StoryForge Workflow Example

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Overview

This page shows a standalone novel in the StoryForge workflow, from setup to EPUB. The example book is "The Lighthouse Keeper" (German title "Der Leuchtturmhüter"), a fictional novel.

Characters, plot and author persona are invented. The page does not show how you write a particular book, but in which order you use the skills. The outputs are shortened and illustrative, the exact texts of the skills differ.

Writing a series? Then also read the Series Workflow Example for series setup, book completion and onboarding the next volume.

Key data:

Phase 0: Setup (once)

claude plugin add storyforge
/storyforge:setup

/storyforge:setup creates the virtual environment under ~/.storyforge/venv, installs the dependencies, creates the directories ~/.storyforge/cache and ~/.storyforge/authors, copies the configuration template to ~/.storyforge/config.yaml, checks Pandoc (and optionally Calibre for MOBI) and the MCP connection. Details: Installation.

Then you adjust ~/.storyforge/config.yaml. For this example:

paths:
  content_root: "~/books"
  authors_root: "~/.storyforge/authors"

defaults:
  language: "de"
  book_type: "novel"
  review_handle: "Maja"   # prefix of your inline comments in the draft

export:
  default_format: "epub"

All keys are explained on the Configuration page.

Phase 1: Author Profile

/storyforge:create-author

The skill asks in phases. For fiction these are:

1. Identity: pen name, genres (from list_genres, up to three), literary influences, mother tongue and writing language
2. Voice: narrative perspective, tense, tone (two to four descriptors from a fixed list), sentence style, vocabulary level, dialogue style, pacing and the writing mode (outliner, plantser or discovery writer)
3. Depth: recurring themes, what the author never does, their signature moves

After your confirmation the skill creates the profile, fills in the answered values and shows the pre-filled list of banned words for you to adjust. Result: ~/.storyforge/authors/maja-sundberg/profile.md and vocabulary.md. Structure and effect of the fields are under Author Profiles.

Style extraction (optional)

If you have your own works, study-author analyzes them and writes the style patterns it finds into the profile:

/storyforge:study-author ~/books/works/the-island-at-night.epub maja-sundberg

The file has to lie under content_root or authors_root (here ~/books or ~/.storyforge/authors). The tool extract_text_from_file rejects paths outside of them. So copy a work from another folder there first.

The skill asks for the source genres, assembles a checklist of positive markers from the author's genres and tone, waits for your confirmation and only then analyzes. For the example we assume Maja is starting fresh.

Phase 2: Brainstorm (optional)

If the idea is still vague:

/storyforge:brainstorm

In fiction mode the skill runs in four phases: Seed, Explore, Develop and Save. Provocative "what if?" questions sharpen the idea, and at the end it saves it as an idea in {content_root}/ideas/ (status for example raw, developed or ready). You manage saved ideas with /storyforge:ideas. To create the book, the skill points to /storyforge:new-book --from-idea {slug}.

Phase 3: Create the Book

/storyforge:new-book --from-idea der-leuchtturmhueter

The skill takes title, genres and logline from the idea and asks for what is missing: category (fiction or memoir), genres, book type, author, perspective and tense, language, target word count. For the writing mode it shows the author's default and asks whether this book should deviate. Then it creates the project, generates the book CLAUDE.md, sets the book as active in the session and marks the idea as promoted.

The directory {content_root}/projects/der-leuchtturmhueter/ then contains, among others:

README.md          # book metadata in frontmatter
CLAUDE.md          # book rules and context
synopsis.md
plot/
characters/        # INDEX.md
world/
chapters/
research/
cover/
export/

The README frontmatter carries, among others, title, slug, author, genres, book_type, book_category, status: "Idea", language, target_word_count and series. The field author_writing_mode is not in it at creation: it only appears once you deviate from the author's default for this book. The full structure is under Technical Details.

Phase 4: Concept

/storyforge:book-conceptualizer der-leuchtturmhueter

Five phases, and after each the skill waits for your confirmation:

At the end the book is at status Concept. For outliners and plantsers the skill recommends plot-architect, for discovery writers the rolling-planner.

Example premise in the sample book:

Arne Kruse, 72, finds a silver coin dated 1987 on the North Sea island of Kargholm, the year his brother vanished without a trace. The closer he gets to the truth, the clearer it becomes that the island has its own rules about what may be forgotten.

Phase 5: Plot Architecture

/storyforge:plot-architect der-leuchtturmhueter

The skill in outliner mode:

1. Choose a structure from nine: 3-act, hero's journey, Save the Cat, 5-act (Freytag), Fichtean curve, story circle, seven-point, kishōtenketsu and snowflake. For a literary mystery the 3-act frame is a good fit.
2. Map beats: you work through each beat with the skill and approve the beat map (plot/acts.md).
3. Subplots and a foreshadowing table (plant and payoff, plot/outline.md).
4. Align character arcs with the beats (plot/arcs.md).
5. Chapter plan with number, working title, POV, key events, subplots and word count. On request the skill creates the chapter directories with create_chapter.
6. Story timeline (plot/timeline.md, anchor day and preliminary entries marked [PLANNED]). This step is mandatory.
7. Tonal document (plot/tone.md): tonal arc across the acts, warning signs, non-negotiable rules and five to six book-specific litmus questions. This step is also mandatory.

After that the book is at Plot Outlined. For plantsers the flow shrinks to a minimal viable outline (items 3 and 4 of this list are skipped), for discovery writers it is skipped, see Writing Modes.

Phase 6: Characters

/storyforge:character-creator der-leuchtturmhueter "Arne Kruse"

The skill guides you through 14 steps: role, archetype, GMC (goal, motivation, conflict), want and need, motivation chain, the "ghost" (the formative wound), psychology, fatal flaw, human texture, life context, voice, arc and relationships. After the load-bearing steps it waits for your confirmation each time. The result is characters/arne-kruse.md with YAML frontmatter (name, role, status and further fields) and the character's sections. You repeat this for Inga Holm, Pastor Thaden and Jürgen Kruse. Structure of a character file: Character Anatomy.

Optionally you add the knowledge (POV boundary) and tactical (combat and travel scenes) blocks to the frontmatter, see Technical Details.

Phase 7: World Building

/storyforge:world-builder der-leuchtturmhueter

The skill follows the iceberg principle: it builds only what the story needs. It fills world/setting.md (where, when, sensory palette and key locations, later society and culture), world/rules.md (for example magic systems if there are any, and a consistency checklist), world/history.md and world/glossary.md. Every cultural element should be able to create conflict.

In the template, world/setting.md has a Travel Matrix section. It is the source for distances and travel times. The world-builder itself asks about travel times only in its consistency checklist, and chapter-writer adds the routes before it writes a travel scene. Reviewer and continuity checker later compare chapters against it. The tooling expects the columns From, To, Distance, Transport, Travel Time and Notes, a grid with places as column heads is read wrongly:

Canon facts (established facts such as a construction year or a character's age) live in the database. They are created when a chapter is closed (see phase 8) and through add_canon_fact, which continuity-checker, chapter-fixer and manuscript-checker also use. You can call the tool directly.

Phase 8: Writing Chapters

/storyforge:chapter-writer der-leuchtturmhueter 1

First you choose the mode: scene by scene (recommended), whole chapter or all remaining chapters in sequence (only for rough first drafts). The skill marks the chapter as Draft, loads the chapter writing brief and prints the pre-scene logic audit before every scene, see Quality System.

In scene mode the flow is:

1. The skill builds a scene plan for the chapter and, after your confirmation, saves it in the chapter README under ## Scene Plan.

2. It writes one scene (rule of thumb about 900 words) and appends it directly to draft.md. The chat only shows scene number, word count and a one-line summary.

3. You read the scene in draft.md and write your comments as blocks with your review handle directly into the file:

   Maja: The moment he smells the cup is good. Keep.
   Maja: Thaden's dialogue is too chatty. Cut half of it.
   

4. The skill checks each comment before applying it (it quotes the passage and explains if it disagrees), applies it and removes the block.

5. After your approval the next scene follows. After two approved scenes the skill recommends a new session.

The prose hook runs on every write. When the chapter is closed, the skill updates the chapter status (Review or Final, your choice), the ## Chapter Timeline in the README, the story timeline, the promises and the canon facts (it records new established facts in the database with add_canon_fact), and proposes a POV character snapshot at Review or Final.

Rules and callbacks while writing

If you write a line in the chat with one of the prefixes Rule:, Regel:, Workflow: or Callback:, the PreCompact hook secures it for the book before the context is compacted. The line must be a single line, the case of the prefix does not matter, and the text may be at most 300 characters long. With /storyforge:register-callback you create such entries directly:

Rule: Arne never speaks in full sentences when alone. Inner monologues are fragments.
Callback: The silver coin from chapter 3 must return in chapter 17 at the confrontation with Thaden.

Rules, workflows and callbacks live in the database. Of these, only rules (as rules_to_honor) and callbacks (as callbacks_in_register) flow into the chapter writing brief of later chapters. Workflows are not part of the brief.

Reviewing the chapter

/storyforge:chapter-reviewer der-leuchtturmhueter 01-ankunft

For chapter 1 the list of 13 opening points runs additionally, then the reviewer's 33 points. The result is a verdict of PASS, WARN or FAIL. chapter-fixer applies findings as targeted edit patches without rewriting the draft. Before the humanizer, chapter-voice-harvest optionally runs: it evaluates your corrections from the review round and promotes confirmed voice patterns into the author profile; if no feedback is logged, it ends with a single line. After that come chapter-humanizer and chapter-proofreader. Details: Quality System.

For every further chapter you repeat writing, review, fixing, voice harvest, humanizer and proofreader. In between, /storyforge:book-dashboard shows status, chapter states and the next step, and /storyforge:next-step tells you what is due.

Phase 9: Interim Checks

After some chapters:

/storyforge:continuity-checker der-leuchtturmhueter

The skill checks the book against timeline, travel matrix and canon facts and reports, for example:

Ch 6, line 198: "Arne arrived two hours ago"
Timeline: Arne arrived one hour and forty minutes ago
→ minor conflict

validate_timeline_consistency also helps with time drift across chapter boundaries.

Phase 10: Revision

Once all chapters have gone through review, humanizer and proofreader:

/storyforge:manuscript-checker der-leuchtturmhueter --interactive

The skill scans the whole book for book-rule violations, clichés, repetitions across chapters, filter words, adverb clusters, plot holes and more, writes the report to research/manuscript-report.md and goes through the heavy findings with you one by one. Afterwards you re-check the changed chapters with the reviewer.

Optional:

/storyforge:rules-audit der-leuchtturmhueter   # checks whether book rules are visible to the scanner
/storyforge:voice-checker der-leuchtturmhueter # overall score, not a mandatory step

Phase 11: Production

Sensitivity reader (optional)

/storyforge:sensitivity-reader der-leuchtturmhueter

Checks for problematic portrayals, stereotypes and harmful tropes. For sensitive topics this does not replace a human sensitivity reader.

Cover

/storyforge:cover-artist der-leuchtturmhueter

The skill works out cover/brief.md with you (mood, palette, genre conventions, visual elements) and cover/prompts.md with ready prompts for the image generator set in the configuration. The prompts produce a text-free image. You generate the image externally and bring it into the project with import_cover_image(book_slug, path, is_final). With is_final=True it counts as the cover for export.

For the title lettering on the text-free image, /storyforge:cover-typography-mockup helps. It produces an HTML mockup with placement and font pairing plus instructions for the configured tool (Canva, GIMP or Photoshop). You import the finished image again with is_final=True.

Export

/storyforge:export-engineer der-leuchtturmhueter epub

Requirements and flow (in full under Technical Details):

• all chapters at Final (the pre-check blocks otherwise)
• a filled export/front-matter.md without placeholders
• no leftover review comments in the draft
• an imported final cover is embedded, without a cover the export still runs

The result is at export/output/der-leuchtturmhueter.epub. For advance reading copies there is --arc.

Promo

/storyforge:promo-writer der-leuchtturmhueter

The skill first writes the blurb (export/blurb.md), then develops a campaign strategy and creates platform-specific texts under promo/ for Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, Bluesky and newsletter, plus quote cards, hashtags and a content calendar.

Phase 12: Translation (optional)

/storyforge:translator der-leuchtturmhueter en

The skill creates translations/en/glossary.md and agrees the glossary with you first. Then it translates chapter by chapter into translations/en/chapters/ and waits for your approval or correction after each chapter.

Phase 13: Series (optional)

/storyforge:series-planner kargholm-saga

Creates a series layer with shared canon and recurring characters. The whole lifecycle (book completion with harvest-author-rules and harvest-character-evolution, onboarding the next volume) is shown in the Series Workflow Example.

Common Deviations from the Ideal Case

My plot stops working from chapter 7

Go back to plot-architect and restructure the plot from chapter 7. The chapters before stay if they stand.

A side character becomes more important than planned

Run /storyforge:character-creator for that character, plot-architect again for the arc adjustment if needed, and use Callback: to record that the character stays present.

A chapter is twice as long as planned

No problem, chapter lengths are guides. Check whether two chapters are hiding in one.

The timeline is getting confusing

/storyforge:continuity-checker reconstructs missing parts from the drafts.

I am stuck

/storyforge:unblock diagnoses the root cause of the block (fear, perfectionism, procrastination or distraction) and gives targeted steps. For the question of what is due next, /storyforge:next-step is the right one.

Rules are ignored by the hook

/storyforge:rules-audit shows which rules the scanner cannot see and helps rephrase them.

The author profile no longer fits the book

Adapt the book or create a new profile. One author is chosen per book, and you can have as many profiles as you like.

Key Lesson

No book follows the ideal workflow. StoryForge is a structure that lets you deviate from the path without getting lost. The checks are your insurance that after deviating you collect what you need.

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