Authoring Workflow

Establish the next useful outcome

Inspect existing knowledge before interviewing. Ask one material question at a time when the creator wants an interview. If the creator supplies research or a brief and asks for autonomous work, use it and state consequential assumptions. Do not make the creator answer questions already resolved by their documents.

Identify the work's audience, medium, intended experience, scope, constraints and immediate creative objective. An existing character, conflict, world, manuscript excerpt or gameplay idea is a valid entry point. Separate its authoritative facts from proposals. Do not infer a creative promise from a title alone.

Define sufficient Core

Start with Creative Direction and the world frame needed by the current slice. Define applicable setting, lore and narrative constraints. Add gameplay, art and level rules only when required. Use the Core guides selectively.

A provisional rule supports exploration, but the creator approves relevant Core constraints before dependent content becomes final. Reuse approval available in the conversation or Git; do not ask again for unchanged decisions. An assistant cannot approve its own invented canon on the creator's behalf.

Build connected Content

Develop premise, thematic question, protagonist goals/motivation, opposition, stakes and plausible change. Link participants, places and relevant history using the Content guidance. Develop a causal spine and useful composition outline; world facts alone are not a story skeleton.

Co-develop linked entries when needed. An unresolved detail only blocks decisions that depend on it. Keep independent work moving. Use the templates without copying irrelevant sections.

Walk through a representative slice

For a novel, inspect an arc segment and chapter/scene sequence: viewpoint, character knowledge, audience revelation and resulting change. For a game, inspect player actions, discoverable evidence, feasible choices, state and consequences. A paper walkthrough is sufficient for a knowledge skeleton; it is not a playtest of implemented software.

Use validation to assess coherence and causal strength. Exploration can reveal missing constraints; return conflicts to the owner using revision guidance. Do not force all stories into one act structure or convert novel chapters mechanically into quests.

Review and hand off

Present the relevant decisions, uncertainty and slice findings. One combined creator review can approve related Core and Content decisions; approval is not a compulsory ceremony for every record. Resolve blocking contradictions and obtain creator approval before describing new Core constraints or dependent content as final. Preserve valid independent material. Provide the production handoff, then extend the next slice when useful.

Proportionate assistance

Coordinator, architect and author are responsibilities, not compulsory separate agents. One session can perform them. Delegate independent scopes only after inputs exist; assign ownership and prevent conflicting edits. Self-check within each role rather than adding a compulsory reviewer.

This workflow has no mandatory phase commits, semantic version per fictional entity, or workflow database. Git can preserve history when the project uses it. ADD may govern software work that implements a game or changes this reusable framework, but is not a prerequisite for creative knowledge authoring.