Story Computing Machine

A small shared-universe story room. A [WP] prompt becomes four authored files and, after review, one title image. An explicit rewrite updates those same artifacts in place while Git preserves the previous version:

prompt.md → outline.md → story.md → review.md → title-image.jpg

The coordinator delegates fresh outliner, writer, and reviewer agents for each story. The writer uses one local production adapter for in-place structural, dialogue, and language revision; that writer may also make a targeted REVISE pass, while every later review is fresh. The reviewer reads the prose before the outline and checks people, places, prompt fulfillment, dialogue, binding narrative policy, and continuity. For new stories it also checks recent-story interchangeability. New prompts derive a dialogue promise, dialogic medium, dialogue engine, and relationship movement before drafting; the illustrator reads the finished prose and creates an exact 864x1536 portrait key visual. Reference images attached to the prompt are inspected and supplied to both the outliner and the cover generator; only their display names are recorded in prompt.md, and the source images remain outside the story directory. There are no draft/final duplicates, canon briefs, handoff ledgers, or release certificates. Each cover includes the exact reader-facing story title once.

Quick start

1. Open the primary main checkout as the Codex workspace.

2. Submit a prompt such as:

   [WP] Every city has a ghost assigned to it. Tonight, ours resigns.
   Target: about 3,000 words; close third person; melancholy but hopeful.
   

   Attach any character, setting, object, mood, palette, or style references to that same request. Every supplied image will inform the outline and be passed as a reference input when generating the cover.

3. The coordinator updates main, creates codex/story-<slug>, adds a dedicated sibling Git worktree for the branch, and runs the complete story workflow from that worktree.

The default result is a reviewed, non-canon story. Adding it to shared canon is a separate explicit user decision.

Repository map

• AGENTS.md — the complete operating rules.
• .agents/skills/story-create/ — the user-facing new-story coordinator.
• .agents/skills/story-rewrite/ — the user-facing scoped rewrite coordinator.
• .agents/skills/story-room/ — shared outline, review, and title-image stage contracts plus scaffold, rewrite-preparation, and validation scripts.
• .agents/skills/short-story-writing/ — the compact project-owned production adapter that resolves upstream craft advice into one in-place prose workflow.
• .agents/skills/creative-writing-craft/, dialogue/, and prose-style/ — pinned upstream craft references; the first is primary and the other two are diagnostic lenses inside the local adapter.
• .agents/skills/story-analysis/, story-sense/, and sensitivity-check/ — pinned upstream review references used within the repository review contract.
• skills-lock.json — upstream skill sources, immutable commit refs, and content hashes for restoration and updates.
• .codex/agents/ — the narrow outliner, writer, reviewer, and title-image roles.
• stories/_template/ — the four-file scaffold.
• universe/ — authoritative shared-universe facts and style constraints.
• stories/ — legacy bundles and current story packages; title images live beside their story prose as title-image.jpg.
• pages/catalog.json — the stored publication snapshot used by Pages.
• pages/covers/ — captured title images used by the index and story pages.
• pages/build.py — captures reviewed stories and renders the snapshot.

Two validation phases

pwsh -NoProfile -File .agents/skills/story-room/scripts/Test-Stories.ps1 -Story <slug> -Phase PreReview
pwsh -NoProfile -File .agents/skills/story-room/scripts/Test-Stories.ps1 -Phase Final

The agent runs the targeted pre-review phase before review, generates the title image only after a passing review, and then runs the final phase locally. Final validation requires a readable 864x1536 JPEG for every current story. For prospective-2026-08-23, local validation also enforces the compact outline ceiling, the three dialogue-design fields, the six-field Voice capsule, and the existing structured dialogue verdict. The earlier 08-18 and 08-21 contracts remain valid unchanged; 08-21 retains its five-field, 180-word Voice capsule. Both phases ignore locked legacy bundles; semantic noun extraction, dialogue judgment, and continuity judgment remain the reviewer's responsibility.

Rewriting a completed story

A rewrite is available only for an explicitly named, completed current-format story with canon: false. Locked legacy bundles remain immutable; canon stories require a separate retcon or canon decision.

After creating codex/rewrite-<slug> and its dedicated worktree, prepare the same four-file package with:

pwsh -NoProfile -File .agents/skills/story-room/scripts/prepare-rewrite.ps1 `
  -Story <slug> `
  -Title "<fresh story title>" `
  -Request "<verbatim rewrite request>" `
  -Scope Selective `
  -Keep "the two sisters' relationship" `
  -Change "the public confrontation" `
  -Remove "the breakfast epilogue" `
  -Cover Auto

Scopes are Rebuild, Reshape, and Selective. Rebuild produces new whole-story prose and treats unnamed old material as flexible. Reshape rewrites the whole execution while preserving unnamed material in substance. Selective retains the existing prose and edits named Change or Remove targets plus the smallest necessary seams. Selections may be passed through -KeepExact, -Keep, -Change, and -Remove. Each scope's outside rule is fixed so the preservation boundary cannot contradict the chosen mode; named selections are the explicit exceptions to that default.

Cover policies are Auto, Keep, and Regenerate. Auto retains an unchanged-title cover as a candidate for fresh visual comparison, but removes a changed-title cover and records that fresh generation is required. Keep requires an unchanged title and never generates a replacement automatically. Regenerate removes the old cover after the Markdown reset succeeds and requires a fresh image after the new prose passes review.

Preparation preserves the original prompt outside four managed rewrite sections, keeps package identity, records the selection contract and prospective-2026-08-23, and updates the package in one guarded operation with rollback. Rebuild and Reshape reset prose; Selective preserves it. All scopes use the same outliner, writer, reviewer, local production adapter, and six-field Voice capsule as current CREATE, while the selection boundary controls how much prior prose they may read and change. Cover generation is conditional because a retained image may be reused after a fresh six-gate pass; a valid final cover is still mandatory for completion. The workflow finishes with conditional cover replacement, final validation, recapture, commit, push, and a draft pull request. No backup prose or rewrite-history artifact is created.

Pages

Pages does not read stories/ during its build. Every passing story is handed to the stored catalog once:

python pages/build.py capture <slug>

Capture requires a passing review but does not duplicate the full story check. It stores the prose in pages/catalog.json and copies the title image into pages/covers/. The Pages index renders cover cards with each story's title, prompt, cover, created and edited dates, state, word count, and content rating; each story page places the cover below its title and prompt. Verify the stored snapshot and reader locally:

python pages/build.py check
python -m unittest discover -s pages -p "test_*.py" -v
python pages/build.py build --output _site

After merge, GitHub Actions only builds, uploads, and deploys the stored pages/catalog.json and pages/covers/ snapshot with the reader stylesheet; it does not rerun story validation or reader tests.