SceneItAll Docs

Breakdown

Write a scene synopsis

Every scene can carry a synopsis — a short summary of what happens — so your team understands a scene without reading the full screenplay. Write it yourself in the scene detail view, or generate one with AI and review it. This article covers both. For the concept behind AI synopsis generation, see Synopsis generation.

Before you start

  • You have a script with parsed scenes.
  • To edit a synopsis, the breakdown is in Edit mode (Owners and Admins arm edit mode; other members with edit access edit directly). To generate synopses with AI, you need at least one selected scene and edit access.

Write a synopsis manually

  1. Open the scene in the scene detail view.
  2. Find the Synopsis field in the detail panel.
  3. Type your summary into the field.
  4. Select Save, or press Ctrl+S (Windows/Linux) or Cmd+S (macOS) while the Synopsis field is focused.

The Save button appears as soon as your text differs from the saved synopsis. It stays available if the save fails, so a refresh cannot silently discard a draft that looked saved. The field supports multiple lines and has no strict length limit, but keep it to a few sentences that capture the key action.

Saving preserves the caret and selection, so you can continue editing in the middle of a synopsis without jumping to the end.

If the scene is a split part or a copy, its split tag (for example Phone Conversation) appears as a small read-only chip above the synopsis field. The tag is never part of the synopsis text, so you can edit the synopsis freely without disturbing it.

Generate synopses with AI

You can generate synopses for several scenes from the breakdown overview, or for one scene from its detail view. Generation never overwrites your text directly — results go through a review step.

From the breakdown overview

  1. On the Breakdowns tab, select one or more scenes.
  2. Open the AI tools menu and choose Generate Synopses. The item shows the count, for example Generate Synopses (3 scenes).
  3. The job runs in the background. A status strip and a Cancel button appear while it runs.

From a scene

Open the scene’s AI tools menu in the scene detail header and choose Generate Synopses.

Review generated synopses

When generation finishes, a banner offers Review. Select it to open the Review AI Synopses dialog:

  1. Each scene shows its current synopsis and the AI’s version as a diff, with a checkbox.
  2. Check the scenes whose AI synopsis you want to apply, or use Select all / Deselect all.
  3. Select the apply button, for example Apply: 3 synopses.

The applied synopses replace those scenes’ descriptions, and the dialog closes.

[SCREENSHOT: The Review AI Synopses dialog showing a per-scene diff of the current synopsis against the AI version, each with a checkbox]

Tell apart AI and reviewed synopses

In the Synopsis field, a badge shows the synopsis’s review state when an AI synopsis exists:

  • An AI badge means the synopsis is the AI-generated text and has not been edited.
  • A Reviewed badge (with a checkmark) means you have edited the text since it was generated.

Editing the field flips the badge from AI to Reviewed.