A feature-by-feature read of Arqo against the screenwriting field — the FD-era incumbents, the cloud-native cohort (WriterDuet, Arc Studio, Celtx, Highland), the indie mobile set (Beat, JotterPad, Fade In), and the AI-first adjacencies (Sudowrite, Saga, NolanAI). The Apr-22 read called out three “behind” rows and one partial. All four landed in the May 2026 cycle. This is the audit after the ladder was walked.
Every gap the Q1 audit named is closed. FDX round-trip preserves locked scene numbers and dual dialogue. Yjs-over-Liveblocks ships real multi- cursor in the flow editor. Coloured-page rotation lands in PDF export with the asterisk gutter. Per-character table-read TTS shipped today. What remains is the work that doesn't end — defending the lead on mobile, voice-tuned AI, brand, and the no-list.
Three synchronized views on a phone. A 12-framework beat board native to the script. A no-account demo funnel nobody else ships. Deterministic paginator, Courier-Prime industry PDF, revision asterisks, coloured- page rotation, and locked-scene + dual-dialogue FDX round-trip. Yjs- over-Liveblocks multi-cursor with named presence. Per-character TTS via ElevenLabs. Native desktop via Tauri, iOS via Capacitor, and an offline service-worker shell for the web.
Three rows where the field genuinely ships at our level. Sudowrite's Muse muscle is real on prose generation. Highland and Beat are Fountain- native peers. WriterDuet's Electron wrapper and Arc's desktop shell are both legitimate. None of these are blockers — they're rows where a sophisticated buyer can pick either tool on the merits.
Every feature area writers actually compare — with our position and the field's position in plain language, plus a verdict column. Green = we're ahead today. Ochre = genuine parity. The Apr-22 “behind” and “partial” rows are now flagged with a ship date so the history is legible.
Built phone-first. <2s open, offline, three views on a 390px viewport. The primary funnel, not an afterthought.
Final Draft Go is a 3-star reader with edit bugs. Arc Studio iPadexplicitly “lacks key editing features.” Beat is Mac/iOS-only and writing-first, not production-ready.
12+ frameworks (Story Circle, Save the Cat, Hero's Journey, Pixar, Kishōtenketsu, 3/5-act, AV, stageplay) wired live to scenes via the Beats Board. Not a separate file.
FD has Beat Board + Structure Lines but no framework library. Arc Studio has beats; no framework switching. Highland is minimalist by design. Plottr does this but outside the editor.
“Try it — no account.” Public demo mode, persistence in localStorage, zero-to-writing in under 10 seconds.
Every peer gates behind signup or a $249 install. WriterDuet has a free tier but requires account. FD: credit card before cursor.
Neobrutalist paper-stock identity — olive/ochre/clay on cream, serif display, mono metadata. Feels like a tool for writers, not an accounting app.
The category still looks like 2007 Word. FD skeuomorphic, Celtx blue-SaaS default, Sudowrite purple-bro, Arc Studio generic dashboard.
Conformant import + export, title page + forced markers + boneyard + notes handling. Users are never locked in.
Highland and Beat also Fountain-native. FD imports but distrusts it; Celtx import is lossy.
Pro at $9.99/mo (launch rate, was $11) undercuts WriterDuet Pro ($11.99), Sudowrite ($19), Celtx ($15+). Free tier seeds at true zero.
FD $249 one-time but no AI, no mobile, no updates. Arc $99/yr equivalent, no mobile. WriterDuet Free caps at 3 projects.
Shipped. Courier Prime 12pt via jsPDF, 1.5"/1.0" margins, 55 lines/page, MORE/CONT'D, revision asterisks in the right gutter. ±2 pages of FD on a 90-page script is the acceptance bar.
FD, WriterDuet, Arc, Fade In, Highlandall ship Courier-12, 55-line pages, MORE/CONT'D.
Deterministic line-by-line paginator in lib/pagination/engine.ts. MORE/CONT'D insertion, widow/orphan on character cues, dual-dialogue as an atomic unit, scene CONTINUED: markers. Pure function, unit-tested.
Every production-grade editor has one. FD's rules are the undocumented standard everyone else chases.
Element-level revision stamps emit asterisks in the right margin on export. Coloured-page rotation lives in lib/exporters/v1/pdf.ts (#66 / CLOSE-030) — BLUE → PINK → YELLOW → GREEN → GOLDENROD → BUFF → SALMON → CHERRY, with DOUBLE rotations after pass 9.
FD is the reference implementation. WriterDuet and Arc ship the rotation. We match.
Character report, location report, day-out-of-days (DOOD), scene slug parser — all in lib/reports/. Strip-board remains a follow-up we've chosen to defer.
FD, Movie Magic, Celtx all ship the core four. We overlap on three of the four.
Tauri 2 shell (src-tauri/) for macOS + Windows; Capacitor 8 for iOS (ios/App). Web path gets an offline app-shell via service worker.
FD, Fade In, Highland, Beat ship native. WriterDuet has Electron; Arc has a web-first desktop shell. Three surfaces is rare.
Three routes (Suggest, Character-Prompt, Inspire-Scene) on Haiku→Sonnet. Opt-in, inline, context-aware.
Sudowrite Muse 1.5 is the AI-first benchmark with Style Examples. NolanAI covers scene breakdowns. Saga is AI-native pre-production.
Up to 5 style anchors (lib/ai/style-examples.ts), injected as system-prompt priors across every AI route with a server-side re-clamp. Suggest panel surfaces a one-line voice readout.
Sudowriteships Style Examples but isn't a real screenplay editor. WriterDuet AI, Arc AI, and FD's AI surfaces don't voice-tune.
Shipped May 2026. lib/importers/v2/fdx.ts + lib/exporters/v2/fdx.ts preserve <SceneProperties Locked/Number>, <DualDialogue>, <Text RevisionID>, and the typed title-page layout. Covered by tests/fdx/{locked-scene-numbers,dual-dialogue,round-trip-fidelity}.test.ts.
FD is the file-format author. WriterDuet, Arc, Fade In all preserve runs, locked scene numbers, and dual dialogue. We now match.
Shipped May 2026. Yjs over Liveblocks via lib/collab/yjs-provider.ts; cursor + selection overlay in components/app/collab/remote-cursors.tsx; mounted in the flow editor at flow-editor.tsx:177. Per-script collaborators, awareness, and a Y.Doc canonical state. Bundle is dynamic-imported behind a room join.
WriterDuet and Arc Studio are genuinely multi-cursor. We now ship the same surface, with named presence and awareness.
Shipped May 5, 2026. Per-character voice assignment, ElevenLabs cloud render, shareable take links. Production-tools wedge moved to JMNPR Labs (ARQ-658); entitlement removed from lib/billing/plans.ts.
Arc Studio and WriterDuet both ship per-character TTS with cloud render. We match — and the take-link is ours.
The seventeen features a sophisticated buyer actually asks about, mapped across the competitors most likely to appear in a side-by-side demo. Olive column is us. Arqo cells reflect the May 5 code audit.
| Feature | Arqo | Final Draft 13 | WriterDuet | Arc Studio | Highland Pro | Celtx | Sudowrite | Beat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile-first pro editor | ||||||||
| Three synced views (Flow / Pages / Beats) | ||||||||
| Story framework library (10+) | ||||||||
| Beat board tied live to script | ||||||||
| Arqo Staff (inline, context) | ||||||||
| AI tuned to your voice (style anchors) | ||||||||
| Fountain import + export | ||||||||
| FDX text round-trip | ||||||||
| FDX locked + dual fidelity | ||||||||
| Courier-Prime industry PDF | ||||||||
| Deterministic paginator | ||||||||
| Revision marks (asterisk gutter) | ||||||||
| Coloured-page rotation | ||||||||
| Production reports (char / loc / DOOD) | ||||||||
| Real-time multi-cursor collab | ||||||||
| Table-read / TTS | ||||||||
| Native desktop + offline shell | ||||||||
| No-account demo |
Each of these is a consequence of architecture choices the incumbents can't reverse without rebuilding — or cultural choices the AI-first adjacencies won't make. The May-2026 ship adds three new wins to the cluster: lossless FDX, multi-cursor with named presence, and per-character TTS.
Built phone-first from day one. <2s open, offline, three views at 390px. FD Go is a reader; Arc's iPad can't edit in anger. A 35-year-old desktop stack can't bolt this on.
vs. Final Draft Go · Arc iPad · Celtx mobileStory Circle, Save the Cat, Hero's Journey, Pixar, Kishōtenketsu, 3/5-act, AV, stageplay. Pick a lens per script, swap live. Nobody else ships framework-switching in the editor.
vs. Plottr · FD Beat Board · Arc Studio“Try it — no account.” localStorage persistence, zero-to-cursor in ten seconds. Every peer gates behind signup; FD behind a $249 credit card.
vs. every gated peerNeobrutalist paper-stock identity — olive, ochre, clay, true ink. Serif display, mono metadata. In a category that still looks like 2007 Word, distinctiveness is a moat.
vs. the entire fieldUp to five style anchors inject as system-prompt priors across every AI route — Suggest, Inspire, Scene Surgeon, Character Prompt. The only peer to ship Style Examples is Sudowrite; they don't have a screenplay editor around it.
vs. Sudowrite · WriterDuet AI · Arc AIDeterministic paginator, Courier-Prime industry PDF, revision-asterisk gutter, full coloured-page rotation, character / location / DOOD reports. The cluster the Apr-22 prior called Studio-tier blockers is now Studio-tier assets. Strip-board is the only deferred item.
vs. FD · WriterDuet · Arc · Fade In · Highland<SceneProperties Locked/Number> and <DualDialogue> survive the round-trip cleanly. The production-coordinator test that burned every prior FDX exporter we shipped against is now green. Covered by golden-file tests.
Real CRDT state, named presence, awareness-driven cursor + selection overlay. The bundle dynamic-imports behind a room join, so solo writers don't pay the 120KB cost. The wedge WriterDuet and Arc won by default for five years is now ours too.
vs. WriterDuet · Arc StudioTauri 2 shell for macOS + Windows, Capacitor 8 for iOS, and a service-worker offline shell for the web path. Studio IT can approve an installer; writers on planes can still open the app. Peers ship one, maybe two.
vs. native-only FD / Beat · web-only Arc / CeltxPro at $9.99 undercuts WriterDuet, Sudowrite, Celtx. Free tier seeds at true zero. FD's $249 one-time is a cliff, not a ladder — and it ships no AI, no mobile.
vs. FD $249 · Celtx $15 · Sudowrite $19With the Apr-22 ladder closed, what remains isn't a roadmap of blockers — it's a published refusal list. These are decisions, not backlog. Public, signed, on /no-list.
The hardest line to hold. The competitive pressure to add a “generate scene” button is real. We are saying no, permanently — the moment we cross that line we're a replacement, not an amplifier. Sudowrite, NolanAI, Saga ship this; we don't.
We stop at the screenplay. Shot lists, scheduling, EDL / FCPXML / Premiere XML — those belong in the production tool the writer hands the script to, not the writing tool itself.
RTL + dialectal complexity is a 3–4 week tax per feature; mainland China is a parallel legal + infrastructure build. Both deferred deliberately. The 9-language UI ships English / Spanish / French / Portuguese / German / Italian / Japanese / Korean / Hindi.
Not every competitor is the same fight. Against FD we're a mobile/AI upstart with the production workflow now at parity; against WriterDuet and Arc we're a feature peer with a better phone, voice-tuned AI, and now collab; against Sudowrite we're a full editor with their wedge. Six reads.
The 95%-market-share incumbent. The adversary the Studio pitch is built against.
The real-time-collab incumbent. Writers' rooms default choice when FD isn't mandated.
The modern, well-designed cloud peer at our exact price. Closest feature-match.
The minimalist Mac favourite. Fountain-native, writer-voice-heavy.
The AI-writing incumbent. Not a screenwriting editor — the opposite end of the barbell, except we ship Style Examples too.
The old pre-production suite. Broad but thin per module; enterprise + film-school flywheel.
The Apr-Q1 read called the Studio tier blocked on a 22-week production- workflow ladder. The May-2026 ship walks the rest of it: locked + dual FDX, Yjs-over-Liveblocks multi-cursor, coloured-page rotation, table-read TTS. With nothing left to build for parity, the next quarter's question is no longer “what do we ship?” — it's “who knows we exist?”
Win on mobile, framework-beats, no-account demo, Fountain openness, $9.99 price, brand, voice-tuned AI, full production workflow, three-surface platform, multi-cursor collab, and table-read TTS. Tie on AI assistant (generic), Fountain round-trip, native shell. Nothing left in the “behind” column. The remaining work is distribution: ad LPs at /why-arqo, /no-list, /compare/{free,pro,team}; the 9-language launch; switch-from-* migration paths; and the writers'- room reference customer.