Document starters

What this accomplishes

The eighteen document starters in Miton’s Writer: blog post, meeting notes, research brief, board update, project retrospective, speech notes, newsletter, RFC, research summary, product spec, changelog, tutorial, resume, short story, cover letter, essay, letter and manuscript. The fork flow and custom starters.

A document starter is a pre-built outline, draft, and completion checklist for a common document type. The starter is a template the user can fork into the user’s project; the starter saves the user the work of building the document from scratch.

This guide covers document starters. See the Writer overview for the full list; the export pipeline is in export to PDF and DOCX; project memory is explained in the memory overview.

Current availability

This page documents behaviour verified in Miton development builds. Miton is still pre-release and is not publicly downloadable; invited beta users will receive a signed desktop build with automatic updates.

Before you start

• A Miton development build, an active project and Writer open.
• A connected model; keep the source material or existing document in the same project.

The eighteen starters

Miton ships with eighteen document starters:

• Blog post. A long-form blog post template with hook, intro, three to five sections, conclusion, meta description. The outline is “Hook → Intro → Section 1 → Section 2 → Section 3 → Conclusion → Meta description”.
• Meeting notes. A meeting notes template with attendees, agenda, decisions, action items, follow-ups. The outline is “Attendees → Agenda → Notes → Decisions → Action items → Follow-ups”.
• Research brief. A research brief template with topic, outline, draft, citation map. The outline is “Topic → Background → Findings → Implications → Open questions → Citations”.
• Board update. A board update template with executive summary, key metrics, risks, decisions needed. The outline is “Executive summary → Key metrics → Risks → Decisions needed → Next steps”.
• Project retrospective. A retrospective template with what went well, what went wrong, what to do differently. The outline is “What went well → What went wrong → What to do differently → Action items”.
• Speech notes. A speech notes template with opening, three points, closing. The outline is “Opening → Point 1 → Point 2 → Point 3 → Closing”.
• Newsletter. A newsletter template with intro, three to five items, outro. The outline is “Intro → Item 1 → Item 2 → Item 3 → Outro”.
• RFC. A request-for-comments template with summary, motivation, design, drawbacks, alternatives. The outline is “Summary → Motivation → Design → Drawbacks → Alternatives → Open questions”.
• Research summary. A research summary template with findings, methodology, limitations, next steps. The outline is “Findings → Methodology → Limitations → Next steps”.
• Product spec. A product spec template with problem, goals, non-goals, design, metrics. The outline is “Problem → Goals → Non-goals → Design → Metrics → Risks”.
• Changelog. A changelog template with added, changed, deprecated, removed, fixed, security. The outline is “Added → Changed → Deprecated → Removed → Fixed → Security”.
• Tutorial. A tutorial template with prerequisites, steps, troubleshooting, next steps. The outline is “Prerequisites → Step 1 → Step 2 → Step 3 → Troubleshooting → Next steps”.
• Resume. A resume template with summary, experience, education, skills. The outline is “Summary → Experience → Education → Skills → Projects”.
• Short story. A short story template with setting, characters, conflict, resolution. The outline is “Setting → Characters → Conflict → Resolution”.
• Cover letter. A cover letter template with intro, body, closing. The outline is “Intro → Body → Closing”.
• Essay. An essay template with thesis, body, conclusion. The outline is “Thesis → Body → Conclusion”.
• Letter. A letter template with sender, recipient, date, body, signature. The outline is “Sender → Recipient → Date → Body → Signature”.
• Manuscript. A long-form book structure with a book bible, chapter outline and three draft chapter files. Novel, book, chapter and manuscript requests route here automatically; the document library keeps chapters separate without losing project context.

Every starter ships an outline and a draft file; some (changelog among them) also ship a checklist file of things to double-check before you call the document done. That checklist is a plain markdown file you edit like the rest of the document — not an interactive, checkable panel. The manuscript starter instead creates the multi-file structure long-form work needs: a book bible, an outline, and chapter drafts, kept as separate files in the document library rather than one long document.

Forking a starter

Pick a starter to fork it into your project as a new document, seeded with its outline and draft content. From there it’s an ordinary document — edit it, or ask the agent to draft from the outline, the same as any other document in Writer.

What the document starters do not cover

• Custom starters — there’s no built-in way to define your own starter template today; the eighteen (plus the data-analysis reference starter) are fixed.
• An interactive completion checklist — where a starter includes a checklist file, it’s markdown text you check off by editing, not a UI with clickable items.
• Starter dependencies — each starter is a standalone set of files; none reference or build on another.

What success looks like

You pick the starter closest to what you’re writing and start from its outline and draft rather than a blank page.

Common failures and recovery

• Confirm the intended document and project are active.
• Keep the original text when reviewing a model-proposed change.
• Check the model connection and retry only the failed action, not the complete document.

Related next action

Return to the Writer overview to choose the next document task.