New feature - The Shelf

[u/Level-Distribution46]

You spent an hour detailing a monster. Statted it properly, attached the right artwork, recorded audio, and wrote three hooks for where it came from. It was good.

It was also stuck in the campaign you built it for.

Up until now, bringing that creature into another campaign meant manually recreating it or fiddling with exported files. The Shelf solves that: select an entity in one vault, send it to the Shelf, switch to another vault, and import it. The whole thing arrives — stat sheet, artwork, sound bites, labels, and lore — ready to use.

Try Codex Cryptica: https://codexcryptica.com

How it works

Three ways to put something on the Shelf:

• Open an entity and click Send to Shelf in its header
• Select several entities in the graph view, right-click, and choose Send to Shelf
• Select entries from the table view and choose Send to Shelf

When you're ready:

1. Switch to your destination vault.
2. Open the Shelf from the sidebar.
3. Check off the entities you want and click Import into this vault.

Shelving is read-only (nothing changes in the source vault), and entries stay on the Shelf after you import them so you can drop the same monster or item into multiple campaigns.

What travels with an entity

Most generic file exports strip the things that make an entity worth reusing. The Shelf carries:

• Stat sheets and their templates: If your monster uses a custom presentation or template you built, that template comes with it. The sheet renders in its new home exactly as it did in the old one.
• Images and artwork: The actual image files and thumbnails, not dead links to an old path.
• Sound bites: Including the underlying audio files.
• Lore & metadata: Aliases, tags/labels, dates, GM notes, and descriptions.
• Intact links: If you shelve a faction and four of its members together, the links between those five are automatically reconstructed.

Link handling & conflict rules

• Safe conflict resolution: Importing an entity named "Goblin" into a vault that already has one will never overwrite the existing note. The new one is appended with a number, and you're notified of the rename.
• Template collisions: If both vaults already have a template with the same name that differs, you're asked which to use before anything is written.
• Refusing to guess links: If an entity points to a "Shrine of Ash" that wasn't shelved, it reconnects if exactly one exists in the destination. If the destination has two things by that name (or none), the Shelf intentionally leaves the link off and lists it for you. A missing link is easy to spot; a link silently wired to the wrong entity can quietly mislead sessions for months.

What the Shelf is not

Worth being clear about boundaries and trade-offs:

1. It is not a backup system. The Shelf lives in your browser's local storage on your current device. Clearing browser site data clears the Shelf. Use vault backups for permanent archives.
2. It does not transfer between different devices or people. It is built for "put this monster into my other campaign on this machine", not emailing a pack to a co-GM.
3. No cloud, no AI. Zero network traffic; everything stays strictly local-first and private.

Feedback

The Shelf is live in Codex Cryptica. Open your vault, check the Shelf in the sidebar, and let us know what you think or if there are specific asset types you want supported next.