Story Maintenance

Overview

Run deterministic maintenance for Story Skills projects. Use the CLI for structure validation, registry rebuilds, word counts, link checks, continuity checks, project reports, next-action reports, pacing, clue, voice, and name checks, revision-pass tracking, Mermaid diagrams, schema migration, entity helpers, manuscript import, and manuscript export and builds. The creative skills still own story decisions; this skill handles mechanical consistency.

CLI Access

Prefer the first available command:

1. story <command> - when the package bin is installed
2. bun run story -- <command> - when working from this repository
3. node scripts/story.js <command> - bundled fallback, resolving scripts/story.js relative to this skill folder

If none of these are available, perform the requested maintenance manually using the conventions in story-init.

Run the installed or bundled CLI in place. Do not copy scripts/story.js into the user's story project, and do not create project-local build scripts, generator scripts, or bulk writer scripts to generate story content. Story projects should remain markdown-first, plus explicitly requested exports such as manuscript.md.

Commands

Run commands from the story project root, or pass the story path explicitly.

story validate .
story reindex .
story wordcount . --write
story links .
story continuity .
story prose .
story voices .
story pacing .
story clues .
story timeline .
story passes .
story passes . --init
story passes . --start structure
story passes . --done structure
story names "Mira" "Kelvos"
story diagram relationships
story diagram locations --out dist/locations.mmd
story diagram timeline
story diagram clues
story diagram arcs
story progress . --log
story compare . --ref draft-1
story compare . --against ../book-draft-1
story series .
story import draft.md --title "Title"
story report .
story report . --actionable
story next .
story doctor .
story migrate .
story add character "Name"
story add matter "Dedication"
story add research "Tidal bore timing" --source "Tide tables 2024" --used-in chapter-03
story add research "Night shift on a cardiac ward" --method interview --accuracy must-be-accurate --confidence medium --risk medical
story add matter "Acknowledgments" --placement back
story rename character old-id "New Name"
story remove promise old-promise
story export . --out manuscript.md
story build . --format markdown
story build . --format epub
story build . --format docx
story build . --format shunn
story build . --format docx --shunn
story build . --format html
story build . --format print --trim 6x9
story build . --format narration
story build . --format metadata
story knowledge sera-voss --at chapter-04
story add clue "The silver locket" --planted chapter-02 --payoff chapter-05
story synopsis --pages 1
story synopsis --pages 3 --out synopsis.md

Use:

• validate after initialization and at the end of any multi-file edit
• reindex after adding, removing, or renaming any entity file. It rebuilds the character, location, system, faction, artifact, arc, chapter, scene, question, promise, clue, and glossary registries. story add reindexes itself; a hand-written file does not
• wordcount --write after writing or revising chapters
• links after changing character relationships, notable locations, arc participants, or chapter references
• continuity after drafting or revising a chapter, and whenever the user asks about contradictions, dead characters appearing, unfired setups, or stale state; it deterministically checks died-in ordering, promise/question chapter ordering, Chekhov gaps, POV/cast consistency, and continuity/state.md references. It reuses the promise-ordering machinery for the clue ledger (continuity/clues/): payoff before plant is an error, and a completed story with planned or planted clues is an error. The Chekhov warning (a clue or promise planted three or more chapters ago) requires status: planted. story add clue --planted records the chapter and leaves status: planned, so set status: planted when the clue is on the page. A recorded payoff chapter that is still ahead of the latest chapter suppresses the "no payoff yet" warning. It also checks prop custody — artifacts with destroyed or lost status must not be referenced after their destruction chapter (recorded in object-state since: chapter-NN; later scenes referencing them in state-changes or mentions are errors) — and clock/time plausibility when scenes or chapters carry date: YYYY-MM-DD / time: HH:MM frontmatter (time may be dawn, morning, midday, afternoon, evening, or night; scene travel-hours: N asserts the minimum time since the previous dated scene in chapter order; a character, by scene characters or pov, in two dated scenes at locations linked by location routes, with less story time between them than the fastest route, is an error. The route check reads scene date, time, and location only, not chapter dates; a named time is a span such as morning 05:00-11:59, an untimed scene spans its whole day, and only journeys impossible on every reading are reported). No dates means no time findings. Intentional exceptions go in continuity/exemptions.md (frontmatter type: exemption-log, entries with pattern + reason); exempted findings are reported as dismissed, not errors
• compare after a revision pass, or when the user asks what changed since a draft: --ref reads chapters at a git branch, tag, or commit with git show (it never writes to the repository), and --against reads another copy of the project. It reports per-chapter word changes, added and removed chapters, and the share of paragraphs unchanged. See Draft Snapshots in the revision-continuity skill for taking the snapshot
• progress when the user asks how far along the book is, whether they will make a deadline, or after a writing session: it reports words against story.md target-words, days left to deadline and words a day needed, chapter target-words, and pace from progress.md. --log records today's total there (--date YYYY-MM-DD to backfill); only log when the user keeps a log or asks for it
• pacing when the user asks about pacing, sagging middles, or chapter endings, and after drafting or restructuring chapters: per chapter it shows words, scene and sequel counts, scene outcomes (yes, no, yes-but, no-and), and the chapter hook (cliffhanger, question, revelation, reversal, decision, emotional, resolution). It warns about three or more consecutive yes outcomes, four or more scene units with no sequel, chapter length outliers (over 2x or under 0.5x the median once three chapters have prose), three or more consecutive chapters ending on resolution, and drafted chapters with no hook. See the plot-structure and scene-craft skills
• clues for mysteries and any story with a clue ledger: prints a clue-by-chapter matrix (P planted, R payoff, x both, . none; ~ after a clue name marks a red herring) and warns about a payoff with no plant, a late plant (same chapter as the payoff, or the one before), a clue with no characters, three or more genuine live clues (not red herrings) with none significance-delayed, and a red-herring: true clue with no payoff. See the genre-craft skill
• voices when dialogue voices may blur or during a line pass: attributes quoted lines (straight, curly, or British single quotes) to the character the narration names next to a speech verb ("...," Mara said, said Mara, Mara asked, aliases included; a name before the verb wins), or else to the only character the paragraph names (an action beat). Pronoun tags (she said) are never attributed, so a close-third POV character is often under-counted. It reports lines, words, mean sentence length, contraction, question, and exclamation rates, and signature words. It warns when a character says a voice-avoid word, when two characters with five or more lines have near-identical fingerprints ("X and Y may sound alike: ..."), and when a voice-words entry is never said. See the voice-style and line-editing skills
• passes to track named revision passes in story.md revision-passes ({pass, status}, status pending, in-progress, or done). --init writes the default ladder (structure, character, theme, continuity, pacing, line, copyedit, proof) and keeps existing entries; --start <pass> and --done <pass> update one; with no flag it prints the checklist and the checks each default pass runs. When the story status is revising, next recommends the next unfinished pass. See the revision-continuity skill
• names before naming a character, place, faction, artifact, system, or glossary term: story names <name...> checks candidates against every existing name and alias. A candidate's given name (first word that is not a title or article such as the, lord, or captain) is compared with each character's given name, and everything else as a whole name; an exact match with either is a clash, an error (exit 1). Look-alikes (the same first four letters, or the same initial within edit distance 1, or 2 when both words have five letters or more) and a given name sharing an initial with a protagonist, antagonist, deuteragonist, or narrator are warnings. Multi-word names are only checked for exact clashes, so pass a multi-word name's distinctive words separately. Pass --path <project> when not in the project root
• diagram when the user wants a picture of the story's structure: story diagram <kind> prints Mermaid source generated from frontmatter, or writes it with --out <file> (--path <project> sets the project). Kinds: relationships (character graph, family edges styled distinctly: the family tree), locations (map-graph from location routes, edges labelled with hours), timeline (dated scenes and chapters in story-time order), clues (clue plant to reveal flow per chapter), and arcs (arcs to the chapters that advance them). GitHub, many editors, and mermaid.live render it; regenerate rather than hand-edit
• timeline when the user asks what happens when, how flashbacks sit against the main line, whose POV dominates, or where a character drops out: it orders dated scenes (and chapters without scene records) by date and time, marks entries told after later events, lists undated scenes in reading order, totals chapters and words per POV, and reports each character's chapter presence, longest absence, and absence from the final chapters. It is read-only; continuity owns clock errors
• prose when the user asks for a prose check or before sharing a draft: per chapter it counts sentence length and spread, filter words and -ly adverbs per 1,000 narration words, plain and said-bookism dialogue tags, echoed words, watch words, and avoided spellings from style-sheet.md (dialect, preferred, watch-words, allow-words); across the manuscript it lists repeated 4-word phrases and similar character first names. Findings are advisory warnings and the command exits 0. See the voice-style skill for acting on them
• series when story.md has follows or precedes links to other books; it orders the linked sequels and prequels by chronology and checks shared canon (characters deceased in an earlier book, cast listings, facts relearned across books, name drift, destroyed artifacts). Use init --follows <path> or init --precedes <path> to start a linked book, and see the series-continuity skill for carrying canon across
• import when the user has an existing manuscript or chapter drafts and wants a Story Skills project built from them; follow up by creating character and location files from the printed entity candidates. Directory sources import in natural file-name order (chapter-2 before chapter-10). import --force into an existing directory deletes every chapter-NN.md in chapters/ before writing the imported chapters, so confirm with the user before forcing an import over a project with drafted chapters
• report when the user asks for project status, inventory, progress, or a quick health summary
• next before a drafting session to identify the next deterministic action
• doctor when the user asks what is stale, broken, or inconsistent
• migrate when a project has an older schema version or missing v2 paths
• add, rename, and remove for deterministic entity file operations when they fit the requested change
• init --form <form> records form in story.md (novel, novella, novelette, short-story, flash, serial, picture-book, chapter-book) and sets a default target-words when none is given; validate warns when target-words is outside the form's usual range and report shows the form
• add matter when the user wants a dedication, epigraph, copyright page, acknowledgments, author's note, about-the-author, or also-by page. Pages live in matter/ (indexed in matter/_index.md by reindex) with title, placement (front or back), order, and heading (set heading: false for a dedication or epigraph). Write the page text directly in the file; unwritten pages are left out of builds and validate warns about them. Never invent acknowledgments, biographical facts, or copyright details: ask the user for them. Matter pages that quote others' work (an epigraph, song lyrics) may record permission (not-needed, pending, granted, public-domain), rights-holder, and credit; validate warns when permission: pending remains on a complete story and when granted has no rights-holder. See the editorial-review skill
• add research when the story relies on a real-world fact: notes live in research/ with status (open, verified, disputed), whole-citation sources, and used-in chapter ids, plus optional --accuracy (must-be-accurate, blended, invented), --confidence (high, medium, low), --method (fact, interview, site-visit, expert-review, reading), and repeatable --risk (legal, medical, weapons, safety, cultural, defamation, technical). validate warns when a final chapter relies on open or disputed research (invented notes never trigger this), and when a note with a risk is used in a final or complete chapter with no reviewed-by. See the research skill
• export only when the user asks for a combined manuscript at a specific path; it includes front and back matter
• build when the user asks to build the book artifact; supports markdown, EPUB, DOCX, Shunn, HTML, print, narration, and metadata outputs in dist/, with front and back matter. For EPUB, set cover: path/to/cover.jpg (inside the project) and author in story.md to embed a cover image and creator
• build --format html when the user wants a review or reading copy for people who never open a terminal: a single HTML file with a table of contents and a stable paragraph anchor on every paragraph, shown faintly in the margin as a link labelled ch03-p12 (chapter 3, paragraph 12), that reviewers cite in notes. templates/github/review-copy.yml publishes it to GitHub Pages; see the feedback-triage skill
• build --format print for a print-ready interior: HTML with CSS paged media, trim size from --trim (5x8, 5.25x8, 5.5x8.5, 6x9, a5; default 5.5x8.5), mirrored margins with gutter, running heads (author on verso, chapter title on recto, blank on chapter openings), page numbers at the foot of chapter and back-matter pages, chapters on recto, a raised initial at each chapter opening, widow and orphan control, and a copyright page. Render it to PDF with a paged-media engine the user installs (Paged.js CLI pagedjs-cli, WeasyPrint, or Prince); the CLI does not bundle one. See the publishing skill
• build --format narration for an audiobook narration script: a pronunciation guide table from every pronunciation field, each chapter with an estimated finished runtime at 155 words per minute, scene breaks as [pause], and a total runtime. See the adaptation skill
• build --format metadata for a retailer metadata sheet from story.md: title, series, authors, ISBN, publisher, date, language, description with its character count against common limits (KDP 4,000), keywords, BISAC subjects, word count, estimated page count, AI disclosure, and a readiness checklist of missing fields. See the publishing skill
• build --format epub also writes EPUB 3 accessibility metadata, language, semantic chapter and matter markup, and a landmarks nav, and uses the optional story.md publishing fields (cover-alt, isbn, publisher, publication-date, description, subjects, language, and copyright, which generates a copyright page when no copyright matter page exists)
• build --format shunn when the user wants Shunn manuscript-format markdown: title page, contact block, word count, chapter breaks, and double-spaced prose; story build . --format docx --shunn applies the same Shunn formatting to the DOCX output
• knowledge when the user asks what a character knew at a given chapter: story knowledge <character-id> --at <chapter-id> lists knowledge-state entries whose learned-in chapter is at or before that chapter, plus entries without learned-in as pre-existing knowledge
• add clue when the user plants a new clue: story add clue "Name" --planted chapter-02 --payoff chapter-05 creates the clue ledger entity in continuity/clues/ with status: planned; omit --payoff when the payoff is not yet known, pass --red-herring for a clue meant to mislead, and set status: planted when the clue is on the page
• synopsis when the user wants a mechanical synopsis: the first sentence of story.md's ## Synopsis section, then each arc's Setup, Rising Action, Climax, and Resolution. One page is 500 words and three pages is 1500. story synopsis [--pages 1|3] [--out file]. The output is a scaffold; the submission skill rewrites it into an agent-ready synopsis

Failure Handling

• Treat CLI errors as actionable maintenance findings.
• Fix broken references, missing required files, stale registries, or incorrect word counts when the requested task implies doing so.
• Do not overwrite creative prose or story content merely to satisfy a mechanical check.
• If a validation warning reflects intentional user data, report it rather than silently changing it.
• If story reindex fails on a corrupt plot/_index.md, do not hand-edit story content to work around it: restore the index frontmatter from git, or delete plot/_index.md so reindex rebuilds it, then rerun.