Ensemble Novel Writing

A portable Codex and DeepSeek Harness skill for planning, drafting, continuing, revising, and auditing long ensemble novels with complex character and faction relationships.

It is designed for multi-center narratives: recurring characters retain independent goals, relationships are directional, factions contain internal conflict, information has sources and latency, and every approved chapter can commit a small state delta.

Install

Clone this repository, then place or link the repository folder in one of these locations:

Host	User installation	Project installation
Codex	~/.codex/skills/ensemble-novel-writing	.agents/skills/ensemble-novel-writing
DeepSeek Harness	<dshHome>/skills/ensemble-novel-writing or ~/.agents/skills/ensemble-novel-writing	.dsh/skills/ensemble-novel-writing or .agents/skills/ensemble-novel-writing

On Windows, install/install.ps1 -Target codex or install/install.ps1 -Target dsh copies the skill to the standard user directory. Use -Force only to replace an existing installation. On macOS or Linux, run install/install.sh codex or install/install.sh dsh.

Use

Invoke $ensemble-novel-writing, or ask the agent to use ensemble-novel-writing for a long ensemble-fiction task. Example:

Use ensemble-novel-writing to design a 60-chapter original historical ensemble novel. Start with factions, directed relationships, information boundaries, and the first five chapter cards.

Copy assets/project-template/ into a novel project only when persistent state is useful. Validate those files with:

python scripts/validate_novel_state.py <project-state-directory>

The validator checks data shape and references; it does not judge literary quality.

Design and attribution

This skill is an original ensemble-focused adaptation informed by the MIT-licensed wgwtest/novel-writing and HZ-KMNO/web-novel-writing-guidance-skill projects. See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

License

MIT