What formats can I bring?

A zip from Notion or Obsidian, a folder of markdown, a Word document, an RTF, plain text, or anything pasted straight out of another app. It does not need tidying or organising first.

What about a Google Doc?

Download it as .docx and drop that in, or select all and paste. There is no Google sign-in to grant, which is deliberate — it is one download against a permissions dialog nobody enjoys.

Will it duplicate people I already have?

No. A name that already exists is matched even across differences in capitalisation, leading articles and ampersands, and offered as fill in the blanks or leave mine alone. It never overwrites something you wrote.

What if the result is wrong?

Undo takes the whole import back out. Anything it created is deleted, anything it filled in on an existing record is put back exactly as it was, and your own writing is never touched.

How much does importing cost me?

Nothing beyond your plan. A large vault takes a couple of minutes to read and there is no per-import charge.

Can I import more than once?

As many times as you like. Bring one campaign folder now and the rest later, or add a new set of notes after a few sessions. Each import is reviewed and undoable on its own.

Bringing in notes you already have

Reading a Notion or Obsidian export, a Word file, or anything you can paste — without retyping a year of work.

What you can bring

Anything made of words. A zip exported from Notion or Obsidian, a folder of markdown, a Word file, an RTF, or text pasted straight out of whatever you use. It does not need tidying first and it does not need to be organised in any particular way.

You do not have to bring everything at once, either. Import one campaign’s folder, see how it reads, and come back for the rest.

A real vault, from drop to codex · 4 minutes

How it works, in one paragraph

Your notes are read twice. The first pass looks only for names and merges them, so “Aldric Fenn”, “Aldric” and “the captain” become one person rather than three. You confirm that cast. The second pass reads again knowing who exists, and pulls out details and facts — each one quoting the passage it came from.

That is the whole design, and it is why the result is worth having. A single pass has no way to know it met Aldric four pages ago.

Step 1 — Open the importer

Go to Codex and choose Read in notes you already have. It is also the first of the three doors offered the moment a campaign is created.

The codex, with Read in notes you already have — In the codex, or on the screen after making a campaign

Step 2 — Give it your notes

Three ways, and they all end in the same place:

Drag a zip in. Notion and Obsidian both export as a folder of markdown, so this one gesture covers most people.
Choose files. Individual .md, .txt, .docx or .rtf files.
Paste. Select all in whatever you use and paste it into the box. An estimate appears as you type: word count, roughly how many people and places, and how long it will take.

A vault zip being dragged onto the import page — Drag a zip, choose files, or paste

Step 3 — Choose which files to read

A vault is not a campaign. It has meeting notes in it, a shopping list, three abandoned settings and sometimes a different campaign entirely.

Yarnfold drops the obvious rubbish before you ever see it — config folders, images, empty pages, __MACOSX — and shows you everything else grouped by folder with word counts.

The file picker, grouped by folder, with word counts and tick boxes — Everything arrives ticked; untick what is not this campaign

Careful.Do this before reading, not after. Leaving a second campaign ticked puts its people into this one, and unpicking that afterwards is far more work than unticking a folder now.

The reading progress, showing sections completed — You can close the tab. It carries on without you and picks up where it was.

Step 4 — Confirm the cast

Everything found, grouped by kind and sorted by mention count — so the spine of your campaign is at the top and the scenery is at the bottom. Read down until it stops mattering.

Rename anything that came out wrong. Type straight over it.
Change the kind if something was filed as a place when it is a faction.
Untick anything that is not real.
Merge two entries that are the same thing under different names.
Mark who is a player.

This is the most useful minute you will spend on the whole import, because everything after it resolves against exactly this list.

The roster, grouped into people, places, factions, things and threads — Sorted by how often your notes mention each one

Merging two names into one person

Press Merge on a row and pick what it is the same as. The name you folded in becomes an alias, so every mention of it still resolves.

Merging is deliberately cautious. If your notes never say two names are the same person, Yarnfold will not assume it — a wrong merge is invisible for months, and a missed one is two rows next to each other on a screen you are already reading.

The merge control, offering other entities of the same kind — The folded name becomes an alias

Marking who is a player

Every person gets a Player / NPC toggle. Player characters go into your party rather than your NPC list.

The Player and NPC toggle on a person — The one choice here that cannot be undone later

Careful.This is the only choice on the whole screen that cannot be changed afterwards. A player character filed as an NPC is wrong in your party list, wrong in the combat tracker and wrong in spotlight tracking, and nothing moves a record from one to the other later.

Step 5 — Review what your notes say

Entities are the unit here, not facts. A thirty-session campaign produces several hundred facts, and being asked for several hundred decisions is how an import gets abandoned at number forty.

Scan the list. Everything arrives accepted.
Open one to check its details and facts.
Untick a line that came out wrong.
Past sessions appear at the top, as history with their recaps.

The review screen with facts nested under each entity — Accept a person and what is known about them comes with them

Every fact shows where it came from

Press where and you see the exact sentence in your own notes the fact was taken from.

This is not decoration. A fact whose quote is not genuinely in your notes is discarded before it ever reaches this screen, which turns “do not make things up” from an instruction into something mechanical.

A fact with its evidence quote expanded — Press where on any fact

What a reviewed entry looks like

Aldric Fenn — person

role: Harbourmaster of Greywater · disposition: wary

✓ owes the Harbour Guild four hundred crowns
from “Aldric still owes the Guild four hundred crowns”

Step 6 — Write it in

Before anything is written you are shown the names that already exist in this campaign, with a choice for each:

Fill in the blanks — adds only what is missing. Anything you already wrote is untouched.
Leave mine alone — changes nothing about them, though facts about them are still recorded.

Then commit.

The clash screen, offering fill in the blanks or leave mine alone — Names you already have, and what to do about each

And undo, if it is not right

Everything created is deleted. Anything filled in on a record you already had is put back exactly as it was. Facts close rather than vanish, because a fact that was briefly believed is still part of the record.

Your own writing is never touched, whatever happens.

The finished screen, with counts and an undo button — One button takes the whole import back out

Tip.Start with one campaign’s worth of notes rather than a whole vault of several. You get a cleaner result and a shorter list to read — and you can always import the rest afterwards.

Questions

Questions people ask

No. Drop in a Notion or Obsidian export, a Word file, or paste anything at all. Yarnfold reads the people, places, factions and past sessions out of it and shows you every one before a word is written. If it is all in your head instead, answer nine questions and it builds from that.