How Vibrant Frog Collab Works
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. AI Photo Search
- 7. Audio Recording
- 8. Export Features
- 9. Book Export
- 10. Assets & Photo Management
- 11. LLM Options & Providers
- 12. iCloud Sync
- 13. 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:
- Transcription: Captures your work accurately, preserving structure
- Your Edits: You review and refine first
- 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.
Search Photos Premium
Searches your photo library using natural language. Describe what you're looking for and the AI finds matching photos using semantic understanding.
Get Document Versions
Retrieves version history for your document. See how your work has evolved and restore previous versions if needed.
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. AI Photo Search Premium
Search your entire photo library using natural language! Instead of scrolling through thousands of photos, just describe what you're looking for.
How It Works
Vibrant Frog Collab integrates with VibrantFrogMCP, an open-source companion app that indexes your photos with AI-generated descriptions.
- Index Your Photos: Run VibrantFrogMCP on your Mac to analyze and describe your photos
- Sync via iCloud: The photo index automatically syncs to your iOS device
- Search Naturally: Ask the AI to find photos by description ("a sunset over mountains", "my cat sleeping")
- Use in Your Work: Found photos can be used as backgrounds for quote images or inserted into conversations
Semantic Understanding
The search uses semantic embeddings, meaning it understands meaning, not just keywords. Search for "peaceful nature scene" and it will find photos of lakes, forests, and meadows—even if those exact words weren't in the description.
Cross-Device Sync
Photos are identified using Apple's PHCloudIdentifier system, which works reliably across all your devices. Index your photos on Mac, search them on iPhone or iPad.
7. Audio Recording
Record voice narrations of your writing directly in the app. Perfect for audiobook preparation, spoken word poetry, or just hearing your work read aloud.
Recording Features
- High Quality Audio: 44.1kHz sample rate, 128kbps AAC encoding
- Project-Linked: Recordings are automatically associated with the current project
- Simple Controls: One-tap recording from the Document tab
- Playback: Listen to recordings in the Assets tab
- Duration Display: See recording length in real-time
How to Record
- Open a project and go to the Document tab
- Tap the microphone button to start recording
- Speak your narration (duration is shown while recording)
- Tap stop to save the recording
- Find your recordings in the Assets tab
Tip: Review Your Writing
Recording yourself reading your work is a powerful editing technique. You'll catch awkward phrasing, rhythm issues, and unclear passages that you might miss when reading silently.
8. 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 |
| Pamphlet | Multi-page pamphlet with custom backgrounds | Premium |
9. Book Export Premium
Compile multiple projects into a single, professionally formatted book. Perfect for poetry collections, short story anthologies, or any multi-chapter work.
Export Formats
- PDF: Print-ready document with table of contents
- Markdown: Clean markdown for further processing
- HTML: Web-ready format with styling
- Plain Text: Simple text for maximum compatibility
Organizing Your Book
- AI Organization: Let the AI analyze your content and suggest the best order for your chapters
- Manual Ordering: Drag and drop to arrange chapters yourself
- Date-Based: Order by creation date (oldest or newest first)
- Alphabetical: Sort chapters alphabetically by title
Title Options
Choose how chapter titles appear:
- Work Date: Use the original project names
- First Line: Use the first line of each work as the title
- Custom: Set custom titles for each chapter
- AI Suggestions: Let the AI suggest titles based on content
How to Export a Book
- Go to the Prompts tab
- Tap a prompt to see all projects using that prompt
- Select "Export as Book"
- Configure your book settings and export
10. Assets & Photo Management
The Assets tab tracks all media 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
- Audio Recordings: Voice narrations recorded in the Document tab
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.
11. 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.
12. 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.