WriterDuet is the writers’-room default — that adoption is real and we’re not going to argue with it. The collab surface itself is now at parity: Arqo ships Yjs-CRDT live cursors with character-level caret, offline reconnect, comments/threads, and side-by-side version diff. The differences that remain are the phone editor, the free tier, and the buttons we will not ship.
We’d rather lose the click than lose the trust.
WriterDuet has been a writers’-room default for years. The muscle memory is real — if your room is already on it, switching tools mid-season is the wrong fight. We’d rather you stay on WriterDuet for that show and try Arqo on your next pilot than hand-wave the adoption gap.
Same-line collisions during a heated rewrite, six-collaborator merge under deadline, history-revert mid-pitch — WriterDuet has years of those scenarios surfaced and patched. Arqo’s collab is built on Yjs CRDT and has held up in QA, but WriterDuet has stress-test history we don’t.
Same Fountain editor on iOS and Android, three synced views at 390px, sub-2s offline open. WriterDuet’s phone surface is a companion view; Arqo’s is the editor. Solo writers travel; rooms don’t.
Arqo Free opens two scripts with full editor + full export + real-time collab. No assistant, no tokens, no quota. WriterDuet Free caps collaborator counts and project counts before paywall. Both are honest free tiers — ours is the writer-can-finish-a-script tier.
Pro includes the full Memory stack — continuity, project bible, voice-tuned suggestions, drift nudge, transparency pane. WriterDuet Pro doesn’t. At the same total price (Arqo Pro + BYOK add-on = $11.99, same as WriterDuet Pro) the Memory layer is what you get instead of nothing.
/no-list lists, by name, the buttons we will not ship. WriterDuet’s assistant surface is broader and looser by design — they’ll ship more, faster. We’re choosing the opposite trade.
Bone, ink, and lime; serif display + mono metadata; cursor-as-period. The category still defaults to 2007 SaaS blue. If your tool sets your taste, WriterDuet looks like every other web editor; Arqo doesn’t.
WriterDuet AI offers continuation. Arqo’s Suggest route helps you find your own line — it will not auto-complete dialogue past a sentence. The tool’s job is to keep you writing, not to write.
When two collaborators write the same line at the same time, Arqo surfaces the conflict and asks. We will not silently auto-merge dialogue with a heuristic. The cost of getting the wrong word wrong is too high.
FDX is in Free, not gated to Pro. If Arqo is wrong for you, you leave with the file. Vendor lock-in is the oldest screenwriting-software tax; we’re not charging it.
Full signed list at /no-list.
Free tier opens two scripts. No card. Bring your file, see how it lands.
On the surface itself, yes. Arqo runs on Yjs CRDT through Liveblocks — live cursors with character-level caret, named presence, offline reconnect with element-revive guards, comments/threads in the margin, and side-by-side version diff with restore. The one place we’re explicitly different is conflict handling: WriterDuet auto-merges when two writers hit the same line; Arqo surfaces the collision and lets you choose. Different by design, not behind.
Yes. Export FDX from WriterDuet, drop it into Arqo. Locked scene numbers, dual dialogue, revisions preserved. The /switch-from-writerduet guide walks the four-step migration.
Yes — press-and-hold voice capture in the editor on iOS, Android, and desktop, transcribed by Whisper and dropped into the script as text. WriterDuet positions theirs as a live writers’-room transcription workflow; Arqo’s is dictation for the solo writer on the move. Same underlying capability, different framing.
WriterDuet Free caps at 3 projects and 3 collaborators per project. Arqo Free opens two scripts with full editor and full export, no collaborator cap. Both are honest free tiers; ours is the let-a-writer-finish-a-script tier.
WriterDuet AI is broad — continuation, brainstorming, line-rewrites, scene-generation surfaces. Iv is narrow on purpose: three bounded routes (Suggest, Inspire, Scene Surgeon), no auto-generate. Bring your own key on Pro for +$2/mo, or get it bundled on Studio. We refuse one-click scene generation, by name, on /no-list.
Yes. Run the Arqo room for the daily writing; export FDX nightly to the showrunner. The round-trip is verified and locked-scene-number-stable.