Book Genesis

Take an idea to a complete, commercial-length book inside the author's own agent: planned, drafted, read blind, audited, revised and packaged, with every decision saved to files.

This recovery build restores the 5.0 creative approach: draft with a compact story packet and fewer constraints, then audit and repair the prose. Preserve voice, asymmetry and consequential choices. Execution safeguards and file verification stay with the orchestrator.

The goal is a book written with the measured patterns of books readers finish, audited the way a demanding editor would audit it, and packaged to sell. It is a goal, not a promise: no workflow can guarantee sales.

Start here

Read references/pipeline/plugin-onboarding.md first. It routes new ideas, resume, review-only, status and export requests, and keeps the author in a simple conversation while you handle the technical steps.

For an autonomous Codex plugin request, follow the onboarding's controlled Codex start and run the packaged preparation bridge before creating any book records. Do not manually construct install receipts, project configuration or native commands. Once started, monitor that controller; skip the host-owned steps 1–3 below. The plugin routes the conversation; the shared controller owns the long-running book.

The optional checkout launcher can also run an autonomous Codex project through scripts/autonomous_book.py. In that mode a deterministic controller owns state, phase prerequisites, revision budgets and delivery; the native model receives only a scoped role packet and returns its artifact. Do not start a second orchestrator or edit the controller's .book-genesis/workflow.json. The shared phase, writing, criticism and export rules below still apply. Existing guided projects retain their original host-owned workflow and snapshot.

1. Read references/pipeline/host-contract.md. It covers starting, resuming, checking in with the author, and recovering from failures.
2. Read references/prompts/orchestrator.md. It is the main loop.
3. Open or create the author's book folder. If PROJECT_STATE.yaml exists, resume from it; otherwise start at Phase 0 with whatever idea the author gave.

Resolve every references/... path from this skill's folder. The author's files live in the book folder:

<book>/
  PROJECT_STATE.yaml   ASSUMPTIONS.md   RUN_REPORT.md
  artifacts/           plan, audit, score and package files (00 to 13)
  manuscript/chapters/ chapter-01.md, chapter-02.md, ...
  evaluations/         panel verdicts, continuity checks, revision passes
  delivery/            proofread manuscript and exports
  work/                chapter briefs, draft attempts, critic packets

The eight phases

Load only the active phase's prompt and the references references/pipeline/manifest.yaml lists for it.

Those references are the orchestrator's working set, not a critic packet. Never forward the whole list to another role. Assemble each role's packet from the allowed material in references/scoring/evaluator-protocol.md.

references/pipeline/phases.md is the one-screen overview.

What makes the criticism worth reading

• Critics are blind. Readers see only prose; the auditor sees the plan but never targets or earlier scores; the writer never sees the rubric. references/scoring/evaluator-protocol.md sets who sees what.
• Independence is measured and shown. Critics run in isolated subagents or in a second installed tool from another model family when the host allows it (references/hosts.md). Every verdict carries its grade.
• Four readers decide, not one. Primary, hostile, adjacent-genre and casual readers, built per book (references/roles/panel.md, references/roles/blind-reader.md).
• Two gates, bounded. The panel decides whether the book holds readers; the rubric (references/scoring/rubric-criteria.md) decides what to fix. The orchestrator alone reads the gate policy in references/scoring/genesis-score.md. Three passes per gate, then an honest stop.
• Measured patterns, named sources. references/patterns/index.md points to prose, structure and emotion patterns from named books and studies, and to machine-prose tells in English and Brazilian Portuguese.

Specialists

Load when the phase calls for them:

• references/specialists/research.md: comps and market in the book's own language
• references/specialists/narrative-foundation.md: characters, theme, voice and the rhythm contract
• references/specialists/prose-craft.md: openings, chapter endings, dialogue, revision moves
• references/specialists/continuity.md: the ledger and the five-chapter checks
• references/specialists/revision-editor.md: ticket-driven, targeted revision
• references/specialists/production.md: proofreading and export
• scripts/export_book.py: canonical manuscript and EPUB export with receipt validation; optional DOCX/PDF proofs use already-installed libraries only
• scripts/check_progress.py: read-only reconciliation of saved chapter numbers, prose counts and progress state before resuming or claiming complete delivery
• references/specialists/causality.md: a small causal contract and middle-book review when the story depends on a mechanism or mystery
• references/pipeline/evidence.md: original reader receipts, current-text coverage and delivery status
• scripts/verify_book.py: read-only verification of current reader evidence and source-bound deliverables; it never grades prose or approves publication
• scripts/prepare_rubric.py: freezes all visible manuscript passages with source hashes, so critics can cite passage IDs without recopying prose
• scripts/validate_rubric.py: read-only checks of rubric coverage, all ten dimensions and source evidence; invalid or stale evidence cannot support a passing score
• scripts/check_correction.py: freezes narrowly factual corrections for an independent canon check and verifies original native evidence before guarded promotion; it does not invent preference votes or grades
• scripts/decide_comparison.py: translates four validated anonymous votes using the frozen mapping; ambiguous ties retain the accepted chapter without inventing defect counts
• references/specialists/series.md: only when the book belongs to a series

Rules that never bend

• Save important decisions to files; keep PROJECT_STATE.yaml true to what exists.
• Never skip Phase 4, and never score before it.
• Write the book and every message to the author in the book's language.
• A book is "complete" when it meets its length contract (or a declared short form), every planned chapter exists, and the package exists. Quality gates are reported beside that label, never hidden.
• Never claim a book will sell, is a bestseller, or is ready to publish without a human decision.