book-drafting

name	book-drafting
description	Dispatch chapter-writing subagents in parallel batches to draft the book, and handle research where a chapter's sources are not yet gathered. Use once briefs exist. Enforces the batching rule that keeps parallel writers from colliding.

Drafting

Chapters are drafted by subagents working in parallel, one chapter each. You are the orchestrator; you do not write chapters yourself.

Before dispatching

1. python3 scripts/book.py lint — a structural problem found now is cheap.
2. Check each target chapter has a complete brief. A thin brief returns an unusable chapter, and by then other chapters have been drafted against it.
3. Check research in book.toml. Where a chapter's sources are not gathered, run chapter-researcher for it first. Research can run in parallel freely.

The batching rule

Writers run concurrently. There is exactly one constraint:

Two chapters that draw on the same source material for the same purpose must not be drafted in the same batch.

Two agents handed the same source will describe it differently — different emphasis, different terminology, different depth — and both descriptions will ship. Neither agent did anything wrong, and no reviewer looking at one chapter will catch it.

So before each batch, compare the research and establishes lists across the chapters you are about to dispatch. Overlaps go in separate, sequential batches. The later batch's writers then have the earlier batch's ledger entries, which is exactly what resolves the conflict.

Dispatching

Launch a batch in a single message with multiple tool calls so they run concurrently. Each chapter-writer gets its chapter id and nothing else it does not need — it reads its own brief.

Follow the recommended drafting order in the outline, not chapter order.

Writes are scoped

A writer writes manuscript/<its chapter>.md and its own rows in continuity.md. Nothing else. Fan out freely on reading; keep writes disjoint.

After each batch

• python3 scripts/book.py status
• python3 scripts/book.py lint — cross-chapter repetition, continuity ordering, unresolved markers, figure references
• Read the returned chapters yourself. A subagent's output is a report to be checked, not an established fact. Lint catches fabricated paths; it cannot catch a fabricated claim about something that does exist.
• Collect every [VERIFY:] marker into research/sources.md under Unresolved.

When a writer pushes back

A writer that says it cannot write its chapter without reading another one has found a real defect in the brief. Fix the brief. Do not grant it the other chapter — that is the one rule the architecture cannot spend.