May 2025: Meet The New Chatfic Lab: A Massive Leap

Words can't express how happy I am to finally share what I've been pouring my heart and soul into. This isn't an update anymore. Today, what's possible with Chatfic Lab is redefined.

I am working on these features for many months. And today, all of those features are LIVE!

1. New Chatfic Lab Browser

Introducing "Apps": Add Instagram posts, snaps etc to your stories

There are built-in app interfaces like the Photo Feed (basically Instagram) that looks like a social app, has a feed and post history. More built-in apps are on the way (snaps, Home Camera app, OF-like app and more). Chatfic stories can now unfold across multiple apps like these. Users get notifications and they navigate between different apps to advance the story.

If you are an author, you can add your own apps too, which won't have feeds (you have photofeed app for that, for now), but will let you set custom backgrounds. This brings us to the second feature for the readers: you can use these custom apps as visual novel "locations":

Locations

It is not always easy to write Chatfics. let's say the protagonist is getting caught while looking at their crush. We usually have to add a third character to the story just to make our protagonist have someone to text about it like "You can't believe what just happened, Olivia just caught me looking at her". It already happened, it is in the past. We survived the event. The element of tension is gone. We can still write good chatfics without eposing face-to-face interactions to the users. But sometimes, if our chatfic could have just one such scene, it would make the story great.

This is why, now Chatfic supports visual novel conversations. You don't have to use them in your story. But if you ever need them, you just can.

You can also add multimedia messages and any other chat message to a location, it looks like this:

This opens the door to creating fully-fledged visual novels, still with our signature chat-focus, but with so much more depth and dynamism. Soon there will be a lot of chatfic stories with campus / school / park / restaurant ... scenes.

Want to see it in action? I've created a special introductory story that walks you through these new features as you play: Experience it here!

Features For Reading Experience:

• Thought Messages: Chatfics now support thoughts so the reader can now also read minds.

• Better Fast-Forward: A huge bug is fixed.

• Undo Feature: You can now undo your choices or even the entire story. This is a patron-only feature.

• Keyboard Navigation: Use Spacebar and Backspace for easy navigation.

  All existing stories on the platform are compatible with these new features, so you can revisit your favorites.

2. Introducing: "One-Page Chat Mode"

I understand that interactive stories with non-linear plots is not what everyone wants. If you ever feel like just scrolling and reading an entire story, now you can do this at Chatfic Lab as well:

This obviously doesn't support any of the features I am announcing today, as this feature requires a static, scrollable story, you don't have undo, character customizations, app navigation, or even options. But it is still useful for linear stories.

3. The Chatfic Editor: Create Your Stories, or Visual Novels?

The Chatfic Editor now fully supports apps & locations and thought messages. With these tools you can write even more addictive stories or create full Visual Novels and publish them on Chatfic Lab.

4. Chatfic Lab Grows Stronger Thanks To You

Our Discord server now has around 3 thousand users. The true power of Chatfic Lab lies in the open, collaborative ecosystem we're building. Your incredible support on Patreon is my main source of income, allowing me to dedicate myself to this vision. And in return, I'm committed to giving back by ensuring that the core components of this ecosystem remain open-source, so its future isn't solely dependent on me. Today I am also announcing updates to our foundational open-source projects:

• Chatfic Format v1.1: The backbone of our stories, updates with apps and thoughts support. Check out the specs

• Chatficdb (Chatfic Story Servers) Updated: It lets authors host their own content. View on GitHub

• Chatfic Editor Updates: Started as a temporary tool... Now it is constantly improving. View on GitHub

• Chatfic Validator Updated: Addscompatibility with Chatfic Format v1.1. Find on PyPI

An Emotional Thank You & A Call To The Amazing Community! ❤️

It all started on reddit. Together, we’ve turned a spark of a silly idea into a fully living, breathing world of chatfic stories. Chatfics are more persistent and powerful now, and not at the mercy of image hosting providers. Anyone can host their own chatfics and share them. And it’s all thanks to you. Every bug you’ve found, every suggestion you made on discord, and every chapter you’ve created and submitted, ̶I̶'̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶w̶a̶t̶c̶h̶i̶-̶ has helped this project.

Now, Chatfic Lb is stepping into this bold new era where people can literally create visual novel level chatfics without programming. You can help every other reader/fan/member of chatficlab:

• Be one of the first people to drop a story idea to the #authors-discussion text channel on our discord.

• Create a discussion post over at r/NSFWchatfics about your favourite chatfic story, or ask for similar story suggestions.

• Create and publish a chatfic story(if you are interested, our discord members have lots of ideas) and you will have Glass of Wine tier for free.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for being on this journey. The best is yet to come!