Authorship
Not One Word
Maxwell is an AI editor. It reads your manuscript and tells you what it sees. It does not write your book, and it cannot change a word of it. This page explains exactly what that means, where the line sits, and what you can say about Maxwell when a publisher, agent, or contest asks about AI.
What Maxwell does
Maxwell reads a chapter, or your whole manuscript, and writes you a report on it, with comments tied to passages in your text. Every comment quotes your own words and says what the passage is doing, what it could be doing, and why. It will argue a point with you if you disagree. What to write instead is left to you.
What Maxwell cannot do
It cannot change your manuscript. Maxwell reads a copy of your file. It has no way to edit your document, save over it, or send a changed version back. Nothing it says goes into your book unless you put it there yourself.
What Maxwell does not do
It does not write your prose. There is no rewrite button, no "improve this paragraph", and no generate-a-version. Ask it to rewrite a passage and it will tell you what the passage needs rather than hand you sentences.
Two kinds of correction are the exception, and they are the kind any copyeditor or proofreader marks:
- Mechanical fixes. A misspelling, a verb that should agree with its subject, a missing word.
- Factual corrections. A wrong date, a figure that does not add up, a technical detail that is off.
For those, Maxwell names the correct form. It does not rewrite the sentence around it, and whether and how you fix it is your call.
How we hold that line
Every part of Maxwell works under instructions that forbid writing prose for you. On the notes it attaches to your passages, a second check reads each note before you see it and takes out any replacement wording it finds. We are straightforward about what that is: the model underneath is a language model, and an instruction is not the same thing as a wall. If Maxwell ever hands you a sentence for your story, it is a defect. Tell us at support@gomaxwell.org and we will fix it.
Where Maxwell sits in editing
Editors describe their work in four stages, from the whole book down to the last comma. Editors Canada's Professional Editorial Standards 2024, which is free to read, calls them structural editing, stylistic editing, copy editing, and proofreading. American publishing mostly calls the first two developmental and line editing, and we use those names here, as does The Chicago Manual of Style, the reference most American editors work from.
One rule runs through all four: the larger the scope of the edit, the less license the editor has over your actual words. Maxwell does the diagnosing part of every stage and the rewriting part of none.
Developmental
The whole book: structure, story, character, pacing, argument, what is missing and what does not belong.
What a human editor does. Diagnoses. A developmental editor writes you a report on the manuscript (in publishing, an editorial letter) and comments in the margin, and leaves the rewriting to you. One who rewrites your prose has overstepped, even when the new sentences are better.
What Maxwell does. This is Maxwell's core. Its analysis is a written report and comments anchored to your own passages.
Line
Paragraphs and sentences: clarity, rhythm, register, flow.
What a human editor does. Flags what is not working. Where a sentence is only unclear, some line editors will propose an alternative for you to accept or reject. Where your voice is at stake, a good one asks instead.
What Maxwell does. Flags the sentence and says what it needs. It does not propose alternative wording.
Copyediting
Grammar, spelling, punctuation, consistency, house style.
What a human editor does. Corrects mechanical errors, and queries anything that would change what you mean.
What Maxwell does. Names the mechanical error and the correct form. You make the change.
Proofreading
The final surface pass, usually on typeset pages.
What a human editor does. Marks what is left: typos, dropped words, formatting slips.
What Maxwell does. Catches typos as it reads. It is not a final proof of a typeset book.
Using Maxwell under an AI policy
Publishers, agents, contests, and platforms do not all ask the same question, so read the wording of the one in front of you first.
- If it asks who wrote the text ("no AI-generated content", "the work must be the author's own"), Maxwell gave you editorial feedback, and every word in your manuscript is one you wrote.
- If it asks about AI assistance of any kind, including feedback, editing, or research tools, then Maxwell counts, and you should say so. It is an AI tool that gave you editorial notes.
- If you are not sure, ask them, and describe Maxwell accurately. The statement below is written for that.
We cannot tell you whether you need to disclose. Only the policy can, and this page is not legal advice.
AI detectors
Maxwell adds no text to your manuscript, so using it changes nothing a detector reads.
A statement you can use
This is our statement of what Maxwell does. Write your own disclosure in your own words, and quote or link this if it helps.
Maxwell Litura is an AI editorial tool that gives feedback on a manuscript. It reads the manuscript and returns editorial notes, similar to a developmental editor's report and margin comments. Maxwell is not a writing tool. It has no feature for generating, drafting, or rewriting prose, it is built to decline when asked to write, and it has no ability to modify the author's document. Where Maxwell finds a mechanical or factual error, such as a misspelling or a wrong date, it names the error and the correct form, and the author decides whether and how to correct it.
Your manuscript is yours in the other sense, too
Maxwell does not train any model on your manuscript, and neither do the model providers we use. Who can see your work, and how to have it deleted, is on the Trust page.