Story Timeline

What this is

The events table in STOS holds in-universe events: "The king dies", "Sasha arrives in the cove", "the war begins." Each has a free-text event_date (because in-universe dates often don't map to real calendars), an act, an importance rank, and an event_order for sorting within a series.

Distinct from calendar events (real-world dates).

Flow: add a story event

stos_events_create({
  fields: {
    event_name: 'The Crow Court convenes for the first time in 400 years',
    event_date: 'Year 1187, Hightide Moon',
    event_type: 'political',
    description: '...',
    act: 'act-two',
    importance: 'major',
    event_order: 14,
    development_notes: 'Triggers Sasha\'s arc reversal in chapter 17.',
  },
})

Then wire it where it lands:

stos_worldbuilding_link({ entityType: 'scene', entityId: sceneId, targetType: 'event', targetId: eventId })
stos_worldbuilding_link({ entityType: 'event', entityId: eventId, targetType: 'character', targetId: characterId })

Flow: review the timeline

stos_events_list({ penNameId })

Sort by event_order or by act to show the in-universe sequence.

Anti-patterns

• Using calendar-events for in-universe dates. Wrong table. The calendar is for real-world dates only.
• Skipping the associations. A timeline event that isn't linked to a scene or character is hard to find later — wire it on creation.