Carrel
noun
- A table, often partitioned or enclosed, for individual study, especially in a library.
- software. A private workspace for writing, in which drafts are composed, revised, and published.
Etymology Alteration of Middle English caroll, from Medieval Latin carola. First recorded in 1593, for the enclosed study nooks in the cloister of Durham’s medieval monastery.
A private hub for writing#
Carrel is a private writing hub for articles across sites, books and manuscripts. It runs on Cloudflare Workers behind Cloudflare Access and admits only the people it lists, so it has no public sign-up and nothing in it is public until it is published. The articles on this site are written in it before they are published here, and a finished article reaches this site through a small keyed API that the site checks on every request.
What it does#
- For a site's articles: one view of the site's posts, the site's own editor with autosave, a preview the site itself renders, and publishing by role.
- For books: book, chapter and scene views over a private manuscript repository, checks on save for continuity and timeline, and export to ePub and Word.
- For AI assistance: an AI's draft is saved beside the author's and never replaces it, and checks and reviewers flag problems rather than decide them. Publishing through an AI tool is refused while a flag is open.
Why the name#
A carrel is a small library desk, often partitioned or enclosed, where one person can study without interruption. Carrel is a private place for writing in the same sense: drafts are written and revised there, seen only by the people it admits, until they are published.
On this site#
The colophon describes how this site uses Carrel.