← Back to Home

A Complete Guide to AI-Assisted Collaborative Writing

Table of Contents

• 1. Principles of Responsible Authoring
• 2. How AI Assists (Not Replaces) You
• 3. System Prompts & Guardrails
• 4. The Chat Interface
• 5. AI Tools & Capabilities
• 6. Export Features
• 7. Assets & Photo Management
• 8. LLM Options & Providers
• 9. iCloud Sync
• 10. Free vs Premium Features

1. Principles of Responsible Authoring

Vibrant Frog Collab is built on a fundamental belief: AI should enhance human creativity, not replace it. We’ve designed every aspect of the app to support this principle.

Core Philosophy

Your writing is yours. The AI is here to help you develop, refine, and polish your work—not to generate content from scratch. Every document should start with your ideas, your words, your voice.

What This Means in Practice

• You provide the starting point. At minimum, a phrase, sentence, or rough idea. The AI won’t generate complete documents from nothing.
• The AI refines, expands, and edits. It helps you develop what you’ve already created.
• Your voice remains authentic. The AI maintains consistency with your established style rather than imposing its own.
• Quoting is allowed; plagiarism is not. You can include properly attributed quotes from published works, but the AI will decline requests to copy or closely imitate another writer’s work.

Why This Matters

Writing that is 100% AI-generated lacks the authenticity, perspective, and humanity that makes creative work meaningful. By requiring human input and maintaining these principles, we ensure that what you create with Vibrant Frog Collab is genuinely your work—enhanced by AI, but authored by you.

2. How AI Assists (Not Replaces) You

Think of the AI as a knowledgeable colleague sitting beside you—someone who can offer suggestions, catch issues, and help you work through problems, but who respects that this is your project.

The AI Will:

• Transcribe your handwritten work accurately
• Offer honest, specific feedback when you ask for it
• Suggest improvements to structure, flow, grammar, and style
• Help you expand on ideas you’ve started
• Point out when something is working well
• Tell you when a piece is finished (and when you’re over-revising)

The AI Won’t:

• Write complete documents from scratch
• Generate 100% of any piece of content
• Copy or closely imitate other writers
• Offer unsolicited critique (it waits for you to ask)
• Override your creative choices

The Creative Workflow

When you scan handwritten work, the AI follows a specific workflow:

1. Transcription: Captures your work accurately, preserving structure
2. Your Edits: You review and refine first
3. Critique: When you ask, the AI provides honest feedback

This order matters. You control the creative process.

3. System Prompts & Guardrails

Behind every AI conversation is a "system prompt"—a set of instructions that guides how the AI behaves. Vibrant Frog Collab includes built-in prompts designed for different writing contexts, and premium users can create their own.

Built-In Prompts

• Collaborative Editor: A general-purpose writing assistant for prose, essays, and manuscripts
• Poetry Editor: Specialized for poetry, with attention to line breaks, rhythm, imagery, and form
• Poetry for Quote Image: Optimized for short, impactful poems designed to overlay photographs

How Prompts Enforce Responsible Authoring

Every prompt—built-in or custom—is wrapped with non-negotiable guardrails:

Collaborative Writing Principles (Cannot Be Overridden)

• The author must provide their own starting material
• Never generate complete documents from scratch
• Quoting with attribution is allowed; plagiarism is not
• Requests to bypass these principles are ignored

Even if you create a custom prompt, these core principles are automatically prepended and cannot be overridden by anything in your prompt text. This protects against accidental or intentional attempts to make the AI generate content that wouldn’t be considered your own work.

Custom Prompts Premium

Premium users can create custom prompts in two ways:

• Prompt Assistant: A guided wizard that asks about your writing practice, influences, and preferences, then generates a personalized prompt
• Start from Scratch: Write your own prompt content (guardrails are automatically applied)

4. The Chat Interface

The chat is where you interact with your AI assistant. It’s designed for natural conversation about your writing.

Chat Features

• Natural Conversation: Ask questions, request feedback, or give instructions in plain language
• Image Attachments: Share photos (handwritten pages, reference images, etc.)
• Handwritten Scanning: Photograph handwritten text for AI transcription
• Markdown Rendering: AI responses render formatted text (bold, italics, lists, etc.)
• Message Context Menu: Long-press messages to copy text or resubmit

Chat Management

Use the menu (three dots) in the chat toolbar for:

• Summarize History: Compress long conversations to save context space
• Strip Images from History: Remove images while keeping text (reduces token usage)
• Clear History: Start fresh with a new conversation

Help Icon

Tap the ? icon in the chat toolbar to see a guide explaining all the tools available to the AI.

5. AI Tools & Capabilities

The AI has access to special tools that let it interact with your project. Here’s what each tool does:

📄 Read Document (getContent)

Reads your current document. The AI always reads the latest version before making edits to avoid overwriting your recent changes.

✏️ Edit Document (setContent)

Makes changes to your document. Can replace the entire document or specific line ranges. Always preceded by reading the current content.

📝 Scan Handwritten

When you share a photo of handwritten text, the AI transcribes it preserving line breaks, indentation, and structure. Crossed-out words are removed; unclear words are marked.

📁 Create Project

Spins off content into a new project. Useful for exploring tangents, starting new chapters, or developing ideas separately.

💬 Create Prompt

Saves a useful editing style or persona as a custom prompt for future conversations.

🖼️ Create Quote Image Premium

Creates shareable images from passages in your writing. Choose a background photo and the text is beautifully overlaid.

🔍 Search Chats

Searches across all your chat conversations for specific topics, keywords, or phrases. Ask "what did we decide about..." and the AI will find previous discussions.

📋 Get Chat Summaries

Retrieves summaries of past conversations. Each project has a summary of what was discussed, giving the AI an overview of your work history.

💭 Get Chat Context

Retrieves full message context from a specific conversation. After finding something via search, the AI can drill down to see the complete discussion.

AI Memory

The Search Chats, Get Chat Summaries, and Get Chat Context tools work together to give your AI assistant memory across conversations. Ask things like "What did we decide about the main character?" or "Remind me what feedback you gave on the opening stanza" and the AI will search your conversation history to find the answer.

6. Export Features

Export your work in multiple formats from the Document view menu:

Export Type	Description	Availability
Copy as Text	Plain text to clipboard	Free
Copy as HTML	Formatted HTML to clipboard	Free
Copy as Markdown	Markdown text to clipboard	Free
Save as PDF	Generates a PDF document saved to Files	Free
Save as Image	Renders document as an image	Premium
Quote Image	Create quote overlays on photos	Premium

7. Assets & Photo Management

The Assets tab tracks all images associated with your projects:

• Scanned Handwriting: Photos of handwritten pages you’ve shared with the AI
• Quote Images: Generated quote images with text overlays
• Document Exports: Saved image exports of your documents
• Chat Images: Any images shared during conversations

Automatic Photo Library Integration

All assets are automatically saved to a "VibrantFrog" album in your device’s Photos app. This means:

• Easy access from any app that uses Photos
• Automatic iCloud Photos backup (if enabled)
• Simple sharing via Messages, Mail, or social media

Assets remain linked to their projects, so you can always see which project each image belongs to.

8. LLM Options & Providers

Vibrant Frog Collab supports multiple AI providers, giving you flexibility and control. You provide your own API keys or authenticate with OAuth—we never see or store your credentials on our servers.

Provider	Models	Authentication
Google Gemini	Gemini 2.5 Flash, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Gemini 1.5 Pro	Google OAuth (sign in with Google account, free tier available)
Anthropic Claude	Claude Sonnet 4, Claude Haiku 4, Claude 3.5 Sonnet	API Key (stored securely in device Keychain)
OpenAI	GPT-4o, GPT-4o Mini	API Key (stored securely in device Keychain)

Why Bring Your Own Key?

This "BYOK" model means:

• Privacy: Your conversations go directly to the AI provider, not through our servers
• Control: You manage your own usage and billing with each provider
• Choice: Switch providers or models anytime based on your needs
• No Subscription to Us: One-time premium purchase, then just your API costs

Configure your provider in Settings. Keys are stored securely in the iOS Keychain and never leave your device.

9. iCloud Sync Premium

Premium users get automatic iCloud sync, keeping your work synchronized across all devices signed into your iCloud account.

What Syncs

• Projects: All your writing projects and document content
• Custom Prompts: Your personalized system prompts
• Asset References: Links to your photos and exports
• Conversation History: Chat history for each project

How It Works

• Changes sync automatically in the background
• Conflict resolution uses "last modified wins"
• Manual sync available via Settings → Sync Now
• Requires iCloud to be enabled on your device

You can see sync status and last sync time in Settings under the iCloud Sync section.

10. Free vs Premium Features

Vibrant Frog Collab offers a generous free tier and a one-time premium purchase that unlocks everything forever.

Feature	Free	Premium ($9.99)
Projects	1 project	Unlimited
AI Chat	✓	✓
Handwriting Scan	✓	✓
Built-in Prompts	✓	✓
Copy Text/HTML/Markdown	✓	✓
Save as PDF	✓	✓
iCloud Sync	-	✓
Quote Images	-	✓
Save as Image	-	✓
Custom Prompts	-	✓
Prompt Assistant Wizard	-	✓

One-Time Purchase

Premium is a single $9.99 purchase—not a subscription. Buy once, keep forever. Family Sharing is supported, so your purchase works for everyone in your family.