series-continuity

Series Continuity

Overview

Plan and maintain sequels, prequels, and companion books as linked Story Skills projects. Each book stays a standalone project with its own story.md, characters, world, chapters, and continuity files. Books point at each other through story.md frontmatter, and story series checks the canon they share.

series - kebab-case series id shared by every book, such as the-ember-cycle
series-title - optional retail series name, such as The Ember Cycle, that the metadata sheet prints in place of the id
book-number - publication order (1, 2, 3...); 0 for a prequel published later, a decimal such as 1.5 for a between-books novella
follows - paths to books set earlier in the story's chronology
precedes - paths to books set later in the story's chronology

Chronology and publication order are separate. A prequel written after the first book has book-number: 2 and lists ../book-one under precedes.

This skill owns the book-level layer: linked books and the canon they share. The within-serial installment layer — how serial or episodic installments are structured — is covered by the genre-craft skill's serial/episodic structure reference.

Links are relative paths from the book root, and every link needs a matching backlink: if book two lists ../book-one under follows, book one must list ../book-two under precedes. Keep sibling books in the same parent folder so the paths stay short and portable.

When to Use

Starting a sequel, prequel, interquel, or companion book to an existing project
Carrying characters, locations, systems, factions, artifacts, or glossary terms into another book
Revising a book that other books in the series depend on
Keeping a series bible, or planning and pitching a series of several books (see references/series-bible.md)
NOT for a single standalone book (use story-init), for within-book continuity (use revision-continuity), or for the query letter, pitch, or synopsis of a single book (use submission). A series pitch stays here: the series overview and the series line in book one's query (see references/series-bible.md)

Starting a Linked Book

Read the existing book first: story.md, characters/_index.md, worldbuilding/_index.md, plot/timeline.md, continuity/state.md, open files in continuity/questions/ and continuity/promises/, and the final chapters.
Ask the user for:
- Title and synopsis
- Relationship: sequel (set after), prequel (set before), or companion (set alongside, with no chronology link)
- How much time passes between the books
- Which characters and places return
Create the project with the CLI, run from the folder that contains the existing book:

# Sequel: set after book one
story init '{Title}' --follows '{existing-book-dir}' --synopsis '{synopsis}'

# Prequel: set before book one
story init '{Title}' --precedes '{existing-book-dir}' --synopsis '{synopsis}'

# Companion: set alongside book one, with no chronology link
story init '{Title}' --series '{series-id}' --synopsis '{synopsis}'

The title and synopsis are the user's own words, and a folder name can hold spaces, so wrap each value in single quotes. Never paste a value into double quotes, where $(...), backticks, and " still take effect. A single quote inside a value depends on the shell: write it as '\'' in a POSIX shell (bash, zsh, sh, Git Bash) and as '' in PowerShell. Never run the command in cmd.exe, which has no single quotes and runs & inside a value; use PowerShell or a POSIX shell.

Run init from the folder that contains the existing book, never from inside it: init refuses a new book inside another project, and a linked book outside the new book's parent folder. It also refuses a --series that differs from the linked book's, and a --book-number already used in the series. init checks that the linked path is a story project, writes the relative link, adds the backlink (and the new book's series, when the existing book has none) to the existing book's story.md, and inherits series, genre, sub-genre, pov, and tense, plus series-title, author or authors, and language when the linked book sets them. When any book in the linked series has a book-number, it sets book-number to one more than the highest whole number used anywhere in the series, so publication numbers never collide. A normal story init book has none, so a series with no numbered books leaves the new book unnumbered. Pass --book-number (or write the field on both story.md files) in that case. Pass --series, --genre, --pov, or --tense to override the inherited values.

If the existing book has no series yet, pass --series {series-id}: init also writes that series into the existing book's story.md. Add matching book-number values to both story.md files yourself.

A companion has no follows or precedes link. So init inherits nothing from book one, and it writes nothing to book one's story.md. Pass --genre, --pov, and --tense to match book one. Use the same --series id as book one. Set series in book one by hand if it has none. Set book-number by hand: pass --book-number to the companion's init, or write the field in each story.md. story series does not see an unlinked companion, so compare its canon by hand (see references/series-bible.md).

If the CLI is not available, add the fields to both story.md files by hand.

Add a ## Series Notes section to the new story.md body. Record where the book sits in the chronology, the time gap, and the canon facts it must not contradict. references/series-bible.md covers what to put in it.

Carrying Canon Across Books

Only carry entities the new book actually uses. For each one, copy the file from the other book and then adjust it:

Keep the filename id identical. story series matches entities across books by id. A renamed file is a new entity to the checker. story rename warns when the id is also defined in a linked book; rename it there too, or keep the old id.
Keep name identical. Put new titles or epithets in aliases, such as General Maren in a prequel for Lord Maren. A different name produces a warning, and so does a different pronunciation.
Set state for this book's starting point, not the source book's ending.
- Sequel: start from the earlier book's final status, relationships, ownership, and knowledge.
- Prequel: start from the earlier situation, and write the later book's facts as fixed endpoints in a ## Series Canon section.
Remove book-local references. died-in, the from of each progressions entry, and every other chapter id point at chapters in the source book. Set the frontmatter to the state the character starts this book in, and drop the source book's progressions. For a character who died before this book begins, by died-in or by a status progression, keep status: deceased, remove died-in, and list them only in mentions: story continuity warns when one appears in a chapter or scene cast. If they come back in this book, add a status progression to alive from that chapter; story series then allows them on the page from there.
Prune or carry every link. Relationships, locations, notable-characters, faction members, and artifact owner/location must point at entities that exist in this book, with backlinks. Either carry the linked entity too, or remove the reference.
Do not copy chapters, scenes, arcs, questions, promises, or continuity/state.md. Rebuild them for the new book:
- Unresolved questions or promises the new book continues become new files in its continuity/ folders.
- Events from the other book become Backstory Events rows in plot/timeline.md (sequel) or Series Canon notes (prequel).
- continuity/state.md starts at current-chapter: 0 with the carried character and object state. Carried knowledge goes in knowledge-state without learned-in, because the character already knew it when the book began.
- An artifact destroyed or lost in an earlier book keeps its object-state entry with status: destroyed (or lost) and no since: that marks it gone before this story, so story continuity errors on any scene whose state-changes use it while still allowing mentions.

Fact Ids

Give series-relevant knowledge a stable fact id in continuity/state.md, and use the same id in every book:

knowledge-state:
  - character: kael-voss
    knows: The gallery tunnel reaches the Whisper Gate
    fact: whisper-gate-route
    learned-in: chapter-04

Fact ids are kebab-case, and each character lists a given fact only once per book. story continuity checks both rules.
Add learned-in only in the book where the character discovers the fact on the page. In later books, carry the entry without learned-in. Do not put that rule in an inline comment: a command that rewrites the entry drops the comment.
Reuse the exact id in every book. The checker matches the character id plus the fact id, never the knows text.
Give ids to the reveals, secrets, and discoveries a later or earlier book depends on. Everyday knowledge does not need one.

After carrying entities, run in the new book:

story reindex .
story wordcount . --write
story check .
story series .

What `story series` Checks

story series [path] follows follows and precedes to every linked sibling book, orders the books by chronology, lists the canon they share, and reports deaths, casts, learned facts, and destroyed artifacts that contradict an earlier book, and names or pronunciations that drift from it. Errors exit 1. Fix each one in the book that breaks canon (in a prequel, the later book is canon), move a dead character's flashbacks and memories to mentions, and ask the user before changing an earlier book. Treat warnings as prompts to check the named files. story series --help describes the command and, when story-maintenance is installed, the series section of ../story-maintenance/references/continuity-checks.md lists every error and warning and the order rules.

story links . also checks the book's own series links: each path exists, has a matching backlink, and uses the same series id.

The checker cannot judge knowledge without fact ids, or ages, dates, travel time, or tone. Check those by reading both books' timelines and Series Canon notes.

Writing Against Canon

Sequels: before drafting, reread the earlier book's final chapters, continuity/state.md, and every unresolved question or promise. Decide with the user which threads the new book picks up.
Threads left for the next book: a promise, question, or clue that pays off in a later book stays open in this one. story continuity warns about a planted promise or clue while drafting (the Chekhov gap: promise-unpaid or clue-unpaid) and about an open question once twelve drafted chapters follow its introduced chapter (question-unanswered). It errors once story.md is complete (is still planted, is still open). Record each deliberate one in this book's continuity/exemptions.md (the finding's code and file, such as code: promise-unpaid and file: continuity/promises/the-sealed-letter.md, or code: question-unanswered and file: continuity/questions/who-kept-the-key.md, plus a reason naming the book that pays it off; once story.md is complete the code is complete-with-open-promise or complete-with-open-question and the file story.md, so add a pattern naming the promise or question file) rather than marking it paid-off, resolved, or dropped, and add the matching file to the later book's continuity/ folders.
Prequels: the later book is canon. Every fixed endpoint must still be reachable by the end of the prequel. Do not mark a character deceased who is alive in a later book. Do not give a character knowledge that the later book shows them learning for the first time. Before drafting, list the later book's fact ids that have learned-in, and keep those facts out of the prequel's knowledge.
Revising an earlier book after later books exist: run story series . before and after the revision. Update the later books' Series Notes and carried entity files when canon changes.

Maintenance

After any change to series links or carried entities, run the checks in each affected book:

story reindex .
story wordcount . --write
story check .
story series .

If story is not installed, use the bundled fallback node ../story-maintenance/scripts/story.js with the same arguments. Use node <checkout>/bin/story.js instead only when the user names a Story Skills repository checkout or you are working in one. Write the script as an absolute path (resolve the fallback relative to this skill folder) and run it from the folder you would run story from, so . and other relative paths keep their meaning. Use Node, not Bun or a package script: Bun would load that folder's bunfig.toml (which can run code) and .env, and a package script runs from the checkout's root.

Conventions

One project folder per book, with books side by side in a shared parent folder
series ids are kebab-case and identical in every book
Entity ids and name values stay stable across books; variants go in aliases
Chronology goes in follows/precedes, publication order in book-number
Every link needs a matching backlink in the other book

Reference Files

references/series-bible.md - Where each part of a series bible lives across the linked books, writing Series Notes, keeping canon current, planning a multi-book series, and pitching one (query line and submission/series-pitch.md template)

Shared Conventions

Every story skill follows the shared conventions in ../story-maintenance/references/conventions.md, resolved relative to this skill folder. Read it before creating, renaming, or linking story files. If that file is missing because this skill was installed without story-maintenance, the essentials are: kebab-case ids and filenames, YAML frontmatter on every story-project file, _index.md registry tables that story reindex rebuilds (never edit them by hand), bidirectional links between entities, characters for who is on the page and mentions for who is only referred to, status: deceased plus died-in: chapter-{NN} for deaths, and no project-local generator or build scripts (run only the installed or bundled Story CLI).