Type.ai Overview (Updated October 2024)

What is Type?

Type is a writing app designed for professionals who spend hours each week writing. It integrates AI features for generating, rewriting, and repurposing content directly inside of a powerful, elegant document editor. With Type, anyone can go from blank page to "done" twice as fast – all while maintaining their unique voice and playing the central role in the writing process.

Getting started: navigating the document editor

The document

In Type, everything revolves around the document editor.

The left side of Type contains your document. This is where you compose and edit your writing.

After you create a new document, you can just start writing, paste something in, or have the AI generate a draft for you by tapping the Generate Draft button. (For more on draft generation, check out that section further down.)

Toolbar

Located at the top of your document is the toolbar. You can change the settings on your document, AI models, and formatting here.

Sidebar

On the right side of the app, you’ll notice a sidebar.

The sidebar is home to two features: Type Chat and Content ideas. These features are useful for coming up with new ideas that evolve as you write.

You can adjust the width of the sidebar by dragging the border or dismiss it by tapping the sidebar icon in the top right-hand corner.

Core features: how to write in Type

Blocks

You can also transform a selected block with keyboard shortcuts.

In Type, your document is a collection of blocks.

Blocks are individual pieces of content, such as body text, headers, images, and other assets that comprise your writing. Think of them like “building blocks.” A Type document is made up of many of these building blocks.

When you write in Type, each line of your writing exists as a separate block. Pressing the “Enter” key creates a new block.

There are a few different types of blocks:

Headers: come in three different header sizes
Text: basic body text, sized at 14 pt
Code: format your code snippet in over 100 programming languages, including Python, Javascript, and more
Math: format a math formula; use brackets, curly brackets/braces, and other LaTeX punctuation to write your formulas
Quote: give a statement extra oomph

You can change a block’s type in two ways:

While you have a block selected, you can open the block dropdown menu in the main toolbar and select a new block type.
Tap the dropdown carrot inside of a block to reveal the dropdown menu. Then, select “Change block type.”

Drag and drop blocks to rearrange your work. Hover your mouse over the left side of the block you wish to move until the 6-dotted grip icon appears. Your cursor should change, indicating you can drag and drop the block anywhere you want in the document.

Need to go even faster? You can use the keyboard shortcut CTRL-UP or CTRL-DOWN to move your selected block.

AI models, modes, and rate limits

You can write with both Claude and GPT in Type. We go into more about their differences, but here are the 3 most important things you should know:

Claude is more creative, while GPT tends to be more analytical and factual.
Claude has a bigger context window, which means it can process longer inputs and generate longer outputs.
However, GPT can write in 200+ languages.

When you write, you use both sides of your brain—the artistic left side and the technical right side. Writing with AIs is sort of like that, but if each half of your brain was a super processor trained on massive amounts of data.

Change the AI model you’re using in the toolbar when you’re in the document editor. Try alternating between the models while you’re writing!

Type offers two AI modes to help you write: Speed and Power.

In Speed mode, your selected AI will respond and generate almost instantly, but the output quality may be lower. Today, these include OpenAI's GPT-3.5 Turbo and Anthropic's Claude Haiku.

In Power mode, your selected AI may take a moment longer to respond, but it can handle more complex prompts and generate higher quality outputs. Today, these include OpenAI's GPT-4o and Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

Select the lightning bolt icon to toggle between Speed and Power mode.

Note that there users are subject to some basic rate limiting while leveraging the AI models in Power mode. Setting rate limits is a common practice for APIs, as they protect the service, its infrastructure, and other users.

It’s unlikely you’ll reach these limits. However if you do, these limits reset roughly every 30 days alongside your billing cycle automatically. We also offer one-time resets if you email “limit reset” to hello@type.ai.

There are no limits while in Speed mode, which leverages faster models like GPT-3.5-Turbo and Claude Instant.

You can also update your preferred model and mode in your settings.

AI command palette

Use AI in your writing without ever leaving your document. Generate text directly at your cursor so you stay in the writing flow. No need to open other windows or copy and paste.

Type “/” anywhere in your document to open the command palette. This summons AI at your cursor to generate a sentence, paragraph, and more. Each command will take into account the content that’s already in your document.

Generate content: create custom instructions to receive more specific output; it can produce up to 1,000 words, but defaults to a few hundred, depending on your prompt
Write sentence: finish an incomplete sentence or add a new one
Write paragraph: add a new paragraph or finish an incomplete sentence with a few more sentences
Write list: create a bulleted list or add 3-5 new items to an existing one
Continue writing: ask Type to continue writing with free form text based on what’s already in the document
Generate section headline: inserts a header that describes the content below it
Generate document headline: creates an H1 header at the top of your document

Below is a list of the Type’s shortcuts. If you’re on a Windows (PC) computer, you’ll need to use your Control (CTRL) or Windows key, depending on your settings.

General:

Show keyboard shortcuts: Control-H
Toggle power mode: Command-Shift-P
Toggle AI model: Command-Shift-M
Undo: Command-Z
Redo: Command-Shift-Z

AI editing:

Next suggestion: Shift-Command-. (Period)
Previous suggestion: Shift-Command-, (Comma)
Accept suggestion: A
Reject suggestion: R
Accept all: Command-Enter‍
Dismiss all: Escape key

AI generation:

Open Command Palette: Command-K or slash (/)‍
Generate content: Command-Semicolon (;)‍
Write sentence: Command-Period (.)‍
Write paragraph: Command-Slash (/)‍
Continue writing: Option-Command-Slash (/)‍
Generate section headline: Command-Shift-U ‍
Generate document headline: Command-Shift-Y

Block controls:

Change block type: Control-T
Create block below current: Control-Enter
Create block above current: Control-Shift-Enter
Move current block down: Control-Down Arrow
Move current block up: Control-Up Arrow
Turn into header 1: Option-Command-1
Turn into header 2: Option-Command-2
Turn into header 3: Option-Command-3
Turn into paragraph: Option-Command-4
Turn into code block: Option-Command-5
Turn into math block: Option-Command-6
Turn into quote: Option-Command-7

Formatting:

Bold: Command-B
Italics: Command-I
Underline: Command-U
Strikethrough: Command-Y
Inline code: Command-E
Inline math: Command-Shift-B
Hyperlink: Command-Shift-K

Rewrite Brushes

Rewriting with AI in Type takes just a few clicks.

When you highlight text in the document editor, a floating toolbar automatically appears. Open the AI dropdown menu or use slash (“/”) to reveal Type’s rewrite menu. You can either provide your own custom or saved rewrite instructions, or use a pre-built “Brush.”

A Brush is a shortcut for common editing tasks. Here’s what they do.

Improve: Enhances the overall quality of your text by refining word choice, improving sentence structure, and ensuring clarity, all while maintaining your original meaning and tone.‍
Shorten: Reduces the length of your text while maintaining its core message, making it more concise and to the point.‍
Lengthen: Expands your text by adding relevant details and elaboration to ensure comprehensive coverage of the topic.‍
Fix grammar: Corrects grammatical errors in your text, ensuring that it adheres to proper grammar rules and standards‍
Simplify language: Makes your text easier to understand by using simpler words and sentence structures‍
Enhance readability: Separates chunkier text into smaller paragraphs and uses formatting such as bullet points or numbered lists to keep content interesting

When you select a Brush, the change applies to all the highlighted text you’ve selected but uses the entire context of the document when generating its revision.

After you run a transformation, Type makes suggestions throughout your selected text. New and rewritten content is represented by green text, while red text indicates deletions.

You can review these suggestions individually by hovering over the colored text or using the Shift-Command-. (period) keyboard shortcut. To accept a suggestion, press A. To reject a suggestion, press R. Once you've accepted or rejected an edit, Type automatically moves you to the next suggestion to review.

At any point, you can accept or dismiss the remaining suggestions. To accept all, press Command-Enter. To dismiss all, press the Escape key. Dismissing the remaining suggestions does not undo any edits you've made.

If none of these shortcuts give you exactly what you need, you can save your own custom rewrite instructions as a custom Brush for easy reuse. Just select Custom Edit to add a new transformation. Once you save your own, they’ll always be easily accessible in your Saved Prompts.

You can run an edit command multiple times on the same text to get different results by selecting Retry transform.

When selecting text to rewrite, it’s important to consider how much or little to include. Though most Brushes will automatically take your entire document into account, the Type’s AI will pay special attention to the text you highlight.

For best results, it’s generally better to include more rather than less, but also keep in mind that selecting large amounts of text (especially the entire document) may slow down generation times or produce more changes than you may want. We recommend breaking up revision work into independent chunks of text that are directly related (ex. An entire subsection within a blog post).

Generate Draft

Type can generate entire documents that (optionally) contain knowledge you provide and follow a preferred style, voice, or format, making it that much easier to start closer to “done.”

You can open Generate Drafts by tapping on the Generate draft button in the middle of an empty document.

Type’s Generate Drafts will ask you for a description of what you’d like to write as well as the option to attach style, format, and knowledge sources. This feature can produce drafts up to around 2,000 words long.

The first section of Generate Drafts asks you to describe what you’re writing. The more specific you are, the better the AI can tailor the draft to your needs. Include key points, describe a desired tone, and list any specific requirements.

Type’s Generate Drafts saves your prompt history and allows you to add prompts that you may frequently use. Select the dropdown menu icon at the end of the input field, or click into the input field and use your Down arrow key to reveal your prompt history. Your history will also include recently entered commands and prompts you’ve chosen to save. If you want to save a prompt you just created, select the [+] icon to add it to your Saved Prompts.

Style, Format, and Source Material Attachments

With Generate Drafts, you can upload source material to create documents that contain information relevant to the topic you’re writing about.

Attachments can be:

Files (.DOCX, PDFs, images containing text)
URLs
Other Type documents

And if none of those work for you, you can tap the Paste icon to create a new attachment by writing or copying and pasting into a textbox.

Type uses source material to extract text and incorporate it as background information in the draft generation process.

To guide the voice, style, and format of your draft, you can use the style and format attachment field. Here, you can attach a writing sample that represents the structure or tone you’d like to Type’s output to match. For example, you might attach the last blog post you wrote so that Type’s AI can emulate your general style and approach to writing blog content.

Type also offers a library of free, high-quality templates you can choose from, including a cover letter, product requirements document, and more.

You can attach up to 5 source materials and 1 style/format attachment. No attachment can be longer than 50 pages.

For better results, try to keep uploaded information concise. We recommend shorter documents where 95% of the information is relevant, rather than longer documents with fluff. It may be helpful to parse down your attachments yourself before uploading them.

Type Chat

Type Chat is a chat-based writing assistant that integrates directly with your document.

Type Chat understands nuances in conversation and can interpret complex instructions, so you can talk to it just like you would another person. It’s also aware of what’s inside your document and can provide help brainstorming, writing, and editing as you work on a draft.

Open Chat by selecting the sidebar icon next to the Publish button. Make sure the panel has “Type chat” at the top, and the speech bubble icon is indicated.

Chat is useful at any point in the writing process. For example, if you don’t know where to start, you can tell Type Chat to ask you a few questions to help you refine your starting point. On the other hand, when you’re done writing, you can ask Type to give you feedback on your work with a certain goal in mind, such as optimizing for sign-ups.

If you ask Type to generate text to include in your document, it will place its output in a block that you can drag and drop into your document. Just tap the six dots in the top left hand corner of the block and drag it into your document.

Alternatively, you can tap the “Replace selected text in editor” to insert the text at your current cursor position. Or copy the text to your clipboard by tapping “Copy to clipboard.”

You can also use Chat to edit and refine text that’s already in your document. When you highlight text in your document, the selected text will appear in Type Chat. You can ask the chatbot to edit your work, no matter the block type. This means you can even ask Type to help out with writing or reviewing Code or Math blocks.

Highlighting text adds to Type Chat’s context window. A context window refers to the set amount of text or characters the model can interpret when generating an output.

Note that Type’s context window is roughly 128k tokens (about 500k characters or 110k words) if you’re on GPT, and 200k tokens (about 800k characters or 180k words) if you’re using Claude.

For longer documents, Type Chat works best when you highlight and edit smaller chunks of text one at a time, rather than trying to revise thousands of words at once.

To ensure Type Chat has all of the context it needs to provide useful assistance, you can give it access to your document content by tapping the document icon in the message field.

When you enable document access, Chat will take your entire document into context when it generates its responses. This means you can ask it for help across any part of your document without needing to highlight it. Turning off document access means Chat won’t have the current content of your document in memory, but it will respond to your messages more quickly.

Highlight text and ask Type Chat to transform it in any way you need. Type will generate output that fits in the location of the selected text.

Content Ideas

Expand your writing with Content Ideas.

Type makes relevant suggestions on what to write about next based on what’s in your document. These ideas grow and evolve as your document changes.

You can view Type’s content ideas in the sidebar by tapping on the lightbulb icon. Scroll through Type’s suggestions. If you don’t see any you like, you can either ask it to refresh by selecting the cycle icon in the upper right corner or More suggestions at the end of the suggestions list.

Once you find an interesting idea, Type can write it for you. Tap the three dots to reveal the Write it for me button. Type’s AI will write a new section wherever you last placed your cursor. .

Final steps

When you’ve finished writing your document, Type can help you with the final steps, whether that’s sharing privately or publishing to a wide audience.

Export

Type offers several export options to ensure your work is easily shared and compatible with various platforms. To access the export feature, open the toolbar menu [...] and select Export document. Export your document in the following options:

PDF: Ideal for maintaining layout integrity across all devices.
Word Document (.docx): Perfect for collaborative editing in Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
Markdown (.md): Suitable for developers and those working within text-based environments.
Plain Text (.txt): A simple format that strips away any formatting, useful for importing into other applications.

View-only URLs

You can share your Type documents as view-only URLs. Generate a unique, private link that only those with access can view. The published version of your document will automatically update as you make any edits, and you can always unpublish links to make your work private again.

Publish on your own Type blog

Preview this sample blog and this post live.

Publish your work as posts to your own Type blog. This Type feature lets you share your ideas with the world.

Like the private URLs, posts update live, and unpublish your posts to make them private again.

Your Type blog and its posts have unique URLs you can set. You can change your links, but keep in mind that doing so will break older links with the previous URL.