1667 is a free open-source terminal app for writing fiction with AI. Kompozy generates content and publishes every format across 9 platforms. Honest comparison.
If you searched "1667 alternative," start by giving 1667 its due — and understand what it is first. 1667 is a free, open-source terminal app for writing long-form fiction with language models: you ask a model for the next paragraph and it keeps every take on a branching tree you can walk back through, all under your own model keys, in local files, with no telemetry or account. For a novelist who wants a private, keyboard-first place to draft and explore a story's branches, it is a genuinely thoughtful tool and this page won't pretend otherwise.
I run Kompozy, and the honest framing is that Kompozy is not a rival to 1667 — it's a different category entirely, and most people typing "1667 alternative" are really after the half of the job 1667 doesn't touch. 1667 is a drafting environment; its output is exported Markdown. Kompozy is a content generation and publishing engine: its job is to turn one idea into a full week of formats — carousels, quote cards, images, blogs, newsletters, persona video, text posts — and schedule and publish the whole set across nine platforms. If your bottleneck is writing the novel, 1667 (or a tool like it) is the answer. If your bottleneck is that nobody knows the novel exists, that's Kompozy's job.
The tell is where each tool stops. 1667 stops at the manuscript and the export — no graphics, no video, no captions, no scheduler, no publishing. That is by design; it is a local, private writing tool, not a marketing suite. Kompozy starts where a finished chapter exists and carries it to published: atomized into launch graphics and an excerpt-reading video, sized for every feed, and posted across every platform on Autopilot.
Everything below reflects both products as of 2026-08-17. 1667's details are drawn from 1667.ai and its GitHub project; it is early software, so verify current features and platform support there. No invented weaknesses — 1667's branching tree, local-first privacy, and model-agnostic design are real strengths, and I frame them as such.
1667 is a free, open-source, full-screen terminal application (a TUI) for writing fiction with language models. Instead of a chat window, it presents a keyboard-driven workspace: you ask a model for the next paragraph and it keeps every take side by side on a tree you can walk back through, so you can try several continuations of a scene, follow one path, and leave the alternates parked as siblings to revisit and re-branch. Navigation is entirely keyboard-driven, and the story can be viewed as a single path, a full tree, or a "mass" map weighted by word count. It emphasizes control and privacy — "your keys, your endpoint, your files on your disk," with no analytics, telemetry, or account, files stored locally in a .1667/ directory with optional vault-password encryption, and OS-level locking per project. It is model-agnostic, working with any OpenAI-compatible or Anthropic Messages endpoint and shipping presets for OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, Ollama, LM Studio, llama.cpp, and KoboldCpp, so you can use a hosted model or a local one at no per-word cost. It imports from Markdown, SillyTavern chats, and character cards, and exports the chosen path to Markdown. It is Apache-2.0 licensed with installers for macOS, Linux, and Windows. What it does not do is anything downstream of the manuscript: no graphics or carousels, no video, no per-platform captioning or reframing, no scheduler, and no publishing to any channel.
People look past 1667 as their whole toolkit for one honest reason: it produces a manuscript and the audience job hasn't started. A finished chapter is a single asset — and getting a book read needs teasers, quote cards, an excerpt reading, a newsletter drop, and a steady posting cadence across every platform, almost none of it text. To go from a 1667 export to a launch you still need the writing cut into a carousel and an infographic, styled for the feed, turned into video a text tool can't make, and scheduled everywhere. None of that is 1667's job — it deliberately stops at exported Markdown, so you'd hand that file to a designer, a video tool, and a scheduler by hand. The alternative most writers actually want isn't a rival drafting TUI; it's the engine that turns a piece of writing into published, on-brand content everywhere, and that generates the video and images a writing tool can't. Kompozy is that engine — and it keeps its own copy generation on managed Claude and OpenAI models governed by a Persona Brief, so the marketing voice stays consistent even though it never touches your prose.
| Feature | 1667 | Kompozy | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Long-form fiction drafting with AI | Yes — core strength | No | 1667 is purpose-built for drafting a novel paragraph by paragraph. Kompozy writes Blog Articles, captions, and Email Newsletters — not book-length fiction, and it does not try to. |
| Branching tree of takes | Yes — signature feature | No | 1667 keeps every AI continuation as a sibling on an explorable tree. Kompozy has no equivalent creative-drafting model; it generates finished marketing formats. |
| Local-first, private, no telemetry | Yes | No | 1667 stores files on your disk under your own keys with no account. Kompozy is a hosted cloud engine — a different trust model for a different job. |
| Model-agnostic / bring-your-own model | Yes — any OpenAI/Anthropic endpoint, incl. local | Partial | 1667 runs any compatible hosted or local model. Kompozy runs managed Claude/OpenAI and offers BYO-key on the Founding tier. |
| Open source / free | Yes — Apache-2.0 | No | 1667 is free; you pay only your model provider, or nothing running locally. Kompozy is a paid SaaS priced for a content operation. |
| Governed / brand-voice marketing copy | No | Yes | Kompozy holds an author-brand voice and banned words across every promotional format via the Persona Brief; 1667 governs your fiction, not your marketing. |
| Persona / avatar video | No | Yes | Kompozy generates HeyGen-based Persona Shorts and Persona Frames — e.g. a face-locked author avatar reading an excerpt. 1667 generates no video. |
| Brand-exact carousels, quote cards, infographics | No | Yes | Kompozy renders pixel-exact multi-slide Carousels, Quote Graphics, and Infographic Photos via HyperFrames; 1667 outputs text only. |
| Per-platform captioning & reframing (9:16 / 1:1 / 16:9) | No | Yes | Kompozy re-captions and reframes to each feed; 1667 exports a Markdown file, not sized media. |
| Content repurposing into many formats | No — export only | Cross-media | 1667 exports the chosen path to Markdown; Kompozy turns one source into video, image, text, blog, and newsletter formats. |
| Scheduling & autopilot | No | Yes | Kompozy has Autopilot plus a per-post review pipeline; 1667 has no scheduler. |
| Direct publishing to social + blog + email | No | Yes | Eight social platforms plus blog and Mailchimp from one queue; 1667 exports a file you distribute elsewhere. |
| Tier | 1667 plan | 1667 price | Kompozy plan | Kompozy price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry | 1667 (open source) | Free (Apache-2.0) | Kompozy Starter | $99/mo (5,500 credits) |
| Mid | 1667 + hosted model API | Free app + provider API cost | Kompozy Pro | $299/mo (18,000 credits) |
| Top | 1667 (self-hosted / local model) | Free — no server, no provider fee | Kompozy Enterprise | Custom (sales-led) |
Here's the honest split, and it's cleaner than most on this site because the two tools barely overlap. 1667 is a fiction drafting environment — free, open-source, local, private, branch-first — and if your job is writing the book, keep it; Kompozy is not a terminal novel-writer and won't pretend to be one. But a book with no readers is a manuscript, and turning writing into an audience is a different machine entirely. That machine is Kompozy. Export a chapter from 1667 to Markdown, bring it in, and Kompozy atomizes it into a brand-exact Carousel of the opening hook, Quote Graphics from your best lines, an Infographic, native Text Posts and a thread, and an Email Newsletter chapter drop — then, because it generates rather than just writes, it turns that same excerpt into a Persona Short or Persona Frames video where a face-locked author avatar reads it to camera, the media a text tool can't make. Autopilot and a per-post review pipeline schedule and publish the whole launch across the eight social platforms plus blog and email from one queue, each post held to your author-brand Persona Brief. 1667 costs nothing and makes the words; Kompozy meters generations and makes the audience. If you draft happily in the terminal but the book keeps launching into silence, that's the tell — keep 1667 for the writing, start on Kompozy Starter at $99/mo for the publishing, and let each do the job it's built for.
No — they're different categories. 1667 is a free, local, terminal app for drafting fiction with AI on a branching tree; Kompozy is a content generation and publishing engine. If you only need to write the novel, 1667 is the tool and Kompozy doesn't replace it. If your goal is turning that writing into published, multi-format launch content across nine platforms, Kompozy does the half 1667 doesn't.
Not in the same way. Kompozy generates marketing copy — captions, blogs, threads, newsletters — on managed Claude and OpenAI models governed by a Persona Brief; it is not a branch-first novel-drafting environment and doesn't try to be. Many writers draft in 1667 and then repurpose and publish the result with Kompozy.
1667 is free and open source (Apache-2.0) — you pay only your model provider's API usage, or nothing running a local model. Kompozy is $99/mo (5,500 credits) on Starter and $299/mo (18,000 credits) on Pro. They price for different jobs: 1667 charges nothing for drafting; Kompozy meters generations across every format plus publishing.
No. 1667 exports the chosen path to Markdown and stops there — no graphics, video, captions, scheduler, or publishing. Kompozy fans one chapter across the eight social platforms plus blog and email from a single queue, with Autopilot and a review pipeline, and generates the launch video and images to go with it.
For the drafting itself, tools like NovelCrafter and other AI writing environments are closer peers, and general assistants like ChatGPT or a local model via LM Studio can draft too. For the different job of turning finished writing into published, multi-format launch content — carousels, quote cards, an excerpt-reading video, and a newsletter — across every platform, Kompozy is the alternative: it takes the manuscript further into a scheduled content week.