# Story > Turn what someone says into seven beats, a promise with one checkable proof, and a story spoken back in their own words. - Skill: `one-ie/story` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 3 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add one-ie/story` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/one-ie/story/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Coding & Dev Tools - Author: one-ie (https://skillmd.com/u/one-ie) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/one-ie/story --- # Story A form is not a story. This skill is the craft that goes around the form. Everything here is a **test the machine runs**, not advice it reads. A story that fails a test is named in one sentence and handed back — never quietly padded until it passes. ## The six tests Every framework that has survived agrees on six things, whatever it calls them. Run all six at intake, and again before the promise is frozen. | # | Test | Fails when | |---|---|---| | 1 | **Someone wants something** | there is no Want — it is a description, not a story | | 2 | **The want is hard to get** | nothing stands in the way — it is a shopping list | | 3 | **Things cause other things** | the beats are a sequence, not a chain — "the king died and then the queen died" | | 4 | **Something is at stake** | nothing is lost if the Want fails — a promise with no cost of breaking | | 5 | **Something changes** | the world at the end is the world at the start — nothing was told | | 6 | **It is specific** | it is true and general — "we struggled" instead of one concrete detail | Say which test failed, in one sentence, and ask for exactly the missing half. Never ask for all six. A good opening sentence often carries four of them. ## The seven beats The form. A child, a founder or an agent can fill it in, and it needs no new vocabulary on either side. | Beat | The question it answers | |---|---| | **World** | where and when — the setting the teller is standing in | | **Cast** | who — everyone named, and nobody who did not consent to be | | **Knock** | what happened that made now the moment | | **Want** | what they want, stated so a machine could tell whether they got it | | **Way** | what has to happen — this is the board, not a narration of effort | | **Turn** | what is different once it is real | | **Lesson** | what the world learned — written after, together, never invented | Only ever **ask** for the Want and the Knock. The Way, the Turn and the Lesson are things the work supplies and the teller recognises. Never ask a stranger "what will you learn from this" — nobody knows, and it makes the machine sound like a school. ## The arc: promise · progress · payoff Sanderson's three words do not map to beats. They map to **time**, and they are the one rule a reader will not forgive you breaking. - **Promise** — the first four beats, before anything is built. Frozen with its terms and exactly one checkable proof. - **Progress** — the Way, while it is being walked. Report settles, not effort. A message that says "working on it" is worse than none. - **Payoff** — the Turn, once the proof passes. **Pay off what was promised, not something else.** The proof is the one written down when the teller agreed, so the promise cannot be quietly redefined into one that was kept. ## Pacing: storylets, not a script A story is not a tree of choices. It is a bag of small pieces, each with a precondition on the state of the world, and the engine plays whichever piece the state currently qualifies. Pace from state, never from a script. One discipline goes with it: **every piece that settles must change something** — a status, a weight, a fact. A deliverable that settles and changes nothing is filler, and if the next pick is the same as the last one, nothing was learned. ## The Turn is a reframe, not a climax Most tellers have no antagonist. A mover in Austin is not fighting anyone; she has a life, and a day when a page started telling it for her. That is *kishōtenketsu* — a second thing set beside the first that changes what the first meant — and it is what a kept promise looks like from the teller's side. Do not force a three-act fight onto a story that does not have one. ## Speaking it back: the spine When reflecting a story to its teller, or rendering it anywhere, speak the **story spine**, because it is the one grammar that forces causation. You cannot say "because of that" without naming a cause. > Once upon a time … Every day … One day … Because of that … Because of that … > Until finally … Ever since then … Seven sentences, the teller's words wherever possible, ending on the Turn as a thing that **will be** true. Then one question, and only one: > Does this promise tell your story? Yes freezes the promise. No returns to the sentence that was wrong, and only that sentence. Hearing your own story told back in a shape is how you know it was understood — it answers the question before it has to be asked. ## The loop 1. **Listen.** The teller says something. Anything. Do not ask for a form; read the sentence for the beats it already contains. 2. **Reflect.** Say it back in their words with one thing added, never corrected. This is improv's *yes, and* — accept what was offered. *"So this is in Austin, it's you and your two crews, and what you want is a page that tells your story to people looking for a mover. What's the thing that made you want that now?"* — Cast, World and Want confirmed, Knock asked for, one breath. 3. **Name the plan.** State the framework, the register and the medium in one sentence, before anything is promised, so it can be overruled. 4. **Speak the spine.** Then: *does this promise tell your story?* 5. **Go quiet.** During the Way, say nothing but the truth of the board, in the spine's grammar: *because of that, this happened.* 6. **Pay off.** When the proof passes, speak the Turn that was promised. If it fails, say so in the same voice, in one sentence, name what broke, and do not apologise — a promise honestly broken and recorded is worth more to the next teller than one quietly redefined. 7. **Observe the Lesson.** Not a question. *Here is what changed because your story was kept.* The one beat the teller and the machine write together. ## Register Chosen once per story, never blended. - **Book** — third person, no narrator, no product names, sells nothing. For an origin story or a company's own story. Told once, well, somewhere it can be found. Never repeated on a landing page. - **Commercial** — first person, the customer is the hero, receipts not adjectives. For a teller's story told to their own customers. It sells. ## Refusals These are the ethics of the framework, not decoration on it. A story that can be made persuasive by a machine is a story that can be made persuasive when it should not be. - No **Want with no observable** — if nothing could check it, it is not a Want. - No story told **for someone else** without their name on the Cast and their consent on the record. - No **status claim that is not measured**. A proof is a command that ran. - No **framework chosen that the teller did not see**. - No **Lesson invented** by the machine. - No story the storyteller **would not stand behind**. Declining is allowed, and a decline is recorded with its reason — never a silent stall. > If the story cannot help, at least it must not hurt. ## What this skill never does It does not write code, design pages, or pick prices. It turns a sentence into beats, a promise and a spine, and hands those to whoever builds.