Story files

type: development-session
status: active
date: 2026-08-25
topics: story engine, desktop app, local-first, ollama, tauri, mobile portability

Local Story Engine Development Start

Scope

Begin implementation of a local-first desktop Story Engine around the working systems already proven in this vault. This is a software-development session, not a story-development pass.

Preserved state

• GitHub changes through commit 32f9c2f were fast-forwarded into the Neo desktop vault.
• SC-001 through SC-009 remain complete at Macro Shape.
• SC-010 remains at Question 5 with its author gate unanswered.
• This development session must not select an answer, record an acceptance, or advance the story workflow.

Architecture decision

• Desktop: Tauri 2 + React + TypeScript + Rust.
• Default local model runtime: Ollama.
• Initial hardware-fit model: qwen3:4b for the 8 GB MacBook Neo.
• Durable project data: Markdown plus versioned JSON contracts; SQLite may later store disposable indexes and caches only.
• Workflow, authority, canon, retrieval, provider, and export contracts are UI-framework independent.
• A future Flutter/Dart mobile client should implement the same project format and contracts rather than porting React components or Tauri commands.

V1 direction

The first app surface centers the active run, retrieved authority packet, protected author gate, local-provider status, and workflow progress. The full mapping from vault structures to product scope is in 07 Coordination/Vault to V1 Feature Matrix.

Setup completed

• Xcode Command Line Tools were already installed; full Xcode is not required for desktop-only development.
• Homebrew, Node, npm, and Git were already installed.
• Rust stable, Cargo, rustup, rustfmt, and Clippy were installed through rustup.
• Ollama was installed and qwen3:4b downloaded.
• The initial desktop scaffold lives in story-engine/ inside this repository.

Non-story product thesis

• Visual thesis: a quiet, dark editorial workspace with parchment warmth and one sharp growth accent; dense enough for serious work but calm enough for long sessions.
• Content plan: project orientation, current workflow run, protected author decision, retrieved context, and local-model state.
• Interaction thesis: restrained staged entry, clear current-state transitions, and tactile button feedback, all disabled or reduced when the operating system requests less motion.

Read-only vault chat test

• A disposable test copy was created at /Users/realiainreid/Documents/sotr app development/seeds-vault-test.
• The copy excludes Git history and the story-engine/ source tree; it is separate from the canonical working vault.
• Story Engine supplies Qwen a bounded allowlist of orientation, current-state, rules, workflow, and SC-010 files rather than granting the model unrestricted filesystem access.
• The first live pass showed that a 52,000-character packet was too slow for the 8 GB Neo; the tested integration now uses a roughly 24,000-character packet with an 8K model context.
• Retrieval now combines protected orientation/current-state files with up to four Markdown files matched to the question. A Luminai/Daemon definition test correctly retrieved the dedicated Human–Luminai system file.
• Qwen thinking output is stripped before display. The final repeated test returned only a concise definition while preserving the distinction between operational independence and identity independence.

Additional local models

• Installed nchapman/dolphin3.0-llama3:3b (2.0 GB) as the hardware-fit Dolphin option for the 8 GB Neo.
• Installed huihui_ai/qwen3.5-abliterated:4B (3.3 GB) as a local exploratory-brainstorming option.
• Both models passed a short fictional succession-brainstorming smoke test with a 4K context cap. Story Engine still defaults to qwen3:4b.
• The character-dialogue experiment is paused after establishing character-file routing and structured final-answer handling. Generated dialogue remains non-canon and still needs a dedicated continuity critic before it is trustworthy.
• All Ollama models, the Ollama app, and the local Ollama service were stopped at the end of the session.
• The interface discloses which files were supplied and labels every response as local, read-only, and not canon.
• The test path exposes no vault-write command and cannot accept or advance the paused SC-010 author gate.