Anatomy of a journey: what's on the play screen?

Once you start playing, the screen splits into three zones: a header bar at the top, the narrative in the middle, and your action input at the bottom. Here's what every part does.

An Imagina journey with its header controls, narrative, suggested actions, and action input visible.

1. Character

The pill on the top-left shows the character you're playing. Click it (or tap on mobile) to open the character sheet: portrait, description, and any per-character context the world author wrote. From there you can also generate a new portrait, view past portraits, or open the character's lore notes.

2. Trackers

Trackers are dynamic state the world cares about. Some are picked at journey start (a class, a faction, a difficulty), others change turn-by-turn as the AI updates them (health, suspicion, time of day). Click the Trackers (N) chip to see all current values.

If a world doesn't define any trackers, this chip simply doesn't appear. Trackers are entirely up to the world author, so the meaning of each one comes from the world they belong to.

3. Credits

Your remaining credit balance, plus today's free credits if your account has any. Click the number to see your full credit history (every turn, every refund, every gift). The button next to it opens the credit shop. See credits and picking a model for context on what each turn costs.

When your free credits cover a turn, it costs nothing from your Vault, and the credit history marks it as covered by your free credits.

Behind the menu icon you'll find the rest of the controls:

Settings : theme, layout, background, text effects, and the per-journey image toggle.
Export : download the full transcript of your journey as text or JSON.
Debug : open the prompt debug panel (for power users curious about what the AI saw).
Reload world : pull the latest authored version of the world into this journey.

On a wide screen some of these (like Export) are split out into their own buttons; on mobile they all collapse into the menu.

5. The narrative

The middle of the screen is the story itself: what the narrator wrote, what your character did, and any AI-generated turn images the world enabled. You can scroll back through earlier turns at any time. Some words may glow, flicker, or shake; that's the narrator using text effects to mark special beats.

The latest turn has a few extra controls in its corner:

Undo: roll back the latest turn (no refund of the credits already spent).
Retry: regenerate the latest turn with the same action but a fresh roll of the dice.
Branch: fork a copy of the journey from this turn so you can explore an alternate path without losing the current one.

6. Suggested actions

Above your input, the AI offers up to four suggested actions you can take next. They're meant to be a starting point, not a menu: tap one to fill the action box with that text, or hit it twice (or press 1, 2, 3, 4 on your keyboard) to send it straight away. Edit the text first if you want a variant.

You're never required to use a suggestion. The action box is yours, and the most interesting moments often come from typing something the AI didn't anticipate.

7. Your action box

This is where you write what your character does. A few things to know:

Press Enter to send, Shift+Enter for a new line.
The button on the right turns into Continue when the box is empty: that asks the narrator to keep going on its own, useful for cinematic moments where you don't want to interrupt.
Slash commands like /undo, /retry, /1../4, and /steer <text> are recognised; type / to see the full list.
Type @ to mention a character you've met and pick their name from the list, instead of retyping it. See slash commands and @-mentions for both shortcuts in detail.

8. Steering box

The smaller italic field below your action is the steering box. Anything you type here is treated as a private note to the narrator about how the next turn should go, separate from what your character actually does. Use it to:

Set tone or pacing: make it more tense, slow down and linger on the scene, speed up to the next morning.
Introduce something new: introduce a rival, bring back the merchant from earlier.
Reveal a hidden truth to the narrator: To narrator: the bartender is actually a spy.

The To narrator: ... prefix is a particularly reliable pattern, because it makes it unambiguous that you're speaking out-of-character to the AI rather than describing something your character does or says. Your character won't suddenly know the bartender is a spy; the narrator will just start writing the scene with that fact baked in.

You can @-mention a character here too (focus on @Kohaku), the same way you can in the action box.

The steering box is always optional. Leave it empty for normal play; reach for it whenever the story is drifting somewhere you don't want it to go.

Keyboard shortcuts

Enter: send the current action (with steering, if any).
Shift+Enter: new line in the action box.
1 to 4: send suggested action 1 to 4 directly.
/: open the slash command list.