Story Maintenance

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, schema migration, entity helpers, manuscript import, and manuscript export. The creative skills still own story decisions; this skill handles mechanical consistency.

CLI Access

Prefer the first available command:

1. story - when the package bin is installed
2. bun run story -- - when working from this repository
3. node scripts/story.js - 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 import draft.md --title "Title"
story report .
story report . --actionable
story next .
story doctor .
story migrate .
story add character "Name"
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

Use:

• validate after initialization and at the end of any multi-file edit
• reindex after adding/removing/renaming characters, locations, systems, arcs, or chapters
• 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
• 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
• 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
• export only when the user asks for a combined manuscript at a specific path
• build when the user asks to build the book artifact; supports markdown, EPUB, and DOCX outputs in dist/

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.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: danjdewhurst
• Source: danjdewhurst/story-skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.