Compose overview

Compose is a desktop authoring tool. Everything you need — structure, content, styling, preview and export — lives in one window.

The model in one paragraph

A course is a list of lessons. A lesson is a vertical stack of blocks. A block is one piece of content: a paragraph, an image, a quiz, a drag-and-drop exercise, your own HTML. Learners see one lesson per page and move through them in order. On top of that, a course has an overview page (a landing page shown before the lessons) and a set of downloadable resources.

The editor

1. 1
   Title bar

   The menus — File, Edit, View, Insert, Course, Help — plus the course name, undo and redo, your account chip, and the Preview and Export buttons.

   The course name is clickable: it renames the course. A dot beside it means unsaved changes.

2. 2
   Left panel — three tabs

   Tab	Shortcut	What it does
   Outline	Ctrl 1	Lessons: add, rename, reorder, delete. Also the block list within the current lesson.
   Blocks	Ctrl 2	The block catalogue, with search. Click to insert. Also lists blocks you have saved to your Blocks folder.
   Design	Ctrl 3	The look of the published course: presets, colours, logo, typefaces, shape.

   Ctrl B hides and shows the panel. The Design tab can also be popped out into its own larger window.

3. 3
   Canvas

   The lesson you are editing, drawn as a stack of authoring cards. Select a block by clicking it; reorder with Alt ↑ / Alt ↓, duplicate with Ctrl D, delete with Del.

   Blocks can be grouped: select several, then Edit ▸ Group blocks. A group renders as one seamless bordered field for learners, which is how you build a call-out or a sidebar.

4. 4
   Inspector

   Everything about the selected block: its title, its width, whether it is required, and every setting specific to its type. Ctrl Shift I hides and shows it.

5. 5
   Status strip

   Along the bottom: the file name, lesson and block counts, the export format, and a live list of validation notices — an empty text block, an image without alt text, a quiz with no correct answer marked. None of them prevent an export; all of them are things a learner would notice.

What launch looks like

Compose does not open the editor at launch. You see:

1. Sign in — if you have no session. Sign-in happens in your browser, see Accounts.
2. The welcome screen — recent courses with their titles and lesson counts, the Mauvely news feed, and buttons for New course, From a template and Open.
3. The editor — once a course is open.

Turning on Settings ▸ Advanced ▸ Reopen last course skips step 2 and goes straight back into the course you had open.

Undo, redo and autosave

Every change goes through one undo stack (Ctrl Z / Ctrl Shift Z, and Ctrl Y also works). Consecutive edits of the same kind — typing into one field, dragging one slider — collapse into a single undo step rather than one per keystroke.

Autosave is on by default and runs a few seconds after you stop editing. It only applies to a course that has been saved at least once; a brand-new untitled course waits for you to choose a location.

Where to go next

Driving Compose from an AI agent

Compose can run as an MCP server, which lets an AI agent build a course start to finish — lessons, blocks of every kind, the theme, media and export — and take a real screenshot to check what it made.