Projects

A project is just a folder on disk containing .md files and subfolders, marked with a .smaragd/project.json file. There’s no proprietary bundle format — you can open the folder in any other editor, sync it with any tool, and everything still works.

• File > New Project opens a template picker, then a native folder picker; it creates the folder, marks it as a project, and scaffolds in whatever the chosen template provides. If the folder you pick is already empty, the project is created directly in it — there’s no separate name prompt, since the folder’s own name already says what the project is called. Pick a non-empty folder instead (to hold the new project as a subfolder of it) and you’ll get the usual name prompt.
• File > Open Project opens a native folder picker. If you point it at a folder smaragd hasn’t used before, it offers to adopt the folder in place (writing the .smaragd marker) rather than refusing.
• File > Close Project (or Ctrl+Shift+W) saves the current document (and any open Story Card draft) if it has unsaved changes, then closes the project entirely — no save/discard/cancel prompt, same silent-autosave convention as Close Document. The Binder and every other dock tab return to their empty, no-project state, and a later “Reopen project on launch” won’t bring this project back, since closing it is a deliberate choice to leave it behind. Only enabled while a project is open.
• With no project open, the Binder panel shows New Project / Open Project buttons in place of the empty binder — the first time you’ve ever opened a project in smaragd, New Project defaults to the World-Building template (see below) instead of Blank.
• .smaragd/project.json stores things the filesystem can’t express on its own — manuscript ordering, folder roles, whether plugins/git are enabled for this project. If that file’s contents ever get corrupted, smaragd falls back to defaults rather than erroring; only a missing marker means “this isn’t a project yet.”

File > Settings has a “Reopen project on launch” option, and a separate “Ensure Research and Trash folders exist in every project” option (off by default) that creates those two role folders automatically whenever you open a project, recreating them at their original path if they were deleted since.