How Draft Works

Draft follows a simple three-step workflow that keeps you in flow. No context switching, no copy-pasting between apps—just fast, local text transformation.

Trigger

Press your Draft shortcut anywhere you're writing

Instruct

Speak or type what you want to change

Finish

Draft inserts the result at your cursor

Step 1: Trigger

Draft lives in your menu bar and activates with a global keyboard shortcut. The default is ⌥+Space (Option + Space), but you can customize this to any combination you prefer.

When you trigger Draft, it instantly captures the context:

•Selected text — If you have text selected, Draft will transform it
•Clipboard content — If nothing is selected, Draft can work with your clipboard
•Active app — Draft adapts formatting based on where you're writing

Pro tip

You don't need to select text first. Just place your cursor and trigger Draft—it will ask what you want to create.

Step 2: Instruct

Draft's overlay appears, ready for your instruction. You can:

•Type — Just start typing your instruction
•Speak — Press and hold the shortcut to speak (requires microphone permission)

Instructions can be natural language—Draft understands context:

"make this clearer"

"shorten"

"more professional"

"turn into bullets"

"summarize"

"fix the grammar"

"draft a reply"

"extract action items"

Draft routes your instruction to the appropriate editorial skill and applies your active persona settings.

Step 3: Finish

Draft processes your text locally on your Mac—no data is sent anywhere. Within seconds, the result appears:

•In-place replacement — For most transformations, your text is replaced directly
•Scratchpad — For riskier operations (like "draft a reply"), results appear in a preview first

Instant undo

Press ⌘+Z immediately after to undo any change. Draft respects your app's native undo stack.

Context Awareness

Draft adapts its behavior based on where you're writing:

Context	Behavior
Email (Mail, Gmail, Outlook)	Preserves greeting/signature structure
Slack / Teams	Keeps messages conversational and concise
Code editors	Preserves code formatting and syntax
Documents	Maintains paragraph structure

Local Processing

Everything happens on your Mac. Draft uses optimized local language models that run on Apple Silicon:

•No cloud — Your text never leaves your device
•No account — No sign-up, no API keys
•Works offline — Use Draft in airplane mode
•Fast — Response in 1-3 seconds for most operations