Story maintenance

Skill danjdewhurst/story-skills/skills/story-maintenance

Agent Skills for end-to-end story writing in markdown, packaged as Codex and Claude Code plugins.

Install

npx -y skills add danjdewhurst/story-skills --skill story-maintenance

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

What its author says it does

Copied from the file, not written here

This skill should be used when the user asks to validate, reindex, repair registries, check links, check continuity, count words, summarize a story project, import an existing manuscript, export a manuscript, run the story CLI, or perform deterministic maintenance on a Story Skills markdown project.

SKILL.md

3.8 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

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:

story <command> - when the package bin is installed
bun run story -- <command> - when working from this repository
node scripts/story.js <command> - 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.