Lore Release Gate

Lore Release Gate

Arcanea has 21,000 words of researched worldbuilding method (docs/worldbuilding/), a naming system (.arcanea/lore/NAMING_REGISTRY.md), a taste doctrine (docs/worldbuilding/TASTE.md), and a locked canon vault (.arcanea/lore/CANON_LOCKED.md). None of it reads itself. This is the contract that puts it in front of the work, in order, and says when the work is finished.

Three failure modes it exists to prevent:

1. Writing from fantasy defaults. A model asked for "a legendary artifact" produces the median of every fantasy artifact it has read. That is the origin of lore slop — not bad taste, but no decision. The pattern libraries exist so the decision is made deliberately.
2. Silent canon drift. In August 2026 a reviewer found two locked godbeast renames had never propagated: ~15 files still named superseded entities as current, including an active chapter of a published Library text (issue #98). Nobody introduced that in one bad commit. It accumulated because nothing checked.
3. Self-certifying. Declaring lore "canon-consistent," "on-voice," or "excellent" with no check run, no score, and no evidence. A claim is not evidence.

The seven phases

Run them in order. Skip a phase only by saying which one and why.

1. Ground — read canon before writing canon

Never write Arcanea lore from memory, including your own memory of this conversation. Memory is authoritative for intent and strategy; it is never authoritative for what is currently true in the world.

Read, every time:

• .arcanea/lore/CANON_LOCKED.md — the vault. Read-only. Agents never edit it.
• .arcanea/lore/NAMING_REGISTRY.md — registers, collision rules, superseded inventory. Lands with the prose half (#97). Until it does, the vault's own superseded list and lore-lint.mjs are the authority on retired names; coin nothing new that you cannot check against them.
• The existing files your subject touches (FACTIONS.md, MAGIC_SYSTEM.md, STORY_ENGINE.md, the relevant book/ collection)

Beware mirrors. arcanea-lore/ and sync/aios/lore/ contain stale copies whose frequency tables and godbeast names diverge from the vault. The vault at .arcanea/lore/CANON_LOCKED.md wins, always.

2. Choose — pick the pattern, don't inherit the default

Open the horizontal library for your craft problem under docs/worldbuilding/ and name the specific pattern you are applying and the specific one you are rejecting. The by-craft-problem libraries (patterns/ARTIFACTS.md, MAGIC_MECHANISMS.md, ENCYCLOPEDIA_IA.md, LANGUAGE_CRAFT.md) land in a follow-up PR; until then use SYSTEM.md and BEST_PRACTICES.md there. Naming the rejected alternative is the requirement either way — that part needs no library. "I'm using the object-that-chooses-its-bearer pattern, not the stat-block pattern" is a decision. Reaching for whatever comes first is not.

The per-world knowledgebases in research/ are the source material behind those libraries. Go to them when you need the full case, not the extracted rule.

3. Draft — in register, at the right layer

Three layers, three voices (SYSTEM.md):

• Vault — terse, declarative, machine-readable. What is true.
• Fragment surface — in-world, narrated, biased. A named person saying it, who may be wrong. Prefer three viewpoints on a contested fact.
• Encyclopedia — out-of-universe, neutral, cited. What the reader can look up.

Do not blend them in one file. LANGUAGE_CRAFT.md carries the register specifications and the AI-slop repair list; run its checklist before you call a draft done.

4. Cross-check — the part that is not optional

Four checks, all of them, every time:

# Canon: superseded names, Gate names, Gate frequencies, godbeast pairings
# (table and prose), tier banners, lock claims
node .claude/ci/lore-lint.mjs <your files>

• Naming — every coined name runs the NAMING_REGISTRY.md §7 procedure: register identified, three candidates, collision rules applied, G-test read aloud, superseded list checked, etymology note written. A name without an etymology note fails review. Until §7 lands with #97, run the same steps from this list — the etymology note and the superseded check are the two that cannot be skipped, and neither needs the registry file to perform.
• IP — BEST_PRACTICES.md §IV. Architecture, never bricks. If the thing you wrote would be recognizable as a specific franchise's element with the name changed, it fails — and the closer the mechanic sits to a single source, the higher the bar (see the U3 note in research/SYNTHESIS.md).
• Continuity — does this contradict any existing STAGING content, not just locked canon? Grep the lore directory for the entities you touched.

5. Evaluate — score it, don't vouch for it

Run the canon-evaluation skill. It produces a ten-dimension score with evidence per dimension and an adversarial pass that actively tries to refute the work. Attach the score to the artifact or the PR.

A score you assigned yourself without running the rubric is not a score. If the adversarial pass finds a real contradiction, fix it and re-score — do not argue with it in the summary.

6. Stage — everything new is STAGING

All new lore ships as STAGING ⏳. Every file gets:

• a status banner in the first 15 lines (status, date, purpose, and an explicit line stating whether it touches LOCKED canon)
• a ## STAGING LOG table at the bottom, with a row per revision
• mystery-ledger entries for anything deliberately left unanswered, marked oblique only or never answer

7. Promote — Frank only

Promotion from STAGING to LOCKED happens through /lock-decision, by the Creator, never by an agent. An agent proposing promotion is fine. An agent performing one is a canon violation.

What "done" requires

Not one of these is optional, and none of them is a claim:

• Vault read this session, not recalled
• Pattern named — the one applied and the one rejected
• lore-lint.mjs run, output shown, exit 0
• Every coined name carries its etymology note
• IP red lines checked against BEST_PRACTICES.md §IV
• canon-evaluation score attached, adversarial pass survived
• STAGING banner + STAGING LOG present
• Mystery ledger updated if anything was deliberately withheld

Reference

Method and research: docs/worldbuilding/ (README, SYSTEM, SKILL, AGENTS, TASTE, COLLABORATIONS, BEST_PRACTICES, research/, patterns/). Canon vault: .arcanea/lore/CANON_LOCKED.md. Naming: .arcanea/lore/NAMING_REGISTRY.md. Machine checks: .claude/ci/lore-lint.mjs. Open canon debt: issues #98, #99.