Save Once, Create Everywhere: Projects, Autosave & the Unified Novus Library

A creative tool earns trust in a very simple way: when you come back, your work is still there. That sounds obvious until a browser tab crashes, site data gets cleared, or you open a different device and discover that the version in front of you is not the version you finished last night.

Novus is deliberately guest-first for making and exporting, but durable saving is account-based. That split keeps the first session fast and private while giving longer projects a proper home when you decide they matter. This guide explains exactly where each kind of work lives, what autosave is doing, and how to keep a recoverable copy at every stage.

Guest creation and durable saving are different promises

You can open the Classic editor, Creator Studio, lyric tools, cover and Canvas tools, or SFX tools without creating an account. Your source media stays in the browser while you work, and you can export a finished file as a guest. That is the shortest path from an idea to a deliverable.

A guest session is not a cross-device project library. Browser storage belongs to that browser profile, can be limited in private browsing, and disappears when site data is cleared. Signing in is the point where a composition becomes a durable Turso-backed project with an owner, a revision number and a place in your creator library.

What a saved visualizer project actually contains

Novus does not save a screenshot of the canvas. It saves the composition document: the editable instructions needed to rebuild the same frame. That is why a saved project can reopen in either editor without flattening your work into a video.

• Canvas size, aspect ratio, frame rate, background, camera, lighting and quality choices.
• Engine, geometry, media, logo, text, lyric, group, mask and effect layers in their exact order.
• Every control's base value, keyframes and audio bindings — including attack, release, mapping range and contribution.
• The node graph, validated connections, timeline ranges, markers, transitions and loop points.
• Asset references and render settings, without embedding temporary browser Blob URLs into the document.

Reading the autosave status

Once a signed-in project has a cloud identity, edits are debounced so dragging a control does not write to the database sixty times a second. Novus waits briefly for the burst of editing to settle, then saves the newest composition. It also flushes when the page is hidden and retries when the browser comes back online.

• Saving — a validated project update is in flight. Keep the tab open until it resolves.
• Saved — the server accepted the latest revision token and returned the next one.
• Offline — the browser cannot reach the save endpoint; the editor keeps your current in-memory work and retries after reconnecting.
• Conflict — another tab or device saved a newer revision first. Novus refuses to overwrite it silently.
• Failed — validation or the save request failed. Use manual save again after checking the message, and export a pack if the problem persists.

Why revision conflicts are a feature

Every successful save replaces the project's revision token. The next write must present that exact token. If two devices start from revision 12 and one saves revision 13, the other device's old token is rejected instead of turning revision 13 back into yesterday's work. That rejection is the conflict state.

When you see a conflict, do not keep editing blindly. Export the current composition as a .novusvis pack, open the latest cloud version in a fresh tab, and decide which changes to keep. The pack turns a scary overwrite decision into an ordinary comparison with two intact copies.

Autosaves, manual saves and milestones

High-frequency autosaves update the current project efficiently; they are not intended to become an endless undo archive. A manual save is the explicit checkpoint you make before a risky edit or when you finish a session. A milestone is the named version worth remembering — for example logo lockup approved or vertical mix ready. Those deliberate revisions are retained separately from routine autosave traffic.

Classic and Studio open the same work

The Classic editor is the fast, guided view of the document; Creator Studio exposes layers, graph routing, timeline curves, rigging and deeper geometry. Switching between them does not convert the project into a reduced format. Classic leaves graph data it cannot edit untouched, and Studio reads the same engine controls and layer order.

Uploaded audio is a separate choice

A composition and its source audio have different privacy and storage costs. The project document is small enough to save routinely. A master WAV can be hundreds of megabytes, so Novus asks whether the audio should join the private cloud project. If you decline, the project keeps its fingerprint, trim and analysis metadata but another device will ask you to reattach the matching track.

If you opt in, the source file is stored as a private Blob asset and referenced by ID. Community pages never receive that private master; publication uses a separate preview derivative. You can make the storage decision per project rather than accepting one permanent rule for every song.

One library for every Novus output

The creator library is broader than visualizer projects. Its purpose is to keep the pieces of a release together even when they came from different Novus tools.

• Visualizer compositions from Classic or Studio.
• Lyric videos and caption-led projects.
• Cover art and short Canvas loops.
• Saved SFX presets and reusable audio ideas.
• Brand kits and platform-specific release variants.

That shared library is what makes save once, create everywhere practical: a logo, palette, SFX preset or project variant can stay attached to your account instead of becoming an unnamed download scattered across devices.

A recovery-minded workflow

1. Start as a guest if you want; sign in before the project becomes expensive to recreate. Saving after login claims the current composition instead of making you start over.
2. Wait for Saved before closing a device or opening the same project somewhere else.
3. Create a manual checkpoint before restructuring layers, replacing audio or rebuilding the graph.
4. Export a .novusvis pack before a major migration, collaboration handoff or long break.
5. Keep at least one recovery code offline or register a passkey. Novus has no email reset link, so account recovery depends on the methods you control.

The goal is not to make you think about storage every five minutes. It is to give each stage the right safety net: a lightweight guest session for trying ideas, revision-aware cloud saving for real projects, and a portable pack when you want a copy that answers only to you. When the project is ready for other people, the next step is explicit rather than automatic — publishing an immutable community revision.