My Workflow for Writing a Book with an AI-Powered Tool — A "Cursor for Writers"?

Hey everyone,

The first half of the year flew by, and I found myself struggling with a fragmented writing process. I was using Notion, but jumping between research and writing felt clunky. Plus, Notion started to feel too "all-in-one" and wasn't as nimble as I needed for focused writing.

Then, about three months ago, I stumbled upon a tool called YouMind. I was intrigued by its philosophy and decided to give it a shot for a book project I'm working on (I recently got a deal with a publisher!). After writing over 20 chapters with it, I’ve developed a solid workflow that I wanted to share.

Here’s a breakdown of my AI-assisted book-writing process:

1. Creating a Dynamic "Creative Guide"

Instead of a static style guide, I created a living document. I manually compiled dozens of notes from my editor, along with my own "good" and "bad" writing examples. This became my foundational guide for the AI, containing my preferred tone, style rules, and narrative structures.

2. Iterative, Section-by-Section Generation

Working from my chapter outline, I use an "Agent mode" in the tool. I feed it my "Creative Guide" and previous chapters as context. It then generates new content section by section. The initial output is never perfect, but that's part of the process. I manually refine the text, and each correction I make also helps me improve my core "Creative Guide" for future tasks. It's a continuous feedback loop.

3. Enriching with Visuals

Since I'm writing a technical book, charts and diagrams are essential. After drafting a paragraph, I use a chart-generating tool within the AI to create visuals that complement the text, which has been a huge time-saver.

4. Incremental Updates to My Guide

This is key. After finishing each chapter and getting feedback, I create a separate "thought" document to summarize all the new revision ideas. Then, I use the Agent mode again to merge these new insights back into my main "Creative Guide." This way, my writing standard dynamically evolves and improves with every chapter I complete.

My workflow, in short, looks like this:

Topic Selection → Import reference docs into a "Group" → Manually outline key points in a "Thought" → Use the AI Agent to expand and polish the draft → Manually edit and finalize.

From my perspective, using YouMind feels like having a version of Cursor, but designed specifically for writers. It’s been powerful enough and flexible enough for my needs.

I'm curious to hear how others are approaching long-form writing. What does your writing stack look like? Are you using any AI tools in your creative process?