Story files

type: story-loop-index
status: active
version: 0.4
updated: 2026-08-26

Story Loop

The Story Loop is a human-readable, Obsidian-native development environment for moving from broad gaps to tested story structure while preserving author authority.

Start a development run

1. Open 08 Story Loop/DEVELOPMENT-ORCHESTRATOR.
2. Scope one target and use 08 Story Loop/GAP-ANALYZER.
3. Choose Micro, Standard, Deep, or Cascade mode.
4. Route only to the modules needed for the uncertainty.
5. Stop at the author gate before promotion.

When the vault already contains enough recent research and brainstorming but needs fresh directions rather than another answer, run Research → Creative Possibilities / Inspiration Pass. Its output is a non-canon portfolio for author review, not a canon update.

Weekly intake

Weekly Story Synthesis is the high-capacity diagnostic front end for the loop. Its dated reports may reconstruct the story, rank gaps, mine scenes, and recommend maintenance, but they do not establish canon. Route selected BUILD NOW and BRAINSTORM NEXT items through the Gap Analyzer and Development Orchestrator. Preserve LEAVE OPEN items as deliberate ambiguity until a revisit trigger occurs.

Character journals and other physical records are indexed under Character Journal Artifact System. Treat proposed artifacts as evidence/scene candidates until their story facts, knowledge state, provenance, and author gate are resolved.

The current weekly completion set is executed through Story Completion Workflow. It adds horizontal sweep state, task depth, typed dependencies, blast-radius tracing, regression selection, reopening, and public progress without changing story authority. See STORY-CREATION-ENGINE-ROADMAP for the path from the present development environment to repeatable sequence, scene, and draft production.

v0.1 target

A complete causal story map in which every load-bearing unit has:

• a known purpose;
• traceable source material;
• an entering state and resulting state change;
• causes, consequences, and dependencies;
• explicit missing decisions;
• a visible author-approval state.

Folder roles

• STORY-MAP — the master causal backbone and work queue.
• DEVELOPMENT-ORCHESTRATOR — the end-to-end routing contract.
• GAP-ANALYZER — the front end for prioritizing missing structure.
• Units/ — one durable specification per Story Unit.
• Brainstorms/ — prepared context and author questions, followed by extracted decisions.
• CREATIVE-POSSIBILITIES-PASS — bounded synthesis of recent material into multiple non-canon directions.
• Runs/ — chronological records of proposals, critiques, gates, revisions, and outcomes.
• Templates/ — reusable Markdown forms.
• Evaluations/ — recurring failure modes and later quality calibration.
• STORY-CREATION-ENGINE-ROADMAP — maturity snapshot, layered target architecture, proof milestones, and non-goals.
• Templates/sequence-packet.md, scene-packet.md, and draft-pipeline-run.md — state-transition contracts downstream of structural stability.

Status vocabulary

Story completeness and authority are separate.

Completeness: missing, partial, testable, integrated, blocked.

Authority: established, working, proposed, unresolved, rejected.

An established idea can still be structurally partial. A polished proposal can still be proposed and therefore non-canon.

Completion pressure

Every run must be classified as one of:

1. close-gap
2. strengthen-structure
3. new-expansion

Choose close-gap by default. New expansion needs a clear reason that it advances story completion.

Phase boundary

Version 0.2 supports development from era through short prototype, but it does not make finished-novel drafting the default. Scene and 500–1,500 word prototype work may be used early when it cheaply tests dialogue, clarity, mechanism, or emotional effect. Final prose remains a separate downstream workflow after sufficient structure and explicit selection.