If you write Ren'Py, you know the failure mode: everything is fine until you walk the one route you have not touched in a week, and the game dies on a jump to a label you renamed.
VN Architect is a free desktop IDE that reads a Ren'Py project the way the engine resolves it and reports that class of bug before you launch:
- undefined labels, characters and variables
- dead ends, unreachable labels, infinite jump loops
- variable typos —
player_nmeagainstplayer_name— and reads before assignment show/scene/playlines pointing at files that are not in the project
There is also a story-flow graph (every label a node, every jump and menu choice a connection, exports to PNG/SVG/Mermaid/DOT) and an optional AI agent that plans before it edits, shows every change as a diff, and runs the Ren'Py linter on its own work. The agent runs on your own API key, or on Ollama locally for free — and everything else in the app works with no AI and no internet at all.
Quickest way to judge it: hit Open demo project on the welcome screen. It loads a tiny bundled visual novel that is broken on purpose in five different ways, and analyses it immediately, so you can see what it catches in about a minute.
Free for personal and commercial work, Windows / macOS / Linux. Two honest caveats: the macOS build is Apple Silicon only right now, and this is not a WYSIWYG screen designer — it is an editor, an analyser, a graph and an assistant.
