The showrunner's craft toolbox — how to run a whole book as a production. Covers the end-to-end loop (concept → world → cast → plan → simulate-to-beat → cut → render → assemble) and its inner scene loop; gate design (setup/beat/canon/coherence/cut/render/finish — pass conditions and fail actions, and how a gate maps to a real enforcement hook); the notes/state system (the canon ledger, production journal, story-map, thread & promise tracker, continuity register — notes as the save file); thread & promise tracking (open threads, foreshadow→payoff, mystery reveal schedules, what you owe the reader); adaptive replanning (destination fixed / route discovered, revising a beat only on a faithful refusal); and orchestration patterns (orchestrator-owns-invariants, scoped subagent handoff, the beat-blind and POV walls, admitting only gated candidates, resumability). Open it when planning the loop, designing or applying a gate, laying out the notes, tracking a promise, replanning around a refusal, or scoping a subagent
Installation
Install with Codex or Claude Copy this prompt, paste it into Codex, Claude, or another assistant, and let it review the skill page and install it for you.
The showrunner's craft toolbox — how to run a whole book as a production. Covers the end-to-end loop (concept → world → cast → plan → simulate-to-beat → cut → render → assemble) and its inner scene loop; gate design (setup/beat/canon/coherence/cut/render/finish — pass conditions and fail actions, and how a gate maps to a real enforcement hook); the notes/state system (the canon ledger, production journal, story-map, thread & promise tracker, continuity register — notes as the save file); thread & promise tracking (open threads, foreshadow→payoff, mystery reveal schedules, what you owe the reader); adaptive replanning (destination fixed / route discovered, revising a beat only on a faithful refusal); and orchestration patterns (orchestrator-owns-invariants, scoped subagent handoff, the beat-blind and POV walls, admitting only gated candidates, resumability). Open it when planning the loop, designing or applying a gate, laying out the notes, tracking a promise, replanning around a refusal, or scoping a subagent handoff. Framework-neutral — a well of peers, not one prescribed truth.
Showrunning — the process-brain's craft well
This is the toolbox the showrunner agent draws on. The showrunner runs the whole book — calling each specialist, gating each seam, keeping the canonical notes (docs/orchestration.md). This skill holds the craft of running that production: the loop, the gates, the notes, the tracking, the replanning, the handoff discipline.
It holds craft, never canon.How to run the loop, shape a gate, or lay out the notes lives here. What the story is — the world, the cast, the events — lives in the run's notes and the ledger, never in this toolbox.
The index — reference files (deep files authored next)
references/the-production-loop.md — the end-to-end loop and the inner simulate-to-beat loop; phase ordering; when each specialist is called and with what scoped input.
references/gates-and-checkpoints.md — gate design: pass conditions and fail actions; quality gates; the acceptance criteria as the finish gate; how a gate maps to a real settings.json enforcement hook.
references/the-notes-system.md — the notes schemas (canon ledger, production journal, story-map, threads, continuity register); notes-as-save-file; event sourcing; resumability.
references/thread-and-promise-tracking.md — tracking open threads, promises, foreshadow→payoff, and mystery reveal schedules; the register of what you owe the reader.
references/adaptive-replanning.md — destination-fixed / route-discovered; replanning on a faithful refusal; holding the arc firm while the route changes.
references/orchestration-patterns.md — orchestrator-owns-invariants; scoped subagent handoff; the walls (beat-blind, POV-bound); admitting only gated candidates; resumability.
None of the six files above exist on disk yet — each bullet is its own summary. If you route to one and it's missing, act on that one-line summary and proceed; never stall on, or invent, the file.
The method — run the production
Own the invariants. Canon, continuity, progress, and the notes are yours; specialists only propose.
Gate every seam. Nothing advances that hasn't passed its gate; a failure routes a revision, never a shove.
Keep the notes meticulous and current. Write them at every hook; they are the save file — state never lives only in your head.
Hold the destination, discover the route. Beats and ending are firm; the path emerges; revise a beat only on an honest refusal.
Scope every handoff. Give each specialist what its walls allow and nothing more (beat-blind simulator; POV-bound narrator).
Correct forward. Canon is append-only; a bad record is fixed by a compensating event, never a silent rewrite.
Framework-neutral & portable
The patterns here are peers, not a rulebook; a production can run leaner or richer. Plain markdown, liftable to any harness — the loop, gates, and notes discipline work against any multi-agent narrative production, not only this repo's.
Status
Router + method complete; the references/ deep files are authored in the next pass, to the docs/agent-toolboxes.md standard.
