FOR THE STORY YOU CAN’T LEAVE ALONE

Your story.
A little
intelligent
company.

Tarantula is screenwriting software for Mac and Windows: a proper screenplay editor with your ideas, research, characters and story structure kept beside the pages. An AI partner helps when you ask, and nothing reaches your script until you say so.

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25 free beta seats. Applications read by hand.

01 / THE SCRIPT ROOM

You write. It keeps up.

Write the page the way you always have. As you go, Tarantula keeps track of who speaks and where, notices when a new line breaks something the story already said, and when you ask, offers a fix as options to choose from.

02 / THE KEYS

Slash, type, Enter.
Done.

Type “/” and a few letters to jump to any element. Tab changes the line you’re on; Enter takes you to whatever usually comes next. Your characters’ names, your places and the time of day fill themselves in as you type.

And the formatting you’d expect: dual dialogue, scene numbers, title pages, US Letter or A4, and (MORE) and (CONT’D) when a speech breaks across a page.

Type / for any element. Start typing and it’s Action.
/ Any elementTab Change elementEnter Next element

Every room
your story needs.

Ideas, research, your world, the outline and the script each get a room of their own, and every room opens onto the same story.

A half-formed idea is enough.

A person. A place. One strange “what if.” Type it or say it on Home, talk it through, and watch it grow into a project.

Ideas is made for the messy start of a screenplay. Describe a logline, a character or a single image, and the AI chat asks the questions that draw out a premise, a format, and the characters and locations in it.

When it feels like a story, choose what to keep and make it a project. Everything you pick lands in the new project’s story canon, ready for World Building, the beat sheet and page one of the script.

A page for every character
and every place.

Every character who speaks and every place with a scene gets a page as you write, with the sections you choose and a board of who’s connected to whom.

Worldbuilding in Tarantula grows out of the screenplay itself. Characters with dialogue and locations with a scene get their own pages, and you choose the sections each one has: appearance, voice, want, need, wound and arc.

Draw who’s connected to whom on the relationships board, and use the Reference Rail beside the page to see every character and place the script mentions, with a count for each. Writing science fiction or fantasy? File places under regions, worlds, solar systems, galaxies and universes.

File places by region, world, solar system, galaxy or universe.

Geography levels give science fiction and fantasy screenplays a map that scales. Start with regions, then switch on Solar System, Galaxy or Universe in World Building’s settings, and every location can be filed at the level it belongs.

The World Tree draws the whole hierarchy, from a galaxy down to a single bar on the docks, so you always know where a scene takes place.

Crosscheck keeps
the story straight.

A few seconds after you stop typing, Crosscheck flags contradictions, lines that wander from your premise, and lines left behind by a changed plan.

Crosscheck is continuity checking for screenwriters. It reads behind you and catches contradictions (page 12 says she’s never driven; page 40 has her behind the wheel), lines that drift from your premise, theme, tone or ending, and dialogue still pointing at a plan you’ve changed.

Rewrite the line, delete it, or change your mind about the plan. Open flags are something the Discussion can read too, so you can talk a problem through before you fix it.

When the script disagrees with a World Building page, both get a note.

Crosscheck also reads your screenplay against your World Building pages. If a line gives a character a past, a trait or a home their page disagrees with, both the line and the page get a note, with a link between them.

Fix whichever one is wrong, and your character bible and your script stay in step from the first draft to the shooting script.

A thinking partner.
Not a ghostwriter.

Highlight a passage and ask, typed or out loud. It has read your script and canon, and answers with options you choose. Nothing reaches the page until you say so.

The Discussion is an AI writing partner that has read your screenplay, your story canon, your outline, your World Building pages and your research, so its notes are about your story, not stories in general. Select a passage and it’s quoted in your question; ask out loud and the transcript lands in the box for you to send.

Every answer comes as options with a preview. Apply one, undo it, or dismiss it. The AI never writes into your script on its own: you stay the screenwriter.

Room for the messy part.

Explore is a whiteboard for cards, notes and sketches, where a line between two cards becomes a relationship. Moodboard holds how it should look and feel.

Explore is an infinite canvas for brainstorming your story: idea cards tagged to your canon, characters and places, sticky notes, a pencil for sketches, and pictures anywhere on the board. Draw a line between two cards, label it, and the relationship turns up in World Building.

Moodboard is an endless board of images for your film’s look and feel, organised in pages and collections, so tone, palette and visual references stay beside the screenplay.

Research you can find again.

Links, images and PDFs live with the project. Filter or search them, and every PDF gets a summary the Discussion can read.

Keep your screenplay research where you write. Drop in reference images and PDFs, or paste links to articles and videos, and they all sit in one grid inside the project. Filter by images, PDFs or links, or search as you type to find a source again.

Every PDF gets an AI summary, and the Discussion reads your research too, so you can ask about a source and get answers grounded in it while you work on the script.

A beat sheet tied
to the real scenes.

Start from Save the Cat, the Hero’s Journey or twenty-odd other structures. Every beat owns real scenes, and your story canon sits on one page.

Outline your screenplay with a beat sheet that’s tied to the script. Pick Save the Cat, the Hero’s Journey, a four-act TV hour, half-hour structures, shorts and ads, or start from nothing. Each beat lists its real scenes, and as the story changes you can split a beat between two scenes, merge two beats, or move a beat to another act.

Your story canon (premise, theme, tone and ending) sits on one page. Tarantula can draft a story structure from your idea for you to rework or undo, and in a TV show or franchise every episode shares the same canon.

Draft a structure from your story, and undo it if it’s wrong.

Stuck on the outline? Tarantula’s AI can generate a story structure from your premise and canon: acts and beats laid out in the template you picked, ready to rework. It’s a first draft of the plan, not the plan.

If it isn’t right, undo it in one step and you’re back where you were. Nothing is written into your screenplay.

Three ways
to see the page.

Focus clears everything but the page, Read shows it as the PDF will print, and Dialogue focus lights up one character’s lines.

Tarantula’s screenplay editor has three modes, a click away in the Script toolbar. Focus folds the project tabs and rooms away so only the page and its toolbar are left, and you keep writing. Read shows the script exactly as the PDF will print it, with scene numbers in both margins, so you can check layout and page count without changing a word.

Dialogue focus is for rewrites: pick a character and every other line dims, so you can read their dialogue as one run and hear whether they still sound like themselves. Their lines stay editable while you do. Whichever mode you write in, the script formats itself as you type: scene headings, action, character names, dialogue, parentheticals and transitions.

Keep the versions
worth keeping.

Capture drafts worth keeping, and export a clean PDF or Final Draft file with watermarks and numbered copies for each recipient.

Save script drafts whenever one is worth keeping, name them, and go back any time. Export an industry-standard PDF or a Final Draft (FDX) file, watermarked Confidential, Draft, a recipient’s name or your own words, without moving a page break.

Sending the script out? Number each recipient’s copy and keep a distribution history. Pitching? Your story canon and outline export as their own PDF. Going into production, make a draft a production issue: every change after that comes out on the next revision colour, with scene numbers held and A-pages.

Going into production? Issue a draft, and every change comes out on the next colour, with A-pages.

Production revisions work the way a production office expects. Make a draft a production issue and its page and scene numbers hold. Every change after that opens the next revision colour on its own and turns the pages it touches that colour, with A-pages where something new goes in. Lock the revision when it goes out and send just the colour pages, so nobody has to reprint the whole script.

Already sixty pages in?

Drop in a PDF or Final Draft file, check the pass page by page, and keep writing. Characters and places get pages too.

Bring in a script you’ve started: import a Final Draft (FDX) file or a screenplay PDF on Home. A page-by-page preview lets you check the pass and fix anything before you confirm, and the script opens on its first page, ready for the next line.

Tarantula also drafts your story canon, gives every character and location a World Building page, and files your scenes under beats.

Stuck? Ask GoodBot.

Ask how to do anything and get an answer in a sentence or two. Tell it what broke or what you wish it did, and it goes straight to the team.

GoodBot is Tarantula’s built-in help assistant. It sits at the bottom of every room and knows where everything is in the version you have, so a how-do-I question gets a sentence or two and where to find the thing.

Found a bug, or wish the screenwriting app did something it doesn’t? Tell GoodBot, and your feedback goes straight to the people building Tarantula. It’s a guide, not a writer: it never touches your script.

YOUR WORK

Your screenplay.
On your machine.

Your projects live on your computer. Writing, saving and exporting work offline. When you ask the AI for help, only the passages it needs go to Google’s Gemini to answer you, including the reading Crosscheck does in the background, and Gemini isn’t trained on them. The Privacy Policy has the details.

Your story starts here.

Tell us about you.

A few quick questions about you, your work, and what you want to make.

We read every application.

25 places, reviewed by hand. There’s no first-come, first-served rush.

You’re in — free, for now.

Free beta access while you bring your next project into focus. When something breaks, or delights you, tell GoodBot: it comes straight to us.

We use your answers only to read your application and to write to you about the beta. Privacy Policy

A few fair questions

Before you ask.

Is my writing used to train AI models?

No. Tarantula’s AI runs on Google’s Gemini API, and Google doesn’t train its models on API data. When you use an AI feature, including the reading Crosscheck does in the background, only the passages that feature needs go to Gemini to answer you, and that is all they are used for. The Privacy Policy says what is sent and how long Google keeps it.

Is Tarantula an AI that writes my screenplay for me?

No. Tarantula is a screenplay editor first, and you write the script. The AI develops ideas, suggests structure, explores a character or a scene and offers alternatives as options with a preview. Every option waits for your yes before it touches the page, and you can undo it afterwards.

Where are my screenplays stored?

Your projects live on your own computer: scripts, drafts, research, pictures and World Building pages are saved locally, and exports are written there too. You sign in to Tarantula with your Google account, and the Privacy Policy lists what we keep from it.

What computers does Tarantula run on?

Tarantula runs on a Mac with Apple silicon and on a 64-bit Windows PC.

Does Tarantula format screenplays automatically?

Yes. Tarantula formats your script as you type: scene headings, action, character names, dialogue, parentheticals, transitions and dual dialogue. Tab and Enter move between elements, a / menu changes a line’s type, and SmartType completes character names and places you have already used. Focus mode clears everything but the page, Read shows the script as the PDF will print, and Dialogue focus lights up one character’s lines.

Can I import and export Final Draft and PDF files?

Yes. Tarantula imports Final Draft (.fdx) files and screenplay PDFs, with a page-by-page preview to check before you confirm, and drafts your story canon and a World Building page for every character and location as the script comes in. It exports an industry-standard screenplay PDF and a Final Draft file, with a watermark if you want one that never moves a page break.

How much does Tarantula cost?

The Tarantula beta is free. AI use has a fair-use limit, and your invitation has the details and the download.

How do I join the Tarantula beta?

Apply on this page with your email, whether you are a screenwriter, and what you are working on. There are 25 places, every application is read by hand, and there is no first-come, first-served rush.