# Story Smith

> Generate ten story premises with built-in conflict from your interests; use when starting fresh, between projects, or when every idea feels either empty or already taken.

- Skill: `garphengate/story-smith` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add garphengate/story-smith`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/garphengate/story-smith/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: GarphenGate (https://skillmd.com/u/garphengate)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/garphengate/story-smith

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# Premise Generator

*Free gateway skill from the Story Smith bundle by GarphenGate.*

Ten premises built from the author's actual interests, each with the conflict already load-bearing — a want, an opposition, and a cost in one sentence, so the good ones are testable on sight.

## Procedure

1. **Harvest the raw material.** Ask for 3-5 inputs: obsessions, settings that pull, a fear worth writing about, genres in play, and one thing they'd never write. Thin answers are fine; the mix matters more than depth.
2. **Forge ten premises**, each one sentence, each machine-checked to contain: a specific protagonist, a concrete want, an opposition with teeth, and an implied cost. 'A story about grief' fails the check; 'a widowed lighthouse keeper must train her replacement — the man whose ferry accident killed her husband' passes.
3. **Vary the mechanisms across the ten**: at least two premises each from collision-of-wants, secret-with-a-clock, return-of-the-past, and impossible-role setups; no more than three per genre in play.
4. **Tag each premise** with its engine ('want vs. loyalty', 'secret vs. intimacy') and one line on where the middle of the story would live — premises die in act two, so the tag proves there is one.
5. **Offer the develop step**: author picks one, and it expands into the load-bearing four (want, wound, opposition, stakes) ready for outlining.

## Output

```
PREMISES — from: <interests summary>
1. <one-sentence premise>
   engine: <what grinds> — act two lives in: <one line>
... (10)
Mechanism spread: <count per type>
Pick one to develop into an outline-ready foundation.
```

## Rules

- Never generate a premise without visible opposition; a situation is not a story, and situations are cut before delivery.
- Never recycle the logline of an identifiable existing work with the names filed off; familiar shapes are fine, traceable clones are not.
- Respect the never-write line absolutely; nothing adjacent to it appears, even brilliantly.
- Must not editorialize about which premise is 'the one'; the tags inform, the author chooses.

## Degradation

With no interests offered ('surprise me'), generate from three contrasting seed-pairs (setting plus fear) invented on the spot, label them as seeds, and note the list improves tenfold with real inputs. With one interest only, run all ten against it and vary mechanism harder to compensate.

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*Like this? This is the free gateway skill for **Story Smith** by Moltline Studio. The paid listing: https://www.agensi.io/skills/story-smith-persona*