Storyboards

Storyboards are part of Story Director, but each lives in its own panel — this doc covers them in detail. For the agent that drives them, see Story Director.

A Storyboard is a chat-facing dashboard that surfaces a single slice of your story's living state. Each Storyboard is tied to a tracker module, and each one is structured as a small set of tabs — a hero view at the front, supporting context tabs in the middle, and promote-to-canon tools at the back. The Story Director writes into Storyboards as the chat progresses; you read, edit, accept corrections, and decide what gets promoted up into the lorebook.

There are five Storyboards. They share one wing panel — the Storyboards wing — and switch between tabs at the top:

Storyboard	What it surfaces	Tracker module it's tied to
Quest Board	Active plots, blockers, deadlines, dependency chains	Quests
Cast	Character case files, relationship web, drift	NPC Relationships
Calendar	In-story date, events, celestial state	Calendar
Map	Locations, regions, travel routes, scene context	Map
Renown	Public standing, heat, favors, influence network	Gossip

Open the Storyboards wing from the right rail. If the matching tracker module is disabled in Stage Settings, that Storyboard's tab won't appear at all. Disable Map and the Map tab vanishes on the next render.

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The Shared Control Strip

Every Storyboard tab carries the same control strip across the top. It tells you, at a glance, what data is going to the AI and where the state lives.

Chip	What it tells you
AI Context	Whether this Storyboard's data is being included in the AI's prompt this turn, and in what mode — focused sent, full sent, or off
Scope	canon for the lorebook canon, chat for solo chat state, or group for group chat state
Events	How many tracker events are recorded for this Storyboard
Last Write	When the Story Director last updated this view
Live / Open	Per-tab indicator showing which view is active right now

Below the strip sits a row of stat tiles (counts and key numbers) and then the active tab's content.

AI Context Modes

Every Storyboard can be sent to the AI in different verbosity modes. Open the AI Context tab inside any Storyboard to control it.

Setting	What it does
AI Context enabled	Master toggle. When off, no Storyboard data goes to the AI at all
Include this Storyboard	Per-tab toggle. Excludes one Storyboard without disabling them all
Context profile mode	focused (small, current items only) or full (everything)
Radius	When in focused mode, how many recent events to include (default 5)

The chips at the top tell you which mode is live. If you ever wonder why the AI doesn't seem to know about a quest — check the AI Context chip. It's almost always either off or set to focused with a radius too small to include it.

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Quest Board

The Quest Board surfaces what plots are open, what's blocking them, and what's due to pay off. It's the triage panel for everything from main-quest arcs down to one-message side errands.

Stat Tiles

Tile	Shows
Active	Count of in-progress quests
Blocked	Quests waiting on a prerequisite
Deadlines	Quests with imminent due dates
Linked Cast	Number of NPCs tied to one or more quests
Pressure	Failure-pressure percent across all quests
Rewards	Backlog of unclaimed quest rewards

Tabs

Tab	What it shows
Pressure Board	Live triage view — critical, active, blocked quests at a glance, sorted by pressure
Journal	Full quest list with descriptions, objectives, linked NPCs and locations, and inline AI generation
Dependency Tree	Graph view of prerequisite chains between quests — what unlocks what
History	Timeline of quest events (accepted, objective completed, failed, abandoned, logged note)
AI Context	Token-budgeted preview of what Quest Board data is sent to the AI
Corrections	Items the AI flagged as inconsistent — you accept or reject each one
Promote	Quests ready to upgrade from chat-state into the lorebook canon

What Each Quest Tracks

Field	What it holds
Title	Short display name
Description	Body text the AI sees
Quest type	main, side, hidden, urgent, daily, or event
Status	active, completed, failed, or abandoned
Objectives	List of steps. Each has a description, completed flag, optional progress counter (e.g. 3/10 herbs collected), and optional flag
Linked NPCs	NPC names that are tied to the quest. Auto-derived from descriptions, editable
Linked locations	Location names that anchor the quest
Rewards	Optional bag of XP, currency, items, and reputation deltas per faction
Acceptance time	When the quest was logged
Completion time	When it closed out
Deadline	Optional due date in your calendar's time
Chain ID + order	For multi-quest arcs — links a sequence under one umbrella
Prerequisite quests	List of quest IDs that must complete first
Priority	Higher numbers float to the top of the Pressure Board
Icon	Optional display glyph

AI Context for Quests

When AI Context is on for the Quest Board, the AI sees a token-budgeted snapshot of your active quests plus recent quest events. In focused mode it sees only the highest-pressure quests; in full mode it sees the entire active list. Completed and abandoned quests are usually filtered out unless explicitly relevant.

History

The Quest Board's History tab is an append-only log of everything that's happened to your quests — when each one was accepted, every objective ticked off, every fail or abandon, every log entry the Story Director added. Scroll back to reconstruct exactly when a quest went sideways.

Corrections

Sometimes the Story Director's updates conflict with what's currently in the panel — a name change, an objective that's already done, a quest that the AI thinks should be re-opened. These land in the Corrections tab. You decide accept, reject, or open the side-by-side and edit manually.

Promote

Quests that are completed and feel like they should live forever in canon get promoted from the Promote tab. Promoting writes the quest into your lorebook as a permanent entry. The chat keeps its local copy; the lorebook now has a canonical record.

Hand-Editing the Quest Board

You can add quests yourself, refresh a single quest with an AI guide, tick off objectives, mark fails or abandons, log freeform events, and edit anything — name, description, type, deadline, rewards. The Story Director will respect your edits on subsequent turns.

Patterns for the Quest Board

A few patterns that earn the Quest Board its keep:

• Mainline + side. Tag the central plot quests as main. Tag everything the player picks up along the way as side. The Pressure Board can then show a clean view of "what's the through-line right now."
• Hidden quests for foreshadowing. The hidden quest type lets the Story Director track plots the player doesn't know about yet — they show up in the panel for your awareness but don't bleed into the Narrator's prompt at full strength.
• Daily / event quests for recurring beats. A daily quest like "Tend the herb garden" is something that opens and closes every in-story day. An event quest like "Festival of Lights — find a partner" is bound to a specific date.
• Chain quests for arcs. Give every quest in a sequence the same chain ID and an explicit order. Now the Dependency Tree shows the arc as a clean line.
• Prerequisites for unlocks. If Quest B can only happen after Quest A completes, mark A as a prerequisite. The Pressure Board will surface B as Blocked until A closes out.

When NOT to Use the Quest Board

• Pure character-study chats with no goals or objectives
• Short one-shot scenes with a single, immediate beat
• Stories where keeping a list of "tasks" breaks the tone (introspective, lyric, vibe-driven pieces)
• Chats focused on a single ongoing dialogue where listing "what's next" would feel artificial

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Cast

The Cast Storyboard is your living dramatis personae. Every NPC the Story Director has tracked gets a case file: emotions, memories, hidden thoughts, relationship dynamics, scene presence, and chemistry meters (when those sub-features are on).

Stat Tiles

Tile	Shows
Cast	Total cast count plus an active / off-stage split
High Affinity	Number of NPCs with affinity at or above 80
Active Hostility	Number with affinity at or below 25
Hidden Knowledge	Secrets tracked across the cast (when the Secrets sub-feature is on)
Drift	NPCs whose tracked state has drifted from lorebook canon
Pressure	Composite relationship pressure score across the cast

Tabs

Tab	What it shows
Case File	Deep-dive on one selected NPC — affinity meter, trust meter, memories, dynamics, secrets, scene presence
Web	Relationship graph between all tracked NPCs — who's allied with whom, who's rivals
Relationship Audit	Mismatch detector — flags NPCs whose tracked relationships disagree with what canon says
AI Context	Token-budgeted preview of what Cast data is sent to the AI
History	Timeline of relationship events — memories logged, emotions shifted, presence changes
Corrections	AI-flagged inconsistencies you can accept or reject
Promote	Cast entries ready for lorebook canon

What Each Cast Entry Tracks

Field	What it holds
Name	Display name
Avatar URL	Optional portrait
NPC ID	Optional link to a canon character card
Category	friend, romance, family, rival, neutral, or enemy
Affinity	0–100 — how much they like the player
Trust	0–100 — how much they rely on the player
Memories	Append-only log. Each memory has text, impact (positive / negative / neutral), and a timestamp
Current emotion	Short label — "angry", "amused", "suspicious", "flirtatious"
Emotion intensity	0–100 for how strongly they're feeling it
Emotion cause	Short reason — "player insulted her honor"
Dynamics	Free-form bag of named gauges — { longing: 45, resentment: 20, protectiveness: 80 }
Current thoughts	What the NPC is internally thinking right now — never spoken aloud
First met	Timestamp
Last interaction	Timestamp
Interaction count	Running total
Affiliations	List of organizations with role and status (active, former, honorary, exiled, secret)
NPC archetype	adult, child, baby, elder, monster, animal, spirit, pet, familiar — determines which need profile applies

Chemistry Sub-Feature

When the Chemistry/Synergy sub-feature is on under Relationships in Stage Settings, each Cast entry adds seven compatibility metrics, each 0–100:

Metric	Measures
Intellectual Spark	How well their minds engage with the player's
Emotional Resonance	Shared emotional vocabulary and rhythm
Physical Magnetism	Pure visual / kinesthetic pull
Sexual Tension	The unspoken thrum of attraction
Personality Mesh	Compatibility of temperaments
Life Compatibility	Could their day-to-day lives realistically intertwine
Goal Alignment	Do they want the same things long-term

The case file then shows an overall chemistry score (computed average) and a trend label — rising, stable, declining, or volatile.

NPC Needs Sub-Feature

When the AI-Only Needs sub-feature is on, each NPC has a bag of needs — each with a current value, max value, and label. The AI tracks them and behaviors shift accordingly (a hungry NPC complains, a tired NPC withdraws) but the bars stay hidden from your UI. The point is that NPCs act on their needs without cluttering the panel.

Scene Presence

Already baked into every Cast entry, no sub-toggle needed. Tracks whether the NPC is present in the current scene, where in the scene they are ("corner booth", "by the fireplace"), what they're wearing, their physical status ("weary, nursing a bruised knuckle"), and what they're currently doing.

The Web Tab

The Web tab plots every tracked NPC as a node and every relationship between them as an edge. Edge color reflects alliance vs rivalry; edge thickness reflects intensity. This is how you spot factional clumps and isolated outliers at a glance.

Relationship Audit

When the Story Director's tracked relationships don't match what canon (lorebook entries) says — say canon claims X and Y are sworn enemies but the Cast tracker has them at affinity 75 — the Audit tab flags it. You decide which version is right.

Patterns for the Cast

• Use the dynamics bag for what affinity alone can't capture. Affinity is one number. Dynamics like longing 45, resentment 20, protectiveness 80 let one NPC carry several competing emotional currents toward the player at once.
• Use emotion intensity instead of changing category. When an NPC is having a bad day, push their emotion to furious 80 for the scene. Don't flip their category from friend to rival unless the change is durable.
• Use current thoughts for dramatic irony. What the NPC is thinking but not saying drives the prose. A thoughts entry of "She's been awake since dawn trying to decide whether to tell him the truth" gives the AI a private layer to play.
• Use the Web tab to spot social patterns. When everyone the player has befriended is allied with one faction and everyone they've antagonized is in another, the Web makes the alignment visible at a glance.

When NOT to Use Cast

• Solo introspective scenes with no recurring named NPCs
• Stories where the protagonist's relationship to themselves is the only thing that matters
• Short scenes where there's not enough conversation history to track meaningfully
• Chats where you want the AI to write NPCs without accumulated relationship state biasing them

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Calendar

The Calendar Storyboard is the in-story sense of time — what day is it, what month, which season, what's coming up, what just passed, what the moons are doing. It works for real-world calendars, medieval calendars, sci-fi stellar dates, fantasy calendars with custom months, and everything in between.

Stat Tiles

The Calendar stat row shows the current date, month, season, weekday, plus event counts (upcoming / past / total).

Tabs

Tab	What it shows
Grid	A traditional month grid with event chips and moon phases on each day
Timeline	Linear timeline of upcoming and past events with relative-time labels
Events	Full event list with type filtering, density controls, and inline AI generation
Celestial	Moon disks, zodiac, active phenomena, eclipse indicators
Config	Calendar system setup — months, weekdays, era, format preset
AI Context	Token-budgeted preview of what Calendar data is sent to the AI
History	Timeline of calendar changes (date advanced, event added, moon advanced, etc.)
Corrections	AI-flagged inconsistencies
Promote	Calendar events ready for lorebook canon

Calendar Configuration

Setting	What it does
Calendar Name	Display label — "Verdant Empire Calendar"
Era Name	Era / age — "Third Age", "Year of Our Lord"
Months	Custom month list with day count and optional season
Days per week	Custom week length
Weekday names	Custom weekday system — "Sunsday, Embersday, Mornday..."
Current date	Day, month index, year, and era
Calendar format preset	Pre-built systems — medieval, Chinese, Japanese, Roman, sci-fi, futuristic, custom
Event proximity days	How many days ahead the AI sees upcoming events (default 3, range 0–30)
Hours per day	For non-24-hour fantasy worlds
Time format	12h, 24h, or narrative (dawn / morning / evening)
Real-time sync	When on, calendar follows your real-world date

Calendar Sub-Features

Sub-feature	What it adds
Fantasy Calendar	Custom months, weekdays, eras, and holidays
Time of Day	Tracks hours and periods (dawn, morning, night) alongside the date — supports 12h, 24h, or narrative format
Real-Time Sync	Calendar follows your real-world date and month
Moon & Astrology	Moon phases, zodiac signs, celestial events, multi-moon worlds, eclipse phenomena

What Each Event Tracks

Field	What it holds
Title	Display name — "Festival of the Waning Moon"
Description	Body text
Date	Day, month, year, era
Type	holiday, event, deadline, prophecy, birthday, cosmic, supernatural, ritual, festival, or custom
Recurring	Annual, monthly, or single-occurrence flag

AI Event Generation

The Events tab supports two AI generation flows:

• Bulk generate — pick a density (few, moderate, many, packed, extreme) and a type filter, and the AI seeds the calendar with that many events in your world's style
• One at a time — write a user guide ("an autumn equinox festival the local witches use to gather mushrooms") and the AI produces a single, tailored event

Celestial State

When the Moon & Astrology sub-feature is on, the Celestial tab tracks one or more moons, each with its own cycle length and current phase day. Multi-moon worlds — two moons orbiting at different speeds, three moons forming rare alignments — are supported. The zodiac is also tracked: a list of signs, their symbols, which months belong to which sign, and which sign is currently active. Active phenomena (eclipses, blood moons, comet sightings) appear as chips.

Calendar Format Presets

The Config tab carries a set of pre-built calendar systems. Pick one and the months, weekday names, era style, and prompt flavor all populate at once — useful when you want a world to feel medieval-European, classical-Chinese, or post-stellar-empire without designing the entire calendar by hand.

Preset	Flavor
Medieval	January–December, seven-day weeks, "Year of Our Lord" era
Chinese	Lunar months named after animals, traditional zodiac, dynasty era
Japanese	Traditional month names, five-element cycle, imperial era
Roman	Latin month names, Kalends/Nones/Ides, "Anno Urbis" era
Sci-Fi	Stellar date format, multi-month colony cycles
Futuristic	Earth-relative calendar with corporate / national variants
Custom	Build your own from scratch — months, weekdays, era style, prompt flavor

Patterns for the Calendar

• Use density few for slice-of-life worlds, packed for political dramas. A bustling court has 12 major events in a typical month; a fishing village might have two.
• Use the event proximity setting to control how far ahead the AI sees. Default of 3 days is enough for "the festival is the day after tomorrow" beats. Crank it to 14 or 30 for sagas where players plan ahead.
• Tag deadlines as deadline events. The AI treats these with appropriate dread — a quest deadline two days out generates pressure even without the Quest Board surfacing it.
• Use multi-moon worlds for layered cycles. Two moons at different cycle lengths means there's almost always something in an interesting phase, and the player can build in-world meaning around alignments.

When NOT to Use Calendar

• Floating-in-time stories where dates don't matter — pure dream-logic, dialogue-only pieces
• One-scene one-shots that don't span any meaningful in-story time
• Stories where introducing a calendar system would force unwanted worldbuilding overhead
• Pieces where the absence of time anchors is part of the atmosphere

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Map

The Map Storyboard surfaces geography. Where you are, where you've been, where you've heard of, what's hostile, what connects to what, and what the current scene looks like in space. Maps are hierarchical — a world map can zoom into a region, into a settlement, into a dungeon, into a single encounter.

Stat Tiles

Tile	Shows
Discovered	Count of discovered locations
Visited	Count of locations the player has set foot in
Rumored	Discovered but not yet visited
Hostile	Locations with high or extreme danger level
Connections	Total travel routes between locations
Current	Name of the location the player is in right now

Tabs

Tab	What it shows
Atlas	Visual map with location pins, current-position marker, biome label, danger heatmap, zoom-into-location portals
Locations	Searchable, filterable location list with detail sheets
Travel	Connections graph — what's reachable from where and how, with route types and difficulties
AI Context	Token-budgeted preview of what Map data is sent to the AI
History	Movement and discovery log
Corrections	AI-flagged mismatches
Promote	Locations ready for lorebook canon

Hierarchical Maps

Maps in the Map Storyboard form a tree. Each map has a parent and zero or more children.

Map scope	Used for
world	The top-level continental / planetary map
region	A sub-section of the world — a kingdom, a province, an island
settlement	A single town or city
dungeon	A specific complex (caves, a fortress)
encounter	A single tactical scene (the ambush at the riverbank)

Each map is also classified as either persistent (canonical, kept forever in this chat) or ephemeral (a one-off scene that can be cleaned up when the scene resolves). A pin on a parent map can carry a child map ID, turning the pin into a portal — click it and the Atlas zooms into the child map.

What Each Location Tracks

Field	What it holds
Name	Display name
Type	Free-form — "ruins", "village", "shrine"
Description	Body text the AI sees
Lore	Deeper background — old stories, hidden history
Position	Normalized 0–1 coordinates on the map
Discovered	Player has heard of it
Visited	Player has been there (with timestamp)
Icon type	Display glyph
Danger level	safe, low, medium, high, or extreme
Factions	List with name, influence level (dominant / significant / minor / hidden), disposition (friendly / neutral / hostile / unknown), description
Notable NPCs	List with name, role, disposition, quest-related flag
Connections	Travel routes — target location, route type (road / trail / river / sea / underground / magical / dangerous), travel difficulty (easy / moderate / hard / perilous), distance, discovered flag, description
Population	Free-form — "200 souls", "abandoned"
Economy	Free-form — "salt trade and fishing"
Special features	List of standout traits — "a shrine that whispers at night"
Mood	Current atmospheric tone
Last event summary	What happened the last time the player was here
Child map ID	If set, this pin is a portal into a deeper map

Scene Context

Riding alongside the active map is a scene context — what the current scene looks like sensorily.

Field	What it holds
Time of day	dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, evening, dusk, night, midnight
Day number	Numeric day index for chronological ordering
Season	spring, summer, autumn, winter
Calendar date	In-world date representation (driven by the Calendar Storyboard)
Weather	clear, cloudy, overcast, rain, storm, snow, blizzard, fog, haze, windy
Weather intensity	light, moderate, heavy
Temperature	freezing, cold, cool, mild, warm, hot, scorching
Atmosphere	peaceful, tense, mysterious, dangerous, romantic, melancholic, chaotic, sacred, corrupt, neutral
Ambient sounds	List — "wind through pines, distant wolves"
Lighting	bright, dim, dark, magical, flickering
Present NPCs	List with name, current activity, current mood
Description	Freeform scene note
Active events	List of in-progress occurrences

The Story Director updates scene context on most turns so the AI's prompt always knows whether you're in a sunlit market or a fog-shrouded ruin at midnight.

Atlas vs Locations vs Travel

• Atlas is the visual view — a 2D canvas with pins, fog of war, the player marker, and the biome label. Drag, zoom, tap a pin to open its detail sheet.
• Locations is the list view — searchable, filterable by danger or by whether you've visited, expanded into rich detail sheets one at a time.
• Travel is the graph view — every location is a node and every connection between them is an edge. Color edges by route type, weight them by difficulty. Useful for planning journeys.

Patterns for the Map

• Start with one world map and zoom in. Don't pre-build every region. Let the Story Director discover places as the player travels, then zoom into a settlement when the story actually visits it.
• Use ephemeral for one-off scenes. That tavern ambush map you generated for a single scene? Mark it ephemeral so it doesn't clog your map tree later. Save persistent for places the player will likely return to.
• Use danger level as atmosphere, not just mechanics. A safe village feels different in the prose than an extreme cursed glade — the AI tunes mood and pacing accordingly.
• Use the scene context for time-of-day shifts. Updating scene context every couple of turns keeps the AI describing the world consistently — bright morning markets in the afternoon, fog-shrouded ruins at midnight.
• Add factions to locations selectively. Faction influence on a location colors how NPCs there behave. A village under hostile-disposition Cult of the Black Sun influence will feel different than one under friendly-disposition Royal Order influence.

When NOT to Use Map

• Single-location chats — one coffee shop, one apartment, one therapist's office
• Pure dialogue / introspective pieces where geography never comes up
• Stories that explicitly want the setting to feel placeless
• Chats where introducing a hierarchical map system would make the worldbuilding feel heavier than the story warrants

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Renown

The Renown Storyboard is the player's social ledger. Public standing, heat (how hard people are looking for you), banked favors versus owed favors, predicted reactions if certain things become public, and the network of who's allied with whom around you.

Stat Tiles

Tile	Shows
Public Standing	Composite reputation average across all standings
Heat Index	Average heat score across all standings (how hard people are looking for you)
Wanted By	Count of factions or people actively hunting you
Regions	Geographic regions where you have any tracked standing
Favors	Open favor count, split banked-vs-owed
Network	Number of non-neutral influence edges between standings

Tabs

Tab	What it shows
Standing	All tracked standings — reputation 0±100, region, title, mood (beloved → wanted)
Heat	Heat tracker — who's hunting you, how hot, what the open issue is
Favors	Open favors banked (people who owe you) and owed (people you owe)
Network	Influence-edge graph between standings
Reactions	Predicted reactions if particular things become public
AI Context	Token-budgeted preview
History	Reputation event log
Corrections	AI-flagged drift
Promote	Renown entries ready for lorebook canon

What Each Standing Tracks

Field	What it holds
Name	The faction or person you have standing with
Entity type	individual, group, guild, order, court, city, region, crowd, or faction
Region	Geographic scope — Capital, Salt Coast, or empty for global
Flavor	Italic descriptor shown on cards
Reputation	-100 (hated) to +100 (beloved)
Heat score	0–100 — how hard they're hunting you
Heat label	Free-form — "gathering leverage", "open hunt", "resentment"
Relationship kind	For the influence web — allied, rival, patron, contact, neutral
Influence strength	strong, medium, weak
Banked favors	Count owed to the player
Owed favors	Count the player owes
Tags	Free-form tags
Notes	Free-form longer description
Last shift	Timestamp + reason for the most recent reputation change

Auto-Derived Mood and Heat

Each standing carries an auto-derived mood label based on its reputation: BELOVED (very positive), ADMIRED (moderately positive), NEUTRAL, DISTRUSTED (moderately negative), HATED (very negative), or QUIETLY WANTED (negative + high heat).

The heat level derives from heat score: calm (0–24), watching (25–49), pursuing (50–74), or active (75–100). The Story Director uses these labels in directives ("the city watch is pursuing you") so the AI knows tone without having to read raw numbers.

Favors

Each open favor is tracked separately from the standing it belongs to.

Field	What it holds
Standing	The standing this favor is tied to
Kind	favor, debt, oath, blackmail, obligation, or promise
Direction	banked (owed to you) or owed (you owe them)
Title	Short label — "Smuggle the relic to Eastport"
Description	Longer body
Status	open, settled, broken, or expired
Expires at	Optional deadline

Banked favors are leverage — call them in when you need help. Owed favors are debts — leave too many unpaid and standings sour. The Story Director will sometimes prompt the AI to bring up old debts when an NPC has reason to.

Reactions

Each reaction is a prediction the Story Director has noted — what would happen if a particular fact becomes public in a particular place.

Field	What it holds
Where	The location or social context
Related standings	Which standings this reaction is derived from
Severity	good, neutral, warn, or bad
Prediction	The italic reaction text injected into AI context — "the dock workers would refuse to load your ship"
Auto-flagged	Whether the prediction was AI-authored (so you can prune AI predictions en masse)

The Network Tab

The Network tab plots every standing as a node and every non-neutral relationship between standings as an edge. Use it to spot patron / vassal chains, see how factions cluster, and identify who you can use to apply pressure on whom.

Patterns for Renown

• Use heat for menace, not just reputation. A standing with reputation +60 (admired) but heat 80 (active hunt) is the trope of "the hero everyone loves except the assassins guild that's been hired to kill them" — Renown can model that cleanly.
• Use favors as plot fuel. When a banked favor is sitting there, the Story Director will sometimes prompt the AI to bring it up — an NPC walks in needing help and you have the leverage to demand a price. Likewise, owed favors create pressure.
• Use oaths and blackmail as long-arc obligations. oath and blackmail favor kinds carry weight beyond ordinary favors. The AI treats them as load-bearing commitments.
• Set region scopes for distributed reputation. "The player is beloved in the Capital but distrusted on the Salt Coast" only works if standings carry their region. Empty region = global.
• Use Reactions to plant future consequences. A reaction prediction of "the dock workers would refuse to load your ship if the true cargo became public" lets the AI know exactly what would change — and lets you build toward that reveal deliberately.

When NOT to Use Renown

• Stories with a single, isolated protagonist who doesn't move through a social landscape
• Pure intimate / two-person stories where third-party reactions don't matter
• One-shot scenes with no consequences past the final message
• Chats focused on the protagonist's interior life where third-party reputation never surfaces

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Invisible Arcs — Plot the DM Can See That the Narrator Can't

Every arc, quest, and relationship the Story Director tracks is visible to the Narrator AI — that's the point. But sometimes you want to plant a seed the Narrator hasn't earned yet. A mystery the player isn't supposed to smell coming. A slow-burn payoff that needs five more turns to ripen. A character motivation the scene AI should never allude to until the moment you choose to surface it.

Invisible Arcs are plot threads the Director plants in the background that the Narrator cannot see. You use them to time payoffs, build foreshadowing without telegraphing, and keep long-game secrets out of the prompt until you're ready to detonate them.

What an Invisible Arc Tracks

Field	What it holds
Name	Short label — "Mira's debt to the Guild," "the heir is a changeling"
Description	Full detail of the arc — backstory, stakes, what makes it tick
When planted	The turn or approximate moment you placed the seed
Reinforcement notes	How the arc has been quietly reinforced in the background — turns the Director used to deepen it without surfacing it
Payoff description	What eventually happens when the seed resolves — the reveal, the confrontation, the pivot
Target turn or condition	Optional. The turn number or narrative condition that should trigger surfacing ("when the player reaches the harbor," "after trust with Mira exceeds 80")
Linked storyboards	Which Storyboard entries are downstream of this arc — quests that unlock, Cast entries that shift, standing that changes

Visibility Model

The Narrator AI receives the current scene state, active quests, Cast relationships, and all other Storyboard data on each turn. Invisible Arcs and their payoff details are stripped from the Narrator's prompt. The Narrator writes without knowing they exist.

The Director AI has full visibility. It uses that awareness to nudge the scene toward the arc's conditions — atmosphere that fits the eventual reveal, NPC behavior that could be read two ways in retrospect, pacing that makes space for the payoff — without being allowed to name the arc or telegraph its contents.

Creating an Invisible Arc

From the DM Assistant's Director's Cut tools. The Director's Cut tool panel has three arc-planting calls: Plant Seed, Reinforce Seed, and Resolve Seed. Plant Seed creates a new Invisible Arc with a name, description, and payoff. Reinforce Seed appends a reinforcement note and updates the arc's context for the Director. Resolve Seed is the surfacing event — the moment you're ready for the payoff.

Manually from the Storyboards wing. Open the Storyboards wing → any Storyboard tab → look for the Invisible Arcs section or sub-tab (it appears regardless of which Storyboard is active). From here you can add arcs by hand, edit any field, and manage the full list without triggering Director tool calls.

Surfacing a Seed — The Resolve Step

When you decide the moment has come, call Resolve Seed from the Director's Cut tools, or click Surface on the arc's entry in the Invisible Arcs panel.

When a seed is surfaced, it converts into a Visible Arc — a regular story arc the Narrator can now see and use. On the next turn, the Narrator has access to the full payoff description and can write into it. The arc's linked Storyboard entries (quests, Cast shifts, reputation changes) activate simultaneously.

The arc does not disappear from history — you can see every Invisible Arc you've ever planted, when it was seeded, when it was reinforced, and when it resolved, in the arc's History tab.

Managing Invisible Arcs

Open the Storyboards wing → Invisible Arcs sub-panel (listed under the "Hidden" sub-tab). From here you can:

• See all planted arcs with their status (seeded, reinforced, resolved)
• Edit any field — add reinforcement notes, update the payoff description, adjust the target condition
• Delete an arc entirely if the story has moved past the point where it makes sense
• Surface an arc manually (equivalent to Resolve Seed) at any time, regardless of whether the target condition is met

Patterns for Invisible Arcs

Long-game mysteries. Plant the seed in turn 3 ("the innkeeper recognized the sigil, said nothing"). Reinforce it in turns 12 and 24. Surface it in turn 40 when the player finally has leverage to act on what it means. The Narrator wrote 37 turns without knowing this thread existed — and the prose holds up on a reread.

Slow-burn romance triggers. An Invisible Arc for "Mira is beginning to love the player, doesn't know it yet" keeps the Narrator from writing it explicitly until you're ready. When you surface it, the Cast Storyboard's chemistry metrics activate alongside the reveal.

Hidden character motivations. "The mentor is dying and has been lying about his health for six sessions." The Narrator writes him as vigorous and cryptic; the Director ensures his behavior remains consistent with the arc; you surface it when the scene is right.

Foreshadowing that pays off N turns later. An arc with a target condition of "turn 50" seeds small details — a sound in the night, a locked door, a scar that's never explained — without ever risking the Narrator accidentally explaining them early.

When NOT to Use Invisible Arcs

• Short one-shot scenes where there's no "later" for a payoff to arrive
• Stories where maintaining director/narrator separation feels like overhead you don't want
• Chats where you'd rather let the Narrator improvise the whole arc organically, without your design
• Situations where you know exactly what you want and there's no reason to defer it — just write it

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Promoting from Storyboard to Canon

Every Storyboard has a Promote tab. Promoting a quest, NPC, location, calendar event, or renown standing copies its current state from chat-level storage into the lorebook canon. Once in the lorebook, it becomes:

• Visible to other chats that share the same lorebook
• Eligible for Compendium retrieval
• A permanent entry you can edit or share

Promote when something has stabilized — a completed quest, an NPC the player has clearly made a long-term ally, a location they've returned to multiple times. Keep things in chat-state when they're still in flux.

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Corrections Across Storyboards

Every Storyboard has a Corrections tab. It surfaces every place the Story Director's latest update conflicts with what's already in the panel. Common reasons:

• The AI used a slightly different name spelling
• An NPC's category changed (friend → rival) without a clear in-story trigger
• A location was created twice under near-duplicate names
• A quest the AI considered done was already marked failed

Each correction shows the existing value and the proposed new value. You can:

• Accept — apply the proposed change
• Reject — keep the existing value
• Edit manually — open a side-by-side and write your own version

Sweeping corrections regularly keeps the panels clean. Sweeping them never is fine too — the Story Director will keep flagging the same drift until you act.

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History Across Storyboards

Every Storyboard has a History tab. It's an append-only timeline of everything that's happened to that Storyboard, with timestamps. Use it to:

• Reconstruct when a quest went sideways
• See exactly which turn an NPC's affinity flipped
• Audit how the AI has been moving the calendar forward
• Verify a location was discovered at the moment you expected

History is read-only. Editing happens in the main tabs; History is the receipt.

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How Storyboards Relate to Trackers

Storyboards and tracker wing panels surface the same underlying state. The Cast Storyboard and the NPC Relationships wing panel are reading the same store. The Quest Board and the Quest Journal wing panel are reading the same store. The Calendar Storyboard and the Calendar wing panel are reading the same store. The Map Storyboard and the Map wing panel are reading the same store. The Renown Storyboard and the Gossip wing panel are reading the same Renown store.

The difference is the surface and the audience.

Tracker wing panel	Storyboard tab
Lives in the right rail, one panel per module	Lives in the Storyboards wing, all five share a tabbed surface
Operational — at-a-glance state for the active turn	Reflective — Pressure Boards, dependency trees, audits, promote-to-canon flows
Best for live combat / movement / reputation reads	Best for "what's the whole shape of this story?" reviews

Run both. They feed each other.

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When NOT to Use a Storyboard

A few patterns where leaving a Storyboard tab closed (or its underlying module disabled) is the right call:

• You're doing a tight one-shot. A two-message scene doesn't need a Quest Board or a Renown ledger.
• The tone is wrong. If a Map atlas covered in danger heatmap pins breaks the gentle-slice-of-life atmosphere you're going for, leave Map off.
• You don't trust the data yet. Brand-new chat, no lorebook, no canon — the Storyboards will be near-empty for the first few turns. Let them seed before opening.
• You're stress-testing a character card. Disable Storyboards entirely so the Story Director isn't adding signal you didn't ask for.
• The token budget is tight. Every active Storyboard's AI Context costs tokens. Turn off the ones you don't need on this turn.

You can always turn a Storyboard back on partway through a chat. The Story Director will seed it from chat history when the matching tracker module is re-enabled.

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Editing Storyboards by Hand

Every Storyboard supports hand-editing. You don't have to wait for the Story Director to update anything — open the relevant tab, click on an entry, and edit fields directly.

What you can edit by hand	Examples
Add new entries	Hand-create a quest, a Cast member, a location, a calendar event, a Renown standing
Edit existing fields	Change a quest's deadline, an NPC's affinity, a location's danger level, an event's date
Move things forward	Mark a quest objective complete, advance the calendar by N days, change an NPC's emotion
Re-categorize	Flip a Cast member from friend to rival, change a quest from side to main
Delete	Remove a quest, an NPC, a location, an event, a standing

Hand-edits are durable. The Story Director respects them on subsequent turns — if you manually mark a quest as abandoned, the AI won't reopen it without an explicit reason in the narrative.

For more substantial AI-assisted editing, every panel exposes a "refresh with AI guide" affordance. Click it, type a short instruction ("Rewrite this quest as more urgent, with the village burning down at sunset"), and the AI updates the entry in place.

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AI Generation Inside Storyboards

Most Storyboard tabs include inline AI generation:

Storyboard	Where AI generates
Quest Board	The Journal tab has "Generate Quest" with a user guide field
Cast	New Cast members can be AI-generated from a name and a short prompt
Calendar	Events tab has "Bulk Generate" (with density + type filter) and "Generate One" (with user guide)
Map	Locations can be AI-generated within a parent map
Renown	Standings can be AI-generated with region + entity type seeds

These generation flows use the same model your chat is configured to use (BYOK respected). The Story Director model and the chat model can differ — generation requests inside Storyboards default to the chat model unless overridden.

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Storyboards in Group Chats

Storyboards behave differently from per-character trackers in group chats.

Storyboard	Scope in group chats
Quest Board	Shared — one canonical quest list for the whole party
Cast	Shared — one Cast representing all NPCs the party has met
Calendar	Shared — one canonical time
Map	Shared — one canonical geography
Renown	Shared — one canonical reputation map per party member rolls into a unified Renown

The Story Director itself is also group-scoped — one story brain managing one shared narrative for the whole party. Switching active character in a group doesn't change which Storyboards are visible.

This contrasts with trackers like Combat, Inventory, Player Stats, and Spellbook, which split per-character. See Trackers for the full split.

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Troubleshooting Storyboards

Problem	Likely Cause	Fix
Storyboard tab is missing	The matching tracker module is disabled	Toggle it on in Stage Settings (Quest Board ↔ Quests, Cast ↔ Relationships, Renown ↔ Gossip)
Storyboard data doesn't reach the AI	AI Context is off or in focused mode with a small radius	Open the AI Context tab, enable it, and switch to full or raise the radius
Promote tab is empty	Nothing is ready to promote — quests still open, NPCs still mid-arc	Wait for state to stabilize, or hand-mark items as ready for promotion
Corrections tab keeps re-flagging the same drift	You haven't accepted or rejected the flagged correction	Open the Corrections tab and resolve each item, or hand-edit the underlying field
Map tab shows old data even after disabling Map	Old lorebook entries still in canon	The Storyboard tab respects the module toggle — disabling Map hides the tab; canon entries remain until manually deleted
Storyboards wing won't open	First time opening this chat — a lorebook container is being created	Wait a moment; the wing self-bootstraps a "Storyboards" lorebook the first time
Calendar dates don't match the prose	The Director only updates Calendar every N turns by default	Open the Calendar wing panel's gear icon and set update frequency to 1
Cast affinity feels wrong	Hand-edits and AI updates conflicting	Check the History tab to see what changed when; resolve via Corrections or manual edit

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Storyboards vs Compendium

Promoted Storyboard entries land in the chat's Compendium — the lorebook attached to this chat that holds canon. From there:

• The Compendium retrieves promoted entries when their keywords appear in conversation
• Other chats sharing the same lorebook see the canonical version
• You can edit, share, or fork the canonical entries from the Compendium panel

Storyboards are chat-scoped state. Compendium is lorebook-scoped state. Promote moves something across that line.

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Related Docs

• Story Director — the agent that writes into every Storyboard
• Trackers — the wing panels that share state with each Storyboard
• Compendium — where promoted Storyboard entries live as permanent canon, and the retrieval pipeline that reads them back into context
• Group Chats — per-character vs shared Storyboards in multi-character chats