Book Outline

Phase 2: Outlining

Goal: an outline detailed enough that each chapter can be drafted in full context without inventing structure, and a bible that keeps twenty chapters telling one story or making one argument.

Read PRD.md, STYLE.md, ideation.md, sources/INDEX.md, the genre skill, and ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/loom/quality-bar.md.

Process

1. Invoke book-architect with the project directory. It produces outline.md (draft) and bible.md (initial), then validates its own structure and writes the score and issues into outline.md's ## Validation section.
2. Review the validation. If the score is below 8/10 or any Critical issue remains, have book-architect revise once. If still below, surface the issues to the author instead of iterating blindly.
3. Author checkpoint. Present: the structural shape (one paragraph), the chapter list with one-line purposes, the pacing map, the top three risks the architect flagged, and the bible summary. Ask for approval or changes. Required stop.
4. On approval, add ## Approval to outline.md with the date and any author notes. The router treats an outline without this section as unapproved.

What a chapter spec must contain

The chapter-writer will draft from this spec plus the full manuscript so far. Anything missing here gets invented inconsistently. Per chapter:

• Title (working) and slug
• Purpose — what this chapter changes for the reader. If two chapters have the same purpose, one is redundant.
• Entry state — where the reader (and, for fiction, the protagonist) is at the start: what they know, want, fear, believe
• Exit state — same, at the end. The delta is the chapter.
• Pull — the question or tension that carries the reader through this chapter
• Content — for fiction: 2-5 scene seeds (situation, turn, what is at stake); for nonfiction: the claims made, evidence used (source IDs), the example or story that anchors it; for technical: concepts, the code artifact built, the failure shown
• Sets up / pays off — references to other chapters by number
• Must not — repetitions to avoid, things the reader must not learn yet, tonal limits
• Length target and difficulty (nonfiction/technical)
• Sources — IDs from sources/INDEX.md

Structure by genre

Genre skills carry the options. The architect chooses a structure and states why in outline.md; it does not apply a template silently. Shapes are tools, not rules: a 15-beat sheet that produces fifteen equal chapters has been applied, not used.

• Fiction: three-act, Save the Cat, Hero's Journey, Story Grid, or a bespoke shape derived from the premise. Also: POV plan, timeline, subplot braid.
• Nonfiction: problem → principles → practice → advanced; or narrative spine with argument chapters; or question-driven. Also: evidence map, recurring example strategy.
• Technical: intro → foundations → practice → advanced → reference, with a running project that the reader builds across chapters.
• Screenplay, poetry, game, academic: see the genre skill.

The bible

bible.md is created here and updated by every drafting and editing agent. Initial sections:

• Characters / Key concepts — per entry: name, role, what they want, what they fear, how they speak (fiction); definition, first-introduced chapter, dependencies (nonfiction/technical)
• World and term rules — settings, systems, terminology decisions, spelling and naming conventions, 존댓말 map (Korean fiction)
• Timeline — dated or relative sequence of events (fiction), or chronology of the field/story (nonfiction)
• Motifs and images reserved — recurring images, phrases, or examples and where they are allowed to appear
• Open threads — setups awaiting payoff, with the chapter that must pay them
• Chapter ledger — empty; chapter-writer appends one entry per chapter drafted

Visual plan

If the book will carry images (nonfiction and technical almost always; fiction by author choice; see the genre skill's Visuals section), the outline includes a ## Figure plan: per chapter, the figures and illustrations with a purpose sentence, type, maker (figure-engineer / illustrator / photo), and data source. This is the seed of visuals/manifest.json; art-director refines it in /book-visuals plan. A chapter spec that needs a diagram says so, and the chapter-writer places the reference and caption while drafting.

Output

outline.md: Structure and rationale, Pacing map, Chapter specs, Cross-reference map (DAG for technical/nonfiction; setup/payoff table for fiction), Figure plan (if any), Validation (score, issues, recommendations), Approval.

bible.md as above.

Gate

outline.md has ## Approval. Architect score ≥ 8/10 with no Critical issues, or author explicitly accepted the remaining issues. Every chapter spec has purpose, entry/exit state, pull, and content. bible.md exists with at least the characters/concepts and term rules sections filled.

Post-completion

node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/velith.mjs scan [project-dir]