Narrative Continuity

Maintain enough explicit story state to prevent drift without turning the project into a knowledge-engineering platform.

Use when

• continuing long-form or multi-scene work;
• checking contradictions;
• updating canon;
• tracking character knowledge or beliefs;
• tracking consequential chronology or world rules;
• preparing context for a scene or revision;
• assessing impact of an upstream change.

Narrative state

At minimum distinguish planned, canonical, character-belief, secret, uncertain, and superseded.

An outline event is not canon merely because it is planned. Promote it only when approved narrative establishes it.

Character belief, reader knowledge, narrator knowledge and objective story truth are not interchangeable.

Context assembly

Identify the target, involved characters, relevant beats/outline region, applicable world constraints, relevant continuity and nearby narrative. Omit unrelated artifacts and rejected branches.

Updating continuity

After approved narrative changes, update only the state actually changed. Identify potentially affected future material but do not rewrite it unless asked.

Boundaries

Use portable files and explicit records. Do not require automatic fact extraction, knowledge graphs, vector search, entity-resolution services, temporal engines or hidden model memory.