Local-first workflow engine for serial fiction

NovelForge
Agent

Write coherent long-form novels with the LLM you already use.

NovelForge gives Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and other MCP hosts a strict writing workflow: story bible, chapter review, memory cards, retrieval, and plain project files.

npx -y novelforge-agent install

next step

01 get_next_step packs bible, pacing, threads, and retrieved context
02 chapter_review 8-dimension acceptance gate
03 memory_card updates characters and foreshadows 
{
  "modelHint": "premium",
  "currentStep": "chapter",
  "cacheableSegments": ["rules", "style_guide"]
}

plain files

A novel project is a folder you can inspect, copy, and resume.

  • story-bible.md
  • chapters/001.md
  • memory/chapter-001.json
0 LLM API keys inside NovelForge
26 MCP tools for writing, review, retrieval, and recovery
100+ chapter projects stay file-owned and resumable

Why it exists

AI can write chapter 1. Keeping chapter 73 honest is the hard part.

Continuity is enforced, not requested.

The story bible, character states, volume pacing board, active foreshadows, and retrieved history are packed into the chapter prompt before prose starts.

Revision is part of the state machine.

Every chapter passes through review. Issues route into revision, clean chapters become memory cards, and stuck loops have audited escape hatches.

Workflow

The agent is the discipline layer underneath your host LLM.

novel metadata
story bible
style guide
architecture
chapter
chapter review
memory card
continuity review
complete

Side-tracks for chapter review, revision, cross-chapter review, architecture extension, redo, delete, fork, and force-advance keep long projects repairable instead of fragile.

What you get

Plain files, hard gates, searchable memory.

01

Living story bible

Markdown and JSON artifacts evolve with the novel and old bible versions are archived.

02

Character state table

Cultivation stage, goals, beliefs, secrets, and relationships are updated from memory cards.

03

Foreshadow lifecycle

Threads move through planted, building, paid, or dropped states and are injected into prompts.

04

BM25 retrieval

CJK-aware lexical search over chapters, bible sections, and memory cards without embeddings.

05

AI-tic defense

Repeated LLM prose habits are named, capped, reviewed, and routed into revision when needed.

06

Cost-aware hints

Hosts receive modelHint and cacheable prompt segments so expensive prose and cheap extraction separate cleanly.

MCP + CLI

One core, two adapters.

MCP adapter

Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Cline, Continue, Goose, and other stdio MCP hosts can call the workflow directly.

novelforge-agent-mcp

CLI adapter

Run the same engine from a shell for manual control, smoke tests, and integration into other writing pipelines.

novelforge-agent status novels/<slug>

Positioning

Not a SaaS writing app. Not a hidden model wrapper.

NovelForgePlain chatSaaS writers
Files on your diskYesNo structureUsually no
Bring your own modelYesYesUsually no
Mandatory chapter gateYesNoBest effort
Local retrievalYesNoVendor dependent

Start in 30 seconds

Install it, restart your host, ask for a new novel project.

npx -y novelforge-agent install --host codex
Open npm package