Here is a tool that helps me get into the flow of writing. (And potentially a new one.)

26 Jul, 2026

Enso. Some may have already heard of it. You keep writing and the words you wrote fade out of sight as you write. It helps you focus you attention on what is being written right now. You can delete words if you press backspace, but you cannot select text or scroll up to see what you have written. After you finish writing, you can download what you wrote as a .txt file.

I tried dumping my thoughts as much as possible with it today. After downloading the 700-word text, I realized I do not know what to do with it. I started wondering if anyone built something similar to Enso, except for editing.

So I asked AI ¹ to help me write a local script. I call it "The Editing Workbench". It essentially works like this:

1. You paste your raw draft into the program. (Mine was downloaded from Enso.)
2. The draft will be parsed into single sentences. They will then be presented one by one on screen.
3. You then can choose to a. rewrite the sentence, or b. skip to the next sentence.
4. A full rewritten draft will be ready for download later.

I am thinking about maybe adding a few more features:

• a side by side comparison sheet between the original sentence and the new sentence;
• an option to rewrite the draft this way a few times a bit more seamlessly;
• the option to show the context surrounding the sentence that is currently being rewritten
• rewritten sentences gradually fading away in the background
• ...

What I have noticed is that editing with the Workbench sentence by sentence is like a quick dialogue between past me and present me. I would reframe mental events, come up with better metaphors or even make commentaries on the editing process itself. Best of all, I no longer care about delivering perfect sentences. I spit out words as much as possible, even when editing. It can be so much more reassuring to know that a further round of editing can always happen a bit later. With tools like Enso and the Editing Workbench, all I have to do now is write, rewrite and nothing else.

P.S. I will try to improve on the local script a bit more, because personally I do find it helpful to get into the editing flow. Please reach out if anyone knows about any editing tools that work in a similar way so that I do not have to bulldoze my way into figuring out how all this code works. I do not know if this is something someone else might be interested in, but hopefully I will make this public available somewhere at some point in the future. Still, just for my own reference.

P.P.S. I privated this post for a little while because I see that not everyone agrees with the use of AI tools. Correct me if I am wrong, but the whole "no-AI, made by humans" sentiment should be about becoming more aware when and where one is using AI and what for. That is why I still decided to make this post public. I can sometimes care too much about what others may be thinking about me and my values. Maybe it's not a bad thing after all to be open and honest about that too.