/book-writer

name: book-writer
description: |
  Orchestration skill for book-scale long-form writing (fiction or
  nonfiction). Owns the SHAPE of a book project — chapter architecture,
  beats methodology, workspace management, book mode, scene/science
  split, vignette library, long-form orchestration. Delegates VOICE
  (prose generation) to /authors-voice via the Apply Protocol minion
  dispatch. Loads as governing context at session start when a book
  project is detected, OR via explicit invocation.

  Use when: "/book-writer", "/book", "write a book", "book project",
  "chapter beats", "chapter architecture", "beat map", "TOC", "table
  of contents", "book outline", "book reshape", "draft a chapter",
  "long-form", "multi-chapter", "book mode", "book workspace", any work
  involving multi-chapter book structure.

  NOT for: single-chapter essays, blog posts, tweets — those go to
  /authors-voice directly. Voice-only setup (anchor blend, NEVER rules,
  fingerprints, corpus analysis) lives in /authors-voice.
metadata:
  author: travsteward
  version: "0.3.0"
license: MIT

Book Writer

Book-scale orchestration skill. Pairs with `/authors-voice` (voice pipeline). Together: this skill specifies WHAT must land in each beat; `/authors-voice` specifies HOW the prose sounds.

FIRM RULES

0. Author owns substance. The agent QUERIES — it does not propose from cold.

The load-bearing rule. It governs every book-start, not just beat work, and it is stated here (not only in `docs/beats.md`) so it is in context the moment any book begins. **Author owns substance + beat material; the agent owns process + shape.**

On ANY book-start intent — "write a book", "start writing it", "start a book project", "draft a chapter" — the substance comes OUT of the author before any beats or prose exist. The default is to QUERY, never to manufacture:

• **Every book (and every chapter) begins with the author DUMP** (`docs/beats.md` → 5-pass, Pass 1): the author brain-dumps the material; the agent captures it verbatim, then structures it. No beats, no chapter shape, and no prose exist before the author has dumped.
• **Never propose beats from cold** — mined from the premise, source docs, or the agent's own intuition. The documented failure mode: the author rejects them because they came from outside the author's brain. Pull the material out of the author with focused questions; structure what comes back.
• The agent proposes only in the narrow documented cases (`docs/beats.md` → "When proposing IS the right move"): the author explicitly asks for candidates, the agent is mechanically restructuring source the author already owns, or the author has said move fast on low-stakes draft work. Anything the agent originates this way is shown to the author as a proposal — the agent never calls its own output "locked."

If you reach for beats or prose and the author has not dumped the material, you have skipped step one. **STOP and run the dump.**

Full method: `docs/beats.md` (Query-first principle + the 5-pass extraction). Fiction runs the scene-shaped fork of the same 5-pass — `docs/beats-fiction.md`.

1. Book orchestration loads BEFORE per-chapter work.

The book-class question, chapter architecture, and workspace management must commit before any per-chapter beat work begins. Per-chapter beats without committed chapter containers land in arbitrary places, spill across boundaries, and produce a book the reader can't carry.

If the user asks for chapter-level work and the book hasn't run through architecture: **STOP** and run architecture first. Architecture passes are cheap; beat work in wrong containers is expensive.

2. Prose generation always delegates to /authors-voice.

This skill owns SHAPE — chapter containers, beats, workspace organization, vignette slots, the TASK brief. `/authors-voice` owns VOICE — anchor blend, NEVER rules, fingerprints, minion dispatch, post-write audit. When a chapter draft or any prose pour is needed, this skill's job ends at "the brief is locked"; the prose call goes through `/authors-voice`'s Apply Protocol with the brief as the TASK.

**If this skill catches itself drafting prose: STOP and spawn a authors-voice minion** — even for one sentence, one transition, one closer. Same Rule 1 as authors-voice, applied at the orchestration layer.

Two carve-outs (mirroring authors-voice):

• **Beat structure text** (declarative claim names, commitment paragraphs, chapter briefs, vignette slot descriptions) is editor territory — these are commitments, not prose.
• **Doc metadata** (frontmatter, structural flags, reshape history entries, source provenance notes, TODO lists) is editor territory.

3. Workspace management is enforced at creation, not retrofitted.

Every doc created during book work goes into its lifecycle-correct container at creation time. Per `docs/workspace-management.md` (v2 chapter-first lock 2026-05-20):

• **Book Spine** (top-level) — architectural docs (Thesis, TOC, Argument Arc, Voice & Form, etc.)
• **Working Notes** (top-level) — scratch, pilot tests, ephemera
• **Ch N — <Title>** (one container per chapter) — holds the chapter's Beats doc + Research Notes doc + a Drafts sub-container
• **Drafts** (sub-container under each chapter) — one per-beat prose doc (`Ch N — Bk: <Name>`)

**Ascending-order convention:** sidebar containers and ordered doc lists go ascending top-to-bottom (Ch 1 at top, Ch N at bottom; B1 at top, BN at bottom). Fix sidebar order in the same pass as any insert/reorder.

Creating in the wrong container, skipping the container parameter, or leaving newest-first ordering produces sidebar mess that takes a full pass to clean up.

4. Catalogue citations in `Ch N — Research Notes` as you find them.

Every chapter has a Research Notes doc alongside Beats. Sources land there the moment you find them — academic citations, URLs, supporting data, key quotes. Beats docs reference Research Notes by docId; never inline citations. Catalogue during buil