AI Usage Scoring

Overview

Every Muse project tracks two independent AI usage scores, with generous credit for editing AI output, writing detailed prompts, and iterating on ideas. Each score is shown as a divided bar whose author, unverified, and Muse AI shares always add up to 100%:

• Storyboard Score — how much of your story's characters, settings, and plot came from AI versus from you. Also accounts for unverified elements, whose origin Muse could not determine either way.
• Manuscript Score — how much of the written text originated from AI versus your own typing. Also accounts for unverified content, whose origin Muse could not determine either way.

Where Scores Appear

Scores are always visible to you as you write so there are never any surprises:

• Project Settings — charts show your storyboard and manuscript AI usage scores as you build your story.
• Exported PDFs & EPUBs — the AI and unverified shares of both the storyboard and the manuscript are embedded in the document for verification.
• Verification Page — anyone with your document ID or exported PDF or EPUB can verify the scores.

Reading the Usage Scores

AI usage scores are drawn as segmented bars with three segments: your own work, unverified content, and Muse AI, in that order. Editing any text or element yourself shrinks the unverified and AI segments and grows yours.

Credit for Editing

Both scores rest on the same idea: the more you rewrite AI-generated or unverified content, the more of it becomes yours. Muse compares each passage or storyboard element as it originated with what is on the page now, word by word, and turns the difference into a rewrite level from 0% (untouched) to 100% (nothing left in common).

The storyboard score measures AI contribution to your story's structure and foundational creative ideas. Build and edit the whole storyboard yourself and the score is 0%; any time AI creates or modifies an element, it counts toward the AI share, and any content whose origin Muse could not verify (see Unverified Content) counts toward the unverified share, never as AI. The following actions count as AI contributions:

• AI editing — using AI features to rewrite or refine storyboard beats, characters, or settings
• Beat expansion — generating child beats from a parent beat using AI
• Gap resolution — using AI to fix plot holes detected by plot gap analysis
• Element generation — creating characters, settings, and full outlines with the AI brainstorming chat

Which elements matter most

The storyboard score averages the AI share of every element, weighted by how important that element is to the story. Below is a ranked list of storyboard element importance.

1. 1
   Major plot points

   Top-level outline sections with sections or scenes beneath them
2. 2
   Characters
3. 3
   Minor plot points

   A top-level section with no scenes yet, or a mid-level section with sub-sections
4. 4
   Scenes and settings

Brainstorming discounts

Applies only when the Ghostwriter brainstorming chat was used. The more actively you direct the AI, such as by writing longer idea prompts, sending more chat messages, or editing the AI's story plan, the lower the AI share will be.

What the storyboard AI share typically looks like

What the storyboard unverified share typically looks like

Every word in your manuscript belongs to one of three buckets: yours (typed or dictated), AI (generated by a Muse AI tool), or unverified (origin Muse could not confirm — see Unverified Content). Muse's editor invisibly tracks every AI and unverified passage and gives you credit in two ways: for editing a passage after it lands on the page (see Credit for Editing), and for writing detailed instructions when you direct an AI tool.

Credit for detailed prompts

Applies only to text written by Muse AI via prompting (e.g., the rewrite, expand, or edit functions). The more detailed your instructions, the lower that text's AI share will be.

What the manuscript AI share typically looks like

What the manuscript unverified share typically looks like

When text enters your manuscript or storyboard in a way Muse cannot account for, it has no way to tell whether you wrote it yourself or used external AI tool assistance. That text or element is scored as unverified.

What counts as unverified

Any manuscript or storyboard text that Muse could not confirm was written by you. Editing unverified content is always credited accordingly:

• Edit it by hand and credit moves into your share.
• Edit with a Muse AI tool and credit moves into Muse AI and out of unverified.

What it is not

Unverified content is not an inherent indicator of AI usage; Muse simply cannot verify how that text or element was originally written. On exported copyright pages, a project with unverified content and no Muse AI carries no AI usage statement at all (neither “co-created with AI” nor “created without AI”).

AI Dial Levels & Scoring

Muse's AI Dial lets you choose how much AI assistance you want, from Level 0 (no AI) to Level 5 (full generation). Not every level introduces features that affect your AI usage scores. Here's how each level maps to scoring:

Levels 0 – 2: No Impact on Scores

At levels 0 through 2, no AI-generated content is ever inserted into your storyboard or manuscript. Spellcheck corrections and creative nudge prompts are purely informational and are never tracked as AI contributions. Your AI shares will remain 0% at these levels. Unverified text is still tracked at every level, including Level 0.

Level 3 (Copilot): Light AI Contributions

Level 3 introduces two features that can affect your scores. Their contributions tend to be small (a sentence here, a single element there), so scores at this level are typically under 5%:

• Manuscript — inline sentence completions. When you accept a suggestion, the inserted text is marked as AI-origin and counted toward the manuscript score. Suggestions you dismiss have no effect.
• Storyboard — idea suggestions for beats, characters, and settings. If you apply a suggestion, the created or modified elements are tracked as AI-edited and counted toward the storyboard score. Viewing a suggestion without applying it has no effect.

Level 4 (Collaborator): Directed AI Editing

Level 4 unlocks AI tools that edit and expand your existing work based on your instructions. You stay in control — AI only acts on the selections or elements you point it at — every operation is tracked, and editing the output afterward earns credit back (as do detailed prompts, in the manuscript):

• Storyboard — Ask Collaborator to edit beats, characters, and settings via instruction. Expand beats into sub-beats. Detect and resolve plot gaps. Each modified or created element is tracked as an AI contribution.
• Manuscript — Ask Collaborator to rewrite, expand, compress, or adjust the tone of selected text. The edited text is marked as AI-origin. Inline completions from Level 3 remain available.

Level 5 (Ghostwriter): Full AI Generation

Level 5 is a significant step up. It unlocks the Ghostwriter — an interactive brainstorming chat that can generate entire storyboards and manuscript drafts from scratch — and changes AI's role from editor to co-creator. All Level 4 features remain available; the difference is scale, since Collaborator edits what you've written while Ghostwriter can create from a blank page:

• Storyboard — the Ghostwriter chat can generate full character rosters, settings, and multi-level beat outlines in one session. All generated elements are tracked. The brainstorming discounts (prompt length, message count, plan editing) apply here to reward active brainstorming.
• Manuscript — Ask Ghostwriter can generate full section drafts from your storyboard beats, producing entire scenes or chapters at once. This typically results in higher manuscript scores than Collaborator-level edits, since more of the raw text originates from AI.

Translated & Converted Projects

When you translate a project into another language, or convert one between a novel and a screenplay, Muse creates a brand-new project and keeps it linked to the one it came from. Because the AI produces the translation or adaptation, these projects start with high AI usage and then move from there as you revise.

Translated projects

A translation copies your storyboard across unchanged, so the new project keeps the original's storyboard shares instead of re-counting those copied elements as freshly AI-generated. The manuscript, however, is written by AI, so its score starts at 100% and decreases as you revise the translated text by hand, earning the same editing credit as any other AI-generated writing.

Converted projects

A conversion between a novel and a screenplay (or vice versa) is generated end-to-end by AI, so both the storyboard and manuscript scores start at 100%. The AI rewrites your outline to fit the adapted story design and adjusts characters and settings as needed in your storyboard. The AI then rewrites the manuscript in the completely new format. As you edit either in the adapted project, both scores move to reflect your changes.

Linked to the original

Every translated or converted project stays linked to its source. When a reader verifies your exported project, they'll see a Translation Lineage or Adaptation Lineage panel that displays the original project's full origin bars, including any unverified share. This ensures that where a story came from is fully transparent and gives you credit for any original work.

Document Verification

When you export a manuscript as a PDF or EPUB, Muse calculates both scores at export time, embeds them in the document, and assigns it a unique document ID (e.g., MUSE-A1B2C3-D4E5). Scores are frozen at export and cannot be changed after the fact. Anyone — a reader, agent, or publisher — can visit the Verify page, enter the document ID or upload the file, and see:

• Origin bars for the storyboard and manuscript, with an Author / Unverified / AI legend
• The project name, author, word count, and export date

The copyright page of the export carries a one-line statement as well: “co-created with AI” if any Muse AI was used; “created without AI” if none was used and nothing is unverified; and no statement at all if no Muse AI was used but some content is unverified, because Muse cannot honestly make either claim.

Muse also detects when content was generated or substantially written with external AI tools outside the platform. Unlike unverified content, Muse can tell with certainty that AI was involved in these cases, so the manuscript AI share is set to 100%. We won't go into the specifics of how this works, but we're confident in our approach and keep improving it. The simplest way to avoid it is to write all project content yourself (with or without Muse's AI tools) inside Muse. This isn't about catching or punishing anyone; it's about honest creative attribution. Readers, agents, and publishers who verify a Muse document deserve to know what they're looking at, and you deserve credit for the work that's genuinely yours. Write with AI, without it, or anything in between: Muse reflects your process accurately, and that transparency is what earns your audience's trust.