# An editing AI, not a chatbot that rewrites for you > On the field, you dictate. Once back online, you polish. In nTilia, the AI suggests — it never writes in your place. Canonical: https://ntilia.com/u/davidherreman/une-ia-d-edition-pas-un-chatbot-qui-reecrit-a-votre-place?lang=en Auteur: David Herreman (https://ntilia.com/u/davidherreman) Date de publication: 2026-08-17T16:00:03.984+00:00 Dernière mise à jour: 2026-08-17T20:18:00.42+00:00 Tags: IA éditoriale, édition Markdown, écriture mobile, dictée, journalisme terrain, confidentialité IA, nTilia --- There are two ways to "let the AI write." **The first**: paste a paragraph into a chatbot, get back overly smooth prose, paste it back into the article. You save time. You lose the sentence you actually said, the rhythm, sometimes the meaning. The text comes back corrected, sure, but polished away — stripped of those little rough edges that made it recognizably yours. And you have to reread it twice to check the substance hasn't shifted along the way. **The second**: a tool that rewrites behind your back, as you type. Handy, until the day a "smart" correction changes a name, a figure, a tone — without you seeing it coming. A misspelled first name "corrected" into another one, a rounded amount, a swallowed negation: errors you only spot once the article is live, when it's too late. **nTilia does something else. It's an editing AI, designed for a Markdown editor, not a chatbot.** It doesn't open a parallel conversation. It doesn't touch the Markdown until you've said yes. You stay in your note, facing your text, and every suggestion passes before your eyes before it exists. The AI suggests in the right place, in the right context; you're the one who decides. ![nTilia in action](https://estwtgoraddyvzadcfnx.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/article-images/c259246f-b887-4e6c-a30f-d8bc097924be/ef057cd8-3040-4ff4-be83-989fd665fb48/457c0fd4-0d88-431f-a573-b7efbd3e3c68.jpg "ntilia.com") ## Capture first. Polish later. On the field, the network isn't a given. With [nTilia](https://ntilia.com), a Markdown editor designed for mobile writing, dictation, notes, and photos stay local. You dictate at the market, jot notes in a taxi, photograph a document in a room without a signal bar — everything gets saved on the device, without depending on the cloud. The AI, for its part, waits for the connection — deliberately. It's not an oversight, nor a technical limitation nobody figured out how to work around: it's the product's very gesture. Capture where you are, while the material is fresh. Review when you can, at ease. When Wi-Fi or 4G/5G comes back, you don't switch to another piece of software, you don't copy-paste anything into a separate tab. You stay in the note, in the same Markdown editor, exactly where the sentence was dictated. You type **/**. ## A menu, not a chat The **/** character opens the AI assistance, at the cursor, on the paragraph or selection. No separate window, no thread to feed: a menu appears right where you write, and disappears as soon as you've chosen. ### A few commands people actually use: - **Spelling & grammar**: corrects French or English without rephrasing the style. Agreement, punctuation, typos — not the voice. A raw dictation comes back cleaned up, but it stays yours. - **Professional tones**: journalist / field, donor update, team brief. Plus classic, poetic, casual tones. Each tone adjusts the register without reinventing the substance: the same paragraph tightens for a news brief or loosens for a donor letter. - **Ready to publish**: a light pass (spelling, clarity) and an editorial checklist before going live. You spot a repetition, a figure to check, a shaky headline — without the text being rewritten from scratch. - **Personal voice**: if you've recorded your writing style (your way of writing, your voice) in settings, the AI rewrites like you, not like a generic model. Your phrasing, your rhythm, your deliberate quirks stay in place. - **Translate FR ↔ EN**: the passage, not the whole article. You translate the selected sentence, review the After, keep control of the nuances that matter. You can also make a free-form request: "shorten this paragraph and keep the last sentence." **This isn't a chatbot: it's an instruction anchored in the text already there, at the heart of the Markdown editor.** The AI doesn't start from a blank page or a disconnected prompt — it works on what you've written, right where you wrote it. None of this runs in the background. Every AI action is triggered by you. No suggestion popping up unrequested, no correction slipped in as you type: as long as you don't press **/**, the AI stays quiet. ## Before / After: the ritual When the AI is done, the original text doesn't move. Nothing replaces your sentence in the Markdown: the suggestion is displayed alongside it, awaiting your verdict. You see two versions, side by side, and you compare: - **Before**: what you wrote — the raw dictation with its hesitations, the typo, the sentence that runs too long, the spoken turn of phrase left as is. - **After**: what the assistance proposes — the correction, the tightening, the translation, depending on the command used. ![The ritual: Before / After](https://estwtgoraddyvzadcfnx.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/article-images/c259246f-b887-4e6c-a30f-d8bc097924be/ef057cd8-3040-4ff4-be83-989fd665fb48/1ef99e6d-5c44-4662-9255-09fd6b3e8ace.jpg "ntilia.com") The gap jumps out at you. An agreement fixed, a repetition removed, a figure left untouched: you can measure exactly what the AI has touched — and above all what it hasn't. No change buried in the mass, no correction discovered three paragraphs later. If a proper name was wrongly "corrected," you see it before it enters the text, not once the article is live. The banner says it clearly: nothing is modified until you accept. ## Three shortcuts, and that's it: - **Esc**: reject. It closes, the suggestion disappears, the note is untouched — not a comma has moved. The default gesture, the one that costs nothing. - **⌘ Enter** (Ctrl + Enter on Windows): accept. Only then does the Markdown change, and it changes exactly as you just read it. Nothing else replaces your sentence. No "apply and we'll see." No silent merge that blends the old and the new without you knowing where one ends and the other begins. It's the same gesture as in a diff tool: you read, you compare, you decide — and the decision is binary, accepted or rejected, never halfway. - **Ctrl + J**: activates ghost text — a grayed-out continuation that extends your sentence as you type, **Tab** to take it, **Esc** to ignore it and carry on as if nothing happened. Same principle as Before / After: optional, never imposed, never inserted without your keystroke. If you don't confirm it, it erases itself. ## Credits, in plain sight Every AI action consumes credits. The balance stays visible in the Markdown editor, at all times: no need to open a menu or a dashboard to know where you stand. **On the free plan: 40 credits per week**, no credit card required! Enough to test every command, experience the Before / After ritual, decide whether the tool delivers on its promises — before any commitment. This isn't a billing detail. It's a discipline. The AI isn't a tap left running in the background, nor a suggestion looping with every keystroke. You call on it for a correction, a "ready to publish" pass, a translation to review — not to fill the page. A visible counter means a usage you choose: every credit spent corresponds to a conscious decision, a **/** pressed deliberately, never a rewrite launched behind your back. The scarcity isn't an imposed constraint, it's a reminder of what the tool is meant to be — a proofreader you summon, not an engine that writes in your place. ## What this changes, in practice An offline dictation often gives this: *The stalls open, the low sun cuts across the facades. We talk with the trainer, he says millet has changed things around here.* **/** → **Spelling & grammar**. The After proposes the agreements, keeps the spoken breath — the sentence stays spoken, but cleaned up. You accept — or not. Later, **/** → **Journalist / field**. The same scene tightens: the facts, the place, no invented quote. "The trainer states that millet has transformed the local situation" — the words change, but the *millet* stays millet, the *trainer* stays the trainer, nothing slips in that wasn't in the note. Another Before / After review. Before publishing: **/** → **Ready to publish**. A checklist, not a full rewrite: a repetition flagged, a figure to confirm, a subheading to revisit — the text stays yours, you're just shown where to look. **At every step, you remain the author.** nTilia's AI is a proofreader you summon, not a ghostwriter that writes in your place. This is, in fact, the main criticism leveled at "chatbot" uses of assisted writing: you paste in a voice that isn't your own, you lose the rhythm, sometimes the meaning — and often, you only notice on rereading, when the text sounds strangely smooth. Rephrasing tools themselves remind you to "always check" what the machine proposes. Here, checking isn't a last-minute option relegated to fine print: it's the central gesture, built into the Before / After ritual. You never publish without having seen, line by line, what the AI has touched — and what it has left untouched. ![nTilia, Next-Generation Markdown Editor, Dark mode](https://estwtgoraddyvzadcfnx.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/article-images/c259246f-b887-4e6c-a30f-d8bc097924be/ef057cd8-3040-4ff4-be83-989fd665fb48/6cc48238-582b-4956-a1ff-53a1da64ae4c.jpg "ntilia.com") ## Why this choice [**nTilia**](https://ntilia.com) was born from a real-world use case: writing on assignment, where the cloud disappears, then polishing without betraying what was captured. Think of the journalist noting a market scene at dawn, the aid worker drafting a report deep in a valley with no signal, the researcher recording an interview far from any connection. In these situations, what matters isn't a machine's speed, but faithfulness to what was seen, heard, lived. An AI that rewrites on its own breaks this contract: it smooths over the rough edges that give a testimony its value, it substitutes its own coherence for yours. A chatbot sitting alongside the Markdown editor breaks it differently: you leave the file, copy-paste from one window to another, lose the paragraph's context, and end up pasting in a voice that isn't yours — smoother, perhaps, but foreign. The **/** shortcut, the Before / After, Esc, ⌘ Enter and Ctrl + J, the visible credits: this isn't an "AI" layer glued onto an editor. Each of these choices flows from the same rule — the AI suggests, you decide, and nothing changes until you've confirmed it. This is how **nTilia**, a Markdown editor designed for field writing, refuses to replace you: not by restricting the tool, but by putting it in its rightful place — that of a proofreader you summon and dismiss with a keystroke. You stay in control. That's the product: [nTilia.com](https://ntilia.com) ## Frequently asked questions ### How does nTilia's AI differ from a typical chatbot? nTilia is an editing AI designed for a Markdown editor, not a chatbot. It doesn't open a parallel conversation and doesn't touch the Markdown until the user has confirmed: every suggestion appears in the right place, within the context of the text, and it's the author who decides. ### How do you trigger the AI in nTilia? You type the / character to open the AI assistance at the cursor, on the paragraph or selection. As long as you don't press /, the AI stays quiet: no suggestion pops up and no correction is slipped in while typing. ### What is the Before / After ritual? When the AI is done, the original text doesn't move: the suggestion is displayed alongside it, awaiting the user's verdict. You see two versions side by side — "Before" (what was written) and "After" (what the AI proposes) — and nothing is modified until you accept. ### What are the shortcuts to accept or reject an AI suggestion? Esc rejects the suggestion, which disappears without a comma moving. ⌘ Enter (Ctrl + Enter on Windows) accepts: the Markdown then changes to match exactly what was just read. Ctrl + J activates ghost text, a grayed-out continuation confirmed with Tab or ignored with Esc. ### How many credits does nTilia's free plan offer? The free plan offers 40 credits per week, no credit card required. Every AI action consumes credits and the balance stays visible at all times in the Markdown editor. ### Why does nTilia's AI only act once connected? nTilia is designed for field writing: dictation, notes, and photos stay local on the device, without depending on the cloud. The AI deliberately waits for the connection, following the product's logic: capture fresh material where you are, then review at ease once back online. ### What commands does nTilia's AI offer? Among the commands are Spelling & grammar, Professional tones (journalist/field, donor update, team brief) and classic tones, Ready to publish with an editorial checklist, Personal voice, and Translate FR ↔ EN. You can also make a free-form request anchored in the text already written.