Velith — Books to the Human-Quality Bar

Velith produces books a cold reader cannot distinguish from a competent human author's work. Six phases, twelve agents, one standard: quality-bar.md in this directory. Read it once per session before doing any writing or editing work.

${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} is this plugin's install directory. On hosts that do not substitute it, use the directory that contains velith.mjs.

Operating principles (supersede earlier Velith conventions)

1. Full-manuscript context. Every writing and editing agent reads the entire manuscript so far, not summaries. Frontier models carry 1M tokens; a novel is under 200K. Voice drift and contradictions come from partial context. bible.md is an index and ledger, not a substitute for reading.
2. Sequential drafting for narrative work. Fiction, screenplay, game narrative, memoir, narrative nonfiction, and poetry sequences draft strictly in order: chapter N is written only after chapter N-1 exists and its bible ledger is updated. Parallel drafting is allowed only for technical, reference, and academic books, only for chapters the outline DAG proves independent, and never more than 3 at once.
3. Voice lock before volume. No book proceeds past its sample chapter until the author approves the voice. Drafting twenty chapters in a voice the author rejects wastes everything.
4. Draft, critique, revise. No chapter is saved after a single pass. The writer cold-reads its own draft against the rubric, writes a critique with quoted lines, and revises. Editing stages rewrite the manuscript in place; they do not only file reports.
5. Grounded claims. Nonfiction, technical, and academic manuscripts pass fact-check before line editing. A number, quote, or study that cannot be traced to sources/ or a verified URL is removed, not softened.
6. Reader gate. Phase 4 ends with a cold read by simulated target readers. Publishing requires a PASS verdict or an explicit author override.
7. One look per book. Images follow art-bible.md the way prose follows STYLE.md. Prompts are compiled from it, diagrams and drawings are code-rendered, every image passes vision QA, and a look lock precedes volume. See book-visuals.
8. Author checkpoints. The pipeline stops for the author at six points: concept selection, outline approval, voice lock, look lock (if the book has images), developmental restructures, and readiness verdict. Everything else runs without asking.

Phase router

Run node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/velith.mjs scan <project-dir> to get project state, then route:

With an explicit argument (/loom draft), run that phase regardless of detection, but still enforce the gates: drafting refuses to run without an approved outline; publishing refuses without readiness PASS unless --force.

Phases at a glance

Genre support

Agents read the genre skill for the project's genre (${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/book-{genre}/SKILL.md) at the start of every task. Custom genres read genre-custom.md in the project.

Agents

Project structure

{project-dir}/
├── PRD.md              # Requirements + reader promise (Phase 0-1)
├── STYLE.md            # Voice fingerprint, rules, voice lock record (Phase 0, 3)
├── ideation.md         # Concepts, comps, chosen concept (Phase 1)
├── outline.md          # Approved chapter specs + dependency map (Phase 2)
├── bible.md            # Characters/concepts, world/term rules, timeline, per-chapter ledger (Phase 2+)
├── art-bible.md        # Visual identity: look, palette, constants, figure system, look lock (Phase 2+)
├── sources/            # Reference material + INDEX.md (Phase 0+)
├── drafts/             # ch{NN}-{slug}.md, ch{NN}-scenes.md (Phase 3); revised in place (Phase 4)
├── visuals/            # plan.md, manifest.json, figures/, illustrations/, photos/, ref/, prompts/
├── edits/              # 00-fact-check.md … 06-readiness-report.md, editorial-report.md (Phase 4)
├── publish/            # EPUB/PDF/etc., metadata, cover/, marketing (Phase 5)
└── .velith/            # status.json, art-bible.json, critiques/, snapshots/, metrics.json

Status and tooling

• node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/velith.mjs scan <dir> [--ui] — project state, dashboard data
• node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/velith.mjs metrics <file|dir> — sentence/paragraph statistics, repeated phrases, AI-tell counts (JSON)
• node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/velith.mjs snapshot <dir> <label> — copy drafts/ to .velith/snapshots/ before a rewriting stage
• node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/velith.mjs images compile|check|render <dir> [id] — model-agnostic image prompts from the art bible, asset validation, figure rendering
• node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/velith.mjs agents <id> <running|complete|error> [task] — agent status for the dashboard

Every skill ends with scan so the dashboard stays current.

Integrations (optional)

• alcove — search the author's document vault as source material during /book-init and drafting.
• humanize-korean — if installed, style-doctor may run it as a final Korean polish after its own pass.
• Image generation MCPs — cover-designer and illustrator produce prompts; if an image tool is available they can execute them.