Whole Story Judge

Whole-Story Judge — The Macro Gate

quality-critic judges the scene; this judges the whole. They are different questions: a story can pass every scene gate — each scene tense, turning, alive — and still be a pile of good scenes that doesn't cohere. The macro properties (a fired setup, a shaped arc, a kept promise) only exist at the level of the complete draft, so they need their own judge.

It instantiates the shared discipline in _shared/critic-core (evidence-anchor cap, floor gate, reason-first, steelman, guards, bounded authority) with a macro-narrative rubric. Read _shared/critic-core first — that machinery is inherited and not repeated here. This judge runs above the scene gate: scenes pass quality-critic, the whole passes this.

Why it's needed (research). LLMs "generate compelling setups but fail to deliver promised resolutions" — the Chekhov's-gun gap (CFPG, arXiv 2601.07033). And macro-level structural evaluation (story grammar, discourse coherence) substantially outperforms local/lexical signal (arXiv 2604.27846). Local gates structurally cannot catch global failure; this closes that gap.

How to Run

Input

1. The whole — a complete draft, or a full outline/beat-sheet if the draft is too long to hold at once (judge the structure either way).
2. Setups ledger (optional) — a list of planted setups/foreshadows/promises if the author has one; otherwise the judge extracts them.
3. Precondition — the scene-level gate should already pass. Don't macro-judge prose that fails scene by scene; fix the scenes first.

Process

Run the _shared/critic-core loop over the dimensions in references/macro-rubric.md. The macro adaptations:

• Extract the setups ledger first. Scan the whole for planted promises — a named gun, a withheld secret, a posed question, a stated stake, a foreshadow. This ledger is the evidence base for the Payoff dimension; every entry must be traced to a payoff, a deliberate subversion, or marked dropped.
• Cite across distance. Macro evidence is a pair of locations — setup here, payoff there (or its absence). Quote both ends. The evidence-anchor cap means: a Payoff PASS must cite the setup and its fulfilment; you cannot pass it on vibes.
• Steelman before FAIL. A setup deliberately left unfired, an arc that refuses catharsis, an ambiguous ending — these can be earned macro choices, not failures. Apply the mistake-vs-choice test: is the omission patterned and effect-bearing? (See the subversion note in the rubric.)
• Aggregate by FLOOR GATE over the required dimensions. Emit a diagnosis — name the dropped setup / the missing climax / the episodic seam, cite the locations, and state the structural fix (for narrative-arc, narrative-geometry, or prose-editor's structural pass). Withhold the tally (private rubric).

Output

WHOLE-STORY VERDICT: PASS | FAIL   (floor gate · level: draft)
Scene gate: PASS (precondition met)

Setups ledger: <N planted> → <paid> / <subverted> / <DROPPED>

| Dimension          | Verdict | Cited evidence (setup ↔ payoff / structure)             |
|--------------------|---------|---------------------------------------------------------|
| Payoff realization | FAIL    | setup: "the locked western door" (ch.2) → never reopened |
| Arc shape          | PASS    | complication (ch.3) → climax "she signed it" (ch.11)    |
| Causal connectivity| PASS    | each turn caused by the last, not merely sequential      |
| Global coherence   | PASS    | no character/plot/world contradiction across the whole   |
| Promise kept       | PASS    | opening promises a heist; ending delivers/subverts it    |

Verdict legend: advisory dims marked FAIL* (non-gating).

DIAGNOSIS (failed required dimensions only):
- <Dimension>: <the dropped setup / missing beat / seam>, at <locations>. Why it fails: <reason>.
  Fix: <fire it, cut it, or add the beat — sourced to narrative-arc / narrative-geometry>.

Scope Boundaries

Handles: judging macro-narrative properties of a complete work — payoff, arc, causality, promise, global consistency — with cross-distance cited evidence and a structural diagnosis.

Does NOT:

• Judge scene-level craft (tension, interiority, voice) — that's quality-critic, which runs first.
• Check world-canon soundness — that's the worldbuilding-critic (a different domain).
• Rewrite — that's prose-editor (structural pass); this feeds it.
• Dictate the kind of arc or ending — tragic vs triumphant, resolved vs ambiguous are the author's calls (bounded authority). The judge asks "is it shaped, paid off, causal, coherent?", never "is it the ending I'd choose."

Related Skills

• Shared discipline: _shared/critic-core — the judging machinery this instantiates.
• Runs after: quality-critic (scene gate) — the macro gate is the second, higher gate.
• Rubric sources: narrative-arc, narrative-geometry (arc/shape), scene-craft (turns aggregate to arc), character-belief-tracker (global consistency).
• Consumes this: prose-editor (structural pass acts on the diagnosis).
• Sibling judges (peers, not dependencies — see _shared/critic-core): quality-critic (prose), worldbuilding-critic (systems).