A tense break is rarely a typo
The base tense of a novel is a choice. Past tense can suggest a narrator looking back; present tense can bring a scene closer. A shift between them may be deliberate, accidental or part of quoted speech. The useful question is whether the shift does what you intended in this passage. A list of candidate passages can give that review a starting point.
What Lixity shows you
Lixity reads your manuscript on your own computer and assigns supported body paragraphs and list items a heuristic tense reading: present, past, mixed or neutral. It also assigns a tense-friction rating from 0 to 3. These paragraph profiles omit blockquotes, code and headings; they do not parse every grammatical construction.
Out of that come two lists, and they answer different questions:
Flagged passages (rating 2 or higher by default) are candidates for a second look.
The chapter line summarizes the chapter's dominant tense markers. It supplies a comparison for the paragraph, rather than determining how a reader experiences the scene.
One honest sentence: these readings come from verb forms and markers, not from a grammar parse. Dialogue, nested clauses and reported speech all shape the counts. That is exactly why the last step is always a person reading the passage β not a number.
The review loop, step by step
Start with the read-only synthetic demo if you want to see the controls before installing. For your own manuscript, use the local project workflow:
Since v0.7.2: the interactive workspace opens as continuous prose with Analysis Off. Choose Analysis overview for the comparison panels below, or use a paragraph's β¦ menu for its tools. Back to passage returns from the overview. The reading-workbench walkthrough explains these controls. Check lixity --version if an older installation shows different controls.
Install and open.
uv tool install --python 3.12 --managed-python lixity, thenlixity service start --openand choose Open Project for your manuscript folder. (Windows, macOS and Linux are covered in the installation guide.) If you just want to see the loop first: the demo report opens in your browser, no install.Start with the review panel. Open Analysis overview. Start your review offers Open passage (the first paragraph above your threshold, in reading order), Explore chapters and Open sentence rhythm.
Work the flagged list. The Flagged passages panel lists every paragraph at or above your threshold, sorted by strength and line. Choose a row to return to that passage in the continuous manuscript, with its surrounding text available for review.
Read the context before you judge. Open the paragraph's β¦ menu and choose Values for source lines and measurements. Then look at the scene: is the switch carried by a letter, a memory, an interior monologue? The chapter line supplies the comparison; it does not decide whether the passage works.
Write your decision where you read it. In a configured local project, the paragraph's β¦ menu offers work markers such as To-do, Check and Attention. Saving a marker writes a review note into the manuscript as a Markdown comment. It stays invisible while you read and shows up later in the Work markers panel.
When a switch is on purpose
A high rating measures a change, not a mistake. These cases are usually intentional:
Letters and documents. A quoted letter often shifts into present or into a different register; readers expect the frame to change.
Flashbacks and frame stories. Moving from present to past may be exactly what the structure asked for.
Free indirect speech. A characterβs inner voice can pull the tense along β effective, but easy to overuse.
A scene turn. One present-tense paragraph at the end of a past-tense chapter can be a strong, deliberate accent.
The flagged list decides none of this. It can bring a pattern to your attention, but it can also miss tense changes or flag an intentional passage. Read the surrounding prose before making a decision.
What this can and cannot do
Verb-form patterns miss irony, ellipsis and unusual syntax. Dialogue and reported speech affect the counts. Chapters below 100 words are excluded from the manuscript's chapter-style comparisons; that separate size floor does not validate a paragraph's tense flag. The flag_min_severity setting (1β3) controls which paragraph ratings appear in the list; its default is 2. Lixity does not automatically rewrite prose. Saving a work marker is an explicit write of a Markdown comment in the native project; the published examples are read-only. The interpretation guide and the methods document explain the details.
Try it without installing
Start with the Warehouse 4 demo project: one invented manuscript with analysis, research and PDF layouts. The separate literary case studies of Effi Briest and Pride and Prejudice retain their opening-chapter dashboards and full-novel PDF reports. For your own manuscript, install, open the project and review one chapter.
