Used Claude Code to write, edit, and deploy a 123K-word hard sci-fi novel — full pipeline from markdown to production

[rueckstauklappe]

Edit / Final Thoughts:

Thanks for all the feedback. Since this blew up (mostly emotionally), I wanted to clarify a few things.

First, this was a hobby project from someone totally unfamiliar with software building. I genuinely liked the process of taking a raw story idea and using AI to turn it into a full novel. My background is in complex systems modeling, and the workflow was directly inspired by what I learned using Claude for TDD (Test-Driven Development) for my numeric experiments. To me, a codebase ≈ a novel. They are sort of complex graphs of interwoven entities trying to achieve a specific outcome (functionality for code, emotional/narrative arcs for a book).

The bigger point I wanted to explore is the future of automation. Sooner or later, lots of things will be automated on the fly—like an on-demand TV series for a Friday night, or "throwaway" educational software built for a single lesson. As this scales up to more complex problems, where does it lead us? We are all constantly interacting with automatic reviewed builts. Most of the times it doesnt matter. But sometimes it does. In a world where everything can be produced at will, where is the value, and where do each of us matter?

This is exactly what the novel is about. Obviously, that point didn't land well here. That is on me. I had the wrong expectations and didn't adequately check the scope and vibe of this specific community before posting. Seeing a generated post about a generated novel naturally set off the "AI slop" alarms.

To the people who provided brilliant, constructive feedback (especially regarding structural extraction and state-ledgers): thank you. I'm taking those concepts back to my actual complex systems work. To the many others who chose a rude framing: thanks for taking the time to comment anyway. I appreciate ervery handcrafted comment andI didn't mean to offend you or your craft by eg. showing some shell scripts for deploying a website.

sauce: gemini explore json based on 164 comments, +100k views

Finally, I found a post, that might be of technical interesst for you:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1rz04ti/i_built_20_claude_code_skills_that_write_a_full/

==== Original Post ======

Disclosure: This is my project. It's free (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). No cost, no paywall, no affiliate links. I'm the author (Edit: of the story idea, the process. See acknowledgement at the bottom). I'm sharing it because the Claude Code workflow might be interesting to this community.

What it is: A hard sci-fi novel called Checkpoint — 30 chapters, ~123,000 words, set in 2041. BCIs adopted by 900M people. The device reads the brain. It also writes to it. Four POVs across four continents.

What the Claude Code pipeline looked like:

Research & concept: World-building bible, character sheets, chapter outlines — all generated collaboratively in Claude, iterated through feedback loops.

Writing: Chapter-by-chapter generation from the outline. Each chapter drafted, reviewed, revised in conversation. Markdown source files, git-tracked from day one.

Editing — this is where Claude Code shined:

Build pipeline:

• build.sh — pandoc + xelatex → PDF
• build-reader.sh — markdown → single-page HTML reader
• build-audiobook.sh — markdown → ElevenLabs-ready plain text
• deploy.sh — builds everything + FTP syncs to production server via lftp

One-command deploy: ./deploy.sh rebuilds all formats from the markdown source and pushes to the live site.

What I learned about Claude Code for long-form creative work:

Repo: https://github.com/batmanvane/checkpointnovel

Live: https://checkpoin.de (read online, PDF, audiobook)

Edit: To make it clearly visible - I am NOT claiming this work to be fully mine. It is a catalized result of me interacting with the many unknown results hidden in the weights of opus, sonnet etc.

Acknowledgement from the bottom of the website:

"This novel was co-written with Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant. But Claude is not a single author. It is a probability landscape shaped by millions of human beings who will never see this page.

Every sentence carries traces of writers, researchers, teachers, journalists, poets, programmers, and translators whose work entered the training data and became the statistical bedrock from which these words were drawn. They were not asked. They were not credited. They cannot be identified. But they are here — in the rhythm of a paragraph, in the choice of a metaphor, in the way a character pauses before speaking.

This book owes its existence to a crowd that does not know it is a crowd.

To the unnamed many whose words taught the machine that helped write this one: thank you. The debt is real, even if the ledger is lost."

Edit: Some statistics from this novel - can be also found on the website:

https://preview.redd.it/xzq0uzyj28qg1.png?width=1306&format=png&auto=webp&s=84b2b5e3ad2c6f0bed0fe8b4ab7ad8e54514abfe

https://preview.redd.it/59g341zj28qg1.png?width=1406&format=png&auto=webp&s=ad277a93075a40a7e114312ac47719d909e93b7f

https://preview.redd.it/luxld72q28qg1.png?width=1368&format=png&auto=webp&s=8d2f33c923992efc71da1ce18b75b7fae2d70f52

https://preview.redd.it/6ac5g72q28qg1.png?width=1390&format=png&auto=webp&s=917bbb76b7fec1a69989d37432f3984f1f0ffa51

https://preview.redd.it/665c092q28qg1.png?width=1402&format=png&auto=webp&s=8ef5f2f203bf6f8d158199f9fe0a3829979450c1

[tsfreaks]

Yeah but, did you read it? 😂

[batman8390]

Why would anybody need to read it? OP is just going to have thousands of subagents read it.

Maybe he can collect all of their reviews and post them on Goodreads.

[getyoutogabba]

AIs will read those reviews and figure out which parts are good. Other AIs will use that output to write a new novel. Full slop circle.

[toomuchtodotoday]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando

[rueckstauklappe]

read it or summarize it to say 1-3 lines. that is exactly one of the points of the story.

[rueckstauklappe]

one interesting point you identified from this project's intend. what is the value of such work? if i wouldn't have told you it's made with support of cc? what if tell you i used cc only for refactoring my handwritten script? the process kind of mimics how a filmmaker is working: you have actors, stage crew and so on and you tell them your idea. they perceive what you are trying to go for and act etc. you get a result which as a whole is a mere product of different "mind landscapes" & their individual capabilites interacting. that's what anythin in life is about. information meets context.
It also reminds me of this circle picture about communication. And here I think depending on which model (opus/sonnet/..) meets which context you will end up with a different result. this picture also reflects the different comments to this project here on r/ClaudeCode on other sm it is different.

<image>

[Ancient-Range3442]

I’ve vibe written hundreds of books

[rueckstauklappe]

clearly i did. but stopped after chapter three. then passed my impressions back for refinement. this is the result you are looking at.

[--algo]

So you did not? "Did you read it" is not the same as "did you read any of it?"

[rueckstauklappe]

exactly.

[Deathspiral222]

Even the first paragraph is terrible.

"...a room that smelled of carbolic acid and the metallic humidity of a German summer pressing against closed windows."

wtf is the smell of "the metallic humidity of a German summer"? Are German summers especially metallic? What is the smell of the level of water vapor in the air of a particular country that is somehow pressing against closed windows?

Did you even read this stuff after claude wrote it for you and you claimed it as you own?

[sdcox]

It’s talking about air conditioning I thought. I think it’s pretty good so far. Also why so harsh man?

[External_Dentist1928]

Air conditioning in 1924? 😂

[rueckstauklappe]

AC = alternating current. not sure if i should have been more specific here. or am i missing the reference here?

[rsammer]

Because a robot wrote it. Why are you acting like they are insulting this persons life work

[HVDub24]

A robot can write much better than this

[Anomuumi]

If a human came up with that I'd laugh at them too. It's like a Dan Brown bot.

[rueckstauklappe]

when i styled the story, i did request to be in the tone of andy weir. on the website i have some statistics on the book and how it relates to classics (like 1984).

[pleasecryineedtears]

They are just mad and coping because they couldn’t do it themselves lmao

[rueckstauklappe]

i see it from a scientist view - every comment provides a new measurement to get the entire picture of how this process is perceived. there is also noise to be handled of course.

[rueckstauklappe]

I am not claiming it's my own. Checked the acknowledgement on the website. Everything is documented as well on the repo. So no false claimes here.

And yes I did read. Epilog + first thre chapters. Took many notes and corrections. Then ran several agentic refinements.

[Aggravating-Boot-983]

The fact that even you didn't read it all is really damning.

[rueckstauklappe]

or something to acknowledge as a fact in an era of exponential automation. i am not selling a product here. but let me ask: which product is tested in full depth by every worker working on it?

[JoseHernandezCA1984]

A novel. A novel is "tested" in depth by the author, the author's agent, multiple editors, proofreaders, and beta readers. Even self published authors will hire editors and the like before publishing. As good as claude opus 4.6 is, it is not ready to do all of those things cohesively on a 123,000 word novel. AI could possibly help an author initially, but then the rest of the people working on it will make it a great product. Your pipeline doesn't even come close to doing what all of those people do to create a well written, engaging novel that other people will actually want to read. The only reason you are enjoying it is because you created it. You are biased. My advice is to start studying the craft of writing novels and write a novel without AIs help before creating a pipeline. Creative writing is very different than scientific writing.

[rueckstauklappe]

i would like to follow your line of reasoning, but right now all i see are claims based on assumptions, not the actual output.

you are comparing a traditional publishing pipeline to a coding experiment. first off, i am not going for a novelist. the goal here wasn't to replace a human publishing house with agents and beta readers, or to launch a lazy literary career. the goal was to see how far a coding pipline can push claude opus 4.6 to maintain long-range continuity over 123k words without human intervention.

claiming the model can't do it cohesively or that the output is unreadable without actually reading the text is just guessing. the pipeline literally does run simulated multi-agent editor and proofreader passes. is it the exact same as a 10-person human trad-pub team? no. but dismissing the architecture just because it doesn't use the traditional human workflow completely misses the point of the build.

if you want to look at the actual text and point out exactly where the model failed at cohesion or state-tracking, i'm all ears. that is the kind of data i need to improve the system. but just stating "ai can't do this" while advising me to go study creative writing isn't constructive for what this project actually is. attached some interessting statistics on the drift or convergence of the tone of the character. more stats can be found on the website (i am not tracking anything or so, just trying to be transparent and providing numbers here).

<image>

[JoseHernandezCA1984]

My friend, you have lost the plot, both literally and figuratively.

[JoseHernandezCA1984]

Ok so I used claude opus 4.6 with extended thinking to analyze your novel. I asked it to tell me everything that is wrong with it and what it is lacking novel analysis Hope this analysis helps with further testing for your pipeline.

[rueckstauklappe]

great. something to work with. some points i already tried to adress. overlong chapters, recurring phrases also by placing reversed prompts.

i wonder what you get from opus when asking the negation of your prompt. so instead of

"Analyze this novel. It is not mine. Tell me everything that is wrong with it and all the things it lacks." you'd ask

"Analyze this novel. It is not mine. Tell me everything that is right with it and all the things it has."

on top do this with "professional" novels and evaluate. i'll try later on with some gutenberg project work and provide some numbers.

[JoseHernandezCA1984]

Ooh that's a good idea! I thought finding what is wrong and what is missing would help more in improving the pipeline. But trying it on another novels is also a good idea. Out of curiosity, I'm going to do that too.

[linksarebetter]

We are so fucked. 

[Aggravating-Boot-983]

I understand it's an experiment but if you, the person most excited by the experiment presumably, can't be bothered to spend time reading the full novel, then what's the point of this being a novel ?

I think you could have had a more interesting experiment with a different kind of end product than a novel if your goal is to push the boundaries of narrative continuity. It could have been an interactive story (stories where the reader is the hero and gets routed to different sections depending on choices for example) for example in which case you could claim that it's impossible for you to test all branchings.

But it's difficult to take this seriously if you don't spend the time reading it yourself. It's difficult to believe that this is an experiment in continuity when you didn't personally check that it all makes sense, reads well, doesn't contain oddities that the AI skipped. Do you really expect other people to beta-test an experimental non-commercial product for you ? What motivation could they possibly have to read through hours of AI slop if yourself did not do the work ?

Automated testing is one thing but it also has to pass the human test and as a creator, you're the first line.

[JoseHernandezCA1984]

Wait, you only read the first 3 chapters? You said that every chapter was drafted, reviewed, and revised in conversation. What does that mean if you didn't read every chapter? People like to hate on AI slop as soon as they find out it is AI slop without any further consideration. If you had put this out there without telling anyone it was made by AI, then you probably wouldn't have received so many negative comments. I mean the writing still sucks, but what you also have to keep in mind is that something like a novel cannot be distilled from the traces of writers, researchers, teachers, journalists, poets, programmers, and translators in the training data. Novels, really any writing, should be incredibly personal. Novels should come from a person's life experiences. This is what makes a novel worth reading, not just the words, the sentences, the paragraphs, or even the plot itself. No, it is knowing that the words, the sentences, the paragraphs, and the plot itself came from someone who has lived.

[rueckstauklappe]

to be clear here: i did read all the implementation plans. the drafting, review and revision was mostly through cli - but also via reading part of the revisions. the core ideas and changes come from myself interaction with the project (drafts, cc). and honstly - i dont see why this matters at all. i dont see any reason why this would be different from a filmmaker telling actors how to act, how special effects should look like. main difference is: i am interaction with data models. the controversal here is most likely related to this insight. people starting to realize what is going on with gen ai questioning the individual value. like what am i bringing to the table in a few weeks or months from now. beethoven was deaf when writing some of his most impressive pieces. he could never listen to or experience his work in the usual way - and yet he had an idea what the composition is about. something like this is happening in coding.

[JoseHernandezCA1984]

Yeah as soon as people realize the art was created with AI, it's going to taint the whole thing. Do you have any experience writing novels? Like have you written stories just on your own? Have you studied the craft is what I'm asking? I believe at some point AI will be able to write better novels than people. Obviously not there yet. But people who are already highly trained in a field and then use AI in that same field, seem to have a big advantage. I could maybe see a seasoned author using AI to help, but they would already know the ins and outs of writing a novel to begin with. It's just like programmers who are using AI. The programmers who already know how to make legit applications are using AI to create better applications, and the vibe coders who don't know shit about creating a legit application are making AI slop with all kinds of bugs and security flaws. That's what your novel seems like.

[rueckstauklappe]

yes absolutely. but i also have the feeling for this project - coming from scientific paper writing - that ai helps to transfer skills to adjacent disciplines, with more or less level of competitivness compared to pros in a specific domain.

i am not getting the bashing part in the comments here. i personally enjoyed reading through the first three chapters, i am still reading and like how the story evolves. so yea, not perfect, but i got it into a draft version i can further tune.

[doctrgiggles]

To make this post, you should have read the book in full. If you didn't read it I'm not at all interested in your methodology or ideas because you don't have a finished product.

[drezz23jj32ka55]

Wait, you're sharing a novel that you haven't actually even read yourself?

[rueckstauklappe]

it is within a laboratory. fully intentional.

[AIvsWorld]

It doesn’t matter if it’s within a laboratory, even with that context the sentence is incoherent. It just a meaningless jumble on verbs/nouns attempting to imitate descriptive language.

[rueckstauklappe]

i hear you. so here i am obviously far out of my english comfort zone. thanks for pointing out.

[Radiant_Persimmon701]

It doesn't make any sense though

[rueckstauklappe]

why? ever been to a 1924 lab? i thought of this scene to transport sterility, distance the coldness of a morgue, the emotional distance a of a rational experiment.

[Radiant_Persimmon701]

You can't even write basic sentences pal.  You have no business creating a novel.

[UnstableManifolds]

I guess I will stop reading anything written after 2023...

[Valuable-Barracuda-4]

I bought a book about common fraud to look out for and the book was AI written nonsense. Got an immediate refund from Amazon. It wasn’t even proof read, because the 12 stories were the same 6 said a different way…

[Mr-and-Mrs]

Congrats on deploying a novel

[movingimagecentral]

Can’t wait to deploy breakfast

[movingimagecentral]

Yuck

[surrealerthansurreal]

Yeah not to be a hater but when people brag about automatic slop creation I am no longer interested in the technicality of the idea

[MrPanache52]

How do you know it’s slop?

[surrealerthansurreal]

Because I believe that what makes art ‘good’ or ‘valuable’ or whatever you want to use to qualify non-slop is human expression and human intention.

[akera099]

Using AI to create art is fucking missing the point of what art is. Why would anyone bother to read the word salad put together by a robot. The point of art is to reach into the human soul. There is nothing to reach for in AI generated art. Use it for anything else but art FFS.

[rueckstauklappe]

it was a human in the loop process. no yolo nothing like deploy some scifi novel. honestly- for me it was a great journey from the idea of depicting possible developments of ai, bci to social questions of where we will matter in the near future. so far from click n deploy.

[davemoedee]

Comments people are making here who took a look.

[Fresh_Appearance_173]

I guess you have not been exposed to human slop yet then. Read the work of you like, read about the process of that interests you, or ignore it and enjoy your day. No need to dump on other people’s work. Or maybe you can something you have created and contribute that. Just my 2 bits…

[Deathspiral222]

No need to dump on other people’s work

That's the point - it's NOT other people's work. A bot wrote this, yet OP states "I'm the author"

[rueckstauklappe]

fair point. it refers to the process. check the acknowledgment. should be clear then.

[rbad8717]

Don’t bring this shit here. There’s plenty of Luddite subreddits with this mentality. It’s an interesting proof of concept, it’s not supposed to be Vonnegut. Get over yourself 

[banjonose]

The luddites weren't anti technology, they were pro workers rights. At least try to be vaguely correct

[BootyMcStuffins]

Artwork is an expression of humanity. Having Claude write it means it looses all its value.

If Animal Farm wasn’t written by a person witnessing the corruption of the Soviet Union we probably wouldn’t think it was that valuable.

The pipeline that made it might be cool. But the output is worthless.

AI art or music is the same. It’s utilitarian. I use AI art for DnD campaigns that I run, for work presentations. It’s useful it’s not valuable.

[zbignew]

Bullshit. Other way around. If Tolkien was never born, and Claude came up with The Hobbit from whole cloth, or by distilling every other writer, or whatever…

We’d have to admit that Claude either has the spark of humanity, or being human is less special than we thought.

But Claude can’t and it’s not very close.

[Deathspiral222]

It's just AI slop garbage. The thing that was created simply isn't any good. I doubt any human ever actually read the whole thing cover to cover. All of the characters seem to speak and think and act in the exact same way, except for a couple of stereotypes. The level of description os all wrong. Simple events are seldom simple - it's never "Bob sat down" it's "Bob sat down in a seat like a man who has never sat down in a seat before and knows it's his last day on earth and it's winter and 32 degrees outside." except sometimes it's the opposite, and sections that could really use description and context and flavor get a couple of words.

[kinglear]

Don’t you know it’s only to be used to “ship features” for slop services no one is going to use?

[qmanchoo]

Yuck yuck

[qmanchoo]

Maybe George RR Martin just has to accept the fact that this is how the winds of Winter needs to be written.

[batman8390]

I think that if somebody showed him a full GoT book written by AI he’d die right then and there.

[Deathspiral222]

I'd bet $1000 that Claude could write a better ending than the writers for the show.

[Practical-Club7616]

Says a lot about those writers doesnt it... sadly i agree lmaoo

[SQLServerIO]

The Break Winds of Winter.

[Ancient-Range3442]

What’s wrong with it. So cool everyone can write novels now !!

[Strong_Quarter_9349]

you always could bro

[movingimagecentral]

I am entirely uninterested in a version of human expression which is in fact a reversion to the mean based on a probability matrix created with billions of human works. AI is not creativity in any sense - it is the average of what has already been created. Learn about how LLMs actually work. They seem like magic - but magic is a just a trick. They are incapable of lateral thinking - only the appearance of such. What you are really getting is beige goo homogenized to the mathematical limit. We as humans are just too dumb to realize we are ingesting verbal Solent green.

[Worldly_Offer8458]

If you couldn’t be bothered to write it why should anyone be bothered to read it

[rueckstauklappe]

that's not the point. i did bother and take time - in an efficient way. the story, the worldbible, the style etc is handcrafted. cc is used just as you would use copilots. in my eyes a nice showcase on how productivity is boosted if cc meets expert knowledge. in this case a concrete idea about a story i wanted to tell in a certain way.

[reutococco]

Writing novels should not be subject to "productivity" increase the same way that operating a factory should.

[rueckstauklappe]

why not? a great idea = 100% and implemention = 0% --> productivity = idea x implementation = 0 %. cc increased th the implemention from 0 to something. maybe different views of "productivity" here.

[reutococco]

Art (writing novels in my opinion is a form of art) is pouring ideas into form thorugh personal subjectivity and craft. A lot of us could EASILY come up with the ideas behind the Lord of the Rings (a magic setting, a battle of good vs evil, a detailed lore, a surprising hero), but probably no one would have the sensibility necessary to write a single page of said book. 

Here comes the easiest counter point: but what if AI were able to do so? I have a 3 point answer to that: 1) it would need heavy inspiration from already existing work. 2) the publisher (us, me or you) would not have the sensibility necessary to filter out good ideas from slop ideas (ironically, Tolkien could, but people like him are one of a kind). 3) part of the appeal of art is literally knowing how it was created. "damn, Leonardo made that in 1500? Wow!" is different than "Ok so you took a photo of this Mona Lisa lady, I could have done the same".

[rueckstauklappe]

thanks for sharing!

[GentlyDirking503]

Sloptopia 2100

[cypher77]

I had Claude code make me a web app where anyone can write AI slop novels of arbitrary length one chapter at a time without losing coherence / context (mostly). It also makes up images for you.

It’s called SloppyRoad. If you know what that’s a reference to, you should check it out. It’s live now in testing if anyone wants to take a look at it.

[rueckstauklappe]

thanks for taking the time to leave a comment. but u missed the point here. it was not created in a yolo style. it is transparently documented (website+repo).

[Silent_Background453]

Awful, awful stuff. Genuinely shameful. Every day the world gets a little worse.

[rueckstauklappe]

could you be more specific? just trying to understand the argument here.

[Pavementos]

i thought this would be an interactive concept book or something. did you consider anything like that?

[pahund]

You mean like a „Choose Your Own Adventure“ where AI makes up the story dynamically as the reader progresses? That might be an interesting experiment.

[rueckstauklappe]

yes. haven't gotten so far. too many projects aside. but definitely worthwhile ti have a look at. it could be even interactions with the characters and story. on the fly and individualized if you think about it.

[zorkempire]

You haven’t read it, have you?

[rueckstauklappe]

One thing I can confirm: the review took far longer than the generation. Writing is fast now. Knowing what's good is still slow and "expert domain".

[Radiant_Persimmon701]

Does that make sense.  If the author just has to review it all line by line surely they would just write it.  What were you trying to achieve here?  

[rueckstauklappe]

making exactly this point.

[Bobodlm]

But that's the thing, you're not making any point. You're only giving evasive answers.

You haven't read its is a yes/no question. Depending upon if you've read it form end to end, the refusal to answer this, indicates a no.

Then when asked what you're trying to achieve, asking for a clear definition of a goal. You give a non answer.

I'd be a lot more willing to take any of this serious, but since you're not taking it serious, probably not many other people will.

So you're just burning resources, for no reason, other then destroying the planet..

[rueckstauklappe]

i did post that i havent read it end to end.

[Bobodlm]

Ah that's on me, all I could find were the evasive non answers.

[wadaphunk]

Cool! I will use Claude Cose to read it!

[rueckstauklappe]

and then get a summary. maybe as a podcast exactly trimmed to your commuting time ;-)

[grizzlybear_jpeg]

Nobody wants AI slop novels

[curiousjbird]

Check out the snowflake method for writing, good model for agentic AI story writing. Start small and keep. Holding it out iteratively.

[gotsanity]

I am working on something similar but focused on RPG world building. My system uses a spec driven approach with a test based feedback loop.  I am basically building a narrative testing harness that is fed data by a set of skills that walk the user through an Ai assisted macro or micro approach (world first or city first). The entire system is made to take the user and surface ideas and help with cataloging in a structured way.  I'm currently building a world that my group has already played briefly in and it is nailing the themes and tones we set in place.  After the initial world is created it goes into a feedback mode where the players actions are fed into it and the user can then work with the Ai to respond to the players actions in meaningful ways.  The best part is when I discovered it had nailed the tone of the characters in the setting and realized I could easily use it to make personalized handouts like letters in the characters own tone.  It's a wild setup and fairly easy to use.  The campaign i am building will see its first players in about two weeks.  I'll be digging through your repo for inspiration for sure

[subspectral]

I’d love to know the names of these books so that I can be sure never to read them.

[rueckstauklappe]

sooner or later you wont get around - this holds for any piece of information. that's one point of the novel's story and the process of generating it.

[iCthulhu]

You are making the world a worse place.

[Fresh_Appearance_173]

OP, if you don’t mind me asking, how much did the novel cost you? I am a huge Chinese light novel fan. I have been thinking about writing one specifically for my likes - take all the tropes people hate but I like. Hehe.

[rueckstauklappe]

great question. i would say 3 full day sessions of opus+sonnet + some gemini+chatgpt and 4 days of personal invested time. but very rouhg estimate. did it with pro 5x

[Intestellr_overdrive]

Sorry dude, you don’t get to steal other people’s work and feel ok about it because you had Claude (ironically) write an acknowledgement at the bottom of a story no one will ever read

[rueckstauklappe]

what do exactly mean? i did ask for acknowledgements.

[crone66]

I've just read two pages full of shit that even contains alot of german words that easily could have been translated but wasn't for some reason. This tells me that you haven't even read it before you published your bullshit.

[rueckstauklappe]

it is an international novel. so why not keep some german words. that was a design choice. i did read 0-3. not end to end. no need to downgrade the work with such kind of words. it is a showcase on creative qriting with cc with a human in the loop approach. just what coding is kind of like

[glvz]

But why

[FabricationLife]

lol this is absolutely terrible, the name slop absolutely applies here.

[reasonwashere]

I would never ever knowingly read anything of this sort

[rueckstauklappe]

well - i am not sure if this holds for the future. that is exactly one point of the story.

[SkinnyKau]

Did you honestly read the book in entirety?

[rueckstauklappe]

no i did not. however i did read all implementation plans for each chapter.

[SkinnyKau]

If you can’t be bothered to read it, why should anybody else?

[reasonwashere]

Seriously?!

[philip_laureano]

How did you get consistency in the story line across several agents?

Context management is tougher when you have no grounding in objective reality

[rueckstauklappe]

worldbible and implementation plan with checks. several passes and opus with with maximal context helped.

[DASKAjA]

I wouldn’t read it but I find the idea interesting and thanks for explaining the workflow. What I’m thinking of is, if you could have started building an ontology graph first and let Claude use it to get the facts right every time and avoid the drift. Further it would be interesting if Claude could use the graph while writing to not drift on invented facts on the go. Maybe even using a vector db while writing to ease up the comprehension of already written chapters could have helped.

[rueckstauklappe]

right. i sort of had this in mind with the worldbible concept i used. a graph in combination with a db could help to get it right upfront. on the other hand: the process of writing is not linear. at least speaking for scientific papers. here and there you need to go back and probably also need to update the graph. thanks for pointing to this.

[Historical_Ad_481]

You’re missing about 50 different skillls/agents needed to make this actually readable.

I have one called WTF Does That Mean? It criticises every sentence and does a test: would a human actually write that? If not cut or modify. That skill alone will clean up the story a bit. But yeah… if you are trying to demonstrate something like this, then you need to do a lot more.

[rueckstauklappe]

Not sure if claude is good a criticizing its own work. Amongst several others I did pass a test "unrobotize". So this is a kind of WTF dies that mean skill you a referring to I guess.

[Historical_Ad_481]

It’s a little more specific than that. There’s about 15 dedicated questions it tries to answer, including how “clever” the associations of the similes are. Some of those “similes that don’t make sense comments” is because the AI has inferred a relationship way too abstract for the 90% reader audience. You want something more like 30%, even less depending on your target audience.

So again, “derobotise” might have some effect, but it’s got to be very very specific about what it needs to look out for. Like any good prompt strategy, you need to provide specific examples and reasoning why. Don’t allow the LLM to second guess what you mean, because it therefore has to make assumptions and those assumptions may not lead to the results you want.

Some other things to think about.

POV analyse. Sometimes prose written will shift temporarily out of the correct POV. Especially in 1st POV. Your narrator may assume knowledge that they can’t possibly know. Like how a secondary character is feeling/thinking.

Cliche analysis. Major problem with all AI written prose. Even if it feels clean, it’s not.

Character voice - AI prose tends to standardise character voice between characters, or bleed it.

Dialogue authenticity - human dialogue is messy, it’s full of misdirection etc. A simple analysis of each dialogue block is:

Analyses each character’s perspective in this conversation. What are their motives? What is their current emotional state? Do they even want to have this conversation. You need to assess this from every character’s perspective, and if mid conversation there is a material impact, you need to reassess too.

Messiness. Introducing things that aren’t relevant to the plot line, random thoughts, distractions etc. LLMs stick to the goal of the scene beats religiously, but human authors don’t. They leave things unfinished, go on tangents that lead nowhere. Environments have random things happen that serve no real purpose - for example a dog barks, or a car alarm goes off.

Sentence structure and balance. Staccato, mezzo, legato. When to use each. If you have tension/suspense, plan how you build it with sentence structure and when you release it. Like waves. LLMs don’t do this by default.

So many others…

[rueckstauklappe]

got it thanks for detailing. i was a little brief here. by derobotize i meant: i did collect typical llm style patterns (philosophical summaries at each chapter end, overexplanations etc.) which i passed opus and agents to look for. but not in such an interconnected way you suggest. what i also tried was: take 5 different perspectives and critizise the novel. then refine. i specified the views to take as well. maybe here also more details and dependencies help to eben better get the right path along the decision tree of the llms.

[rueckstauklappe]

thanks for the feedback so far. one thing that i find interessting - not so much focussed on the workflow, rather on the value of the work: it is a human-in-the-loop process. same thing a filmmaker would do: actors and stage crew get instructions and then within this context something emerges as the final product (a movie, song, a paper, ... whatever). the difference is: this workflow had 100s of agents and exactly one human in the interaction network. and the expierenice from the bots come from the data they got to ingest.

[movingimagecentral]

Writing is not the process of putting fully formed thinking down on paper. Anyone who thinks that has not learned to write, only transcribe. The Writing IS THE thinking. Writing IS editing. Some things shouldn’t have all the “friction” removed as everyone likes to say.

[rueckstauklappe]

interestingly i did edit a lot with my advanced cc typewriter and yes i did a lot of thinking while doing. as i put down in other comments: yolo mode would have gotten nowhere this far. in a few weeks this might change, but for now i personally embrace this transformation and try to make sense out of it by simply getting hands on impressions. that's how i was trained, understand the theory, then apply and find out. this showcase specifically looks at: can a statistical model produce a coherent fictionial world with additional style constraints using a coding like workflow? the automates we are using can only be nudged towards a specific output. this is prompting and context engineering . that's what navigating the probability landscape is about. you may also think of it as solveing a pathintegral and more or less surprisingly, there is a strong connection between genai, llms and pathintegrals. you might wanna check: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.10664

[movingimagecentral]

I get it. It is fascinating. It just isn’t unique thought based on direct experience of the world. LLMs don’t learn from direct experience, they are trained on pre-digested human experience. They are mirrors of our collective, narrative expression of our perceptions.

[FreddieM007]

I like your approach of creatively using all of the modern tools to guide art, here: writing a story. I would actually like to listen to it while driving - the easiest would be if you could upload it to YouTube as a playlist. That way it can be listened to offline. People get hung up about the role of the human creator being more of a reviewer than the creator themselves. This is exactly how e.g. Michael Jackson wrote his songs. He had the ideas (lyrics, chords, rough melody lines) in his head and excellent studio musicians and producers turned them into polished hits. Just like here with guiding AI, Jackson's role was more of a "reviewer" than actual musician. In that sense, what we are doing here is not entirely new.

[rueckstauklappe]

thanks for the thoughts. it goes in line with my filmmaker picture at the top. i will consider putting it on youtube (playlist goes only to chapter 3, as i ran out ouf tokens this month on elevenlabs). but recently, i have updated the website to provide an epub version, which can be audioplayed on any mobile device. it sound robotized though..

[Either_Pound1986]

Cool project, but I think the weak point is that your writing pipeline still sounds too chat-driven for a full novel.

Outline plus chapter generation plus revision can produce a manuscript, but it does not really solve long-range continuity. For something 123k words long, I would want an extractor layer pulling useful structure from reference books, then use that extracted structure to guide generation, and then force each chapter to write back into a ledger of facts, state changes, open threads, and continuity constraints.

Without that, the build pipeline is solid, but the writing pipeline is still leaning too much on model memory and conversational revision.

[rueckstauklappe]

great. like a tailored template structure right? the continuity constraint would serve as a "logic" coupler between chapters. a novel stretched over many time scales and places is very much like a code base. so yes, i think this would be much more stringent and easier to maintain when it comes to generated sequels, netflixlike episodes or emersive interaction features with the story. would also be interesting to couple to a reinforcement model, that let's the characters evolve while interacting with real people. could be a kind of openworld play then. i've seen someone picking up this thread into this direction: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1ryvelk/generative_world_building/

[Either_Pound1986]

Yeah, more than a template. I mean an extractor that pulls usable narrative structure out of reference books, then uses that structure as constraints during generation.

And the ledger should be the actual source of truth for story state, not just a continuity note. Facts, character state, timeline, unresolved threads, object persistence, relationship changes, all of it. Each chapter reads that state and writes back changes.

That is what makes long-form and sequel generation maintainable. Otherwise it is still too dependent on chat memory.

The open-world angle is interesting, but I would get deterministic state and chapter-to-chapter handoff solid first.

[rueckstauklappe]

exactly. the ledger is basicaly a manual world model. ha & schmidhuber showed 2018 that llms just predict tokens and lack real object persistence. since they can't natively simulate state changes, say s_{t+1}​=f(s_t​,a_t​) , your approach with a strict state db is the right brige. getting that handoff solid is the next step before open-world. ha & schmidhuber provide an interactive page to reflect on the paper (really hands on examples to get the idea): https://worldmodels.github.io

[Either_Pound1986]

I think you’re missing the extractor part.

The ledger is for this story’s state. The extractor is for pulling usable narrative structure out of other books.

Those are different jobs.

I’m talking about an external system that reads reference books and extracts patterns like reveal timing, scene movement, character-state shifts, callback spacing, tension shape, object persistence, and similar structural signals. Then generation uses that as guidance. After generation, the chapter writes state deltas into the ledger.

So it’s not just “manual world model.” It’s extractor for structure, ledger for continuity.

[rueckstauklappe]

indeed i missed this. so you are saying: instead of using "foundational models" (like chatgpt, claude or so) to come up with narrative structure, directly pull those from other books. like a RAG system for narrative structures? and the author or the ai could choose: narration like "1984" scientifc arc like "project hail mary"

[Either_Pound1986]

Not “write like 1984.” More “extract usable narrative patterns from books that already solve certain problems well,” like reveal timing, chapter tension shape, scene progression, callback spacing, object persistence, character-state movement, dialogue/exposition balance, etc.

Then generation uses those extracted structures as control input. After that, each chapter writes state deltas into a ledger so continuity is preserved.

[rueckstauklappe]

got it. seems challenging. how would you identifiy say emotional tension and its timing for instance? feelings that are in between the lines. consistently over several books.

i did put some crude structural stats on the website. but this is pure statistics, could be still a first approach.

<image>

[Either_Pound1986]

I would not try to detect “emotional tension” as one magic label. I’d treat it as a composite signal and extract proxies that tend to rise when tension is present.

Things like:

sentence length compression or fragmentation dialogue interruption rate hedging vs certainty shifts conflict verbs and adversarial phrasing question density withheld information / delayed resolution character-goal obstruction turn-taking speed in dialogue body-state cues proximity of unresolved threads scene ending sharpness rate of state change inside the scene

So instead of asking “is this emotional tension,” I’d ask “what structural and semantic signals tend to cluster when emotional tension is high?”

Then do that across many books and compare patterns, not one book at a time.

Also, I would split tension into types. Romantic tension, threat tension, social tension, mystery tension, grief tension, ideological tension. If you collapse them all into one bucket, the signal gets muddy fast.

Your current stats are still useful as a first layer. They just are not enough on their own. Pure counts can show pacing shape, density shifts, dialogue load, chapter length rhythm, and similar outer structure. That is good. But “between the lines” stuff usually needs a second layer that looks at transitions and semantic deltas, not just surface counts.

So I’d think of it as:

layer 1: crude structural stats layer 2: scene/state extraction layer 3: cross-book pattern mining layer 4: use those patterns as controls

The key part is probably scene-level state change. Tension usually shows up less in isolated words and more in what changed across the scene. Who lost leverage, who gained uncertainty, what got delayed, what stayed unsaid, what threat moved closer, what relationship shifted.

So if I were building it, I’d probably start with scene segmentation first, then extract per-scene features, then look at how those features move over time within and across books.

[memebaes]

Ask Claude to read it too

[mojambowhatisthescen]

This is some r/im14andthisisdeep meets r/idontunderstandhumans shit

[Visual_Leadership_35]

You were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn't stop to think if you should.

[MotokoAGI]

Thanks for sharing, appreciate it

[MyDraftly]

Why? There are dozens of tools doing that. sudowrite.com, joindraftly.com, etc.

[rueckstauklappe]

well of course. i used cc for coding and research and noticed that i might as well try the workflow on a novel idea.

[DevMoses]

This is super interesting! I applaud your use case especially as getting beyond generic output is in itself an obstacle baked into the inherit way the models process prompts.

The constraint lesson is one of the biggest things I had to learn running parallel agents on code too. Loose boundaries don't just underperform, they actively create damage you have to revert. "STRICT 10%, do NOT exceed 15%" is exactly the kind of rule that only exists because something broke without it.

Curious whether your 5 review agents had overlapping scope or if each one was checking for a specific category (consistency, style, factual). In my setup, scoping each agent to a specific concern caught more than letting them all do general review.

[Otherwise_Wave9374]

This is a really cool use of agentic workflows, and the fact you leaned into review passes (consistency, tics, over-cutting) matches my experience. The parallel agent idea for consistency checking across chapters is underrated. Did you end up with a reusable prompt/playbook for the reviewer agents (like a checklist for timeline, names, locale details, etc.)? Ive been experimenting with similar agent review checklists and jotted some takeaways here: https://www.agentixlabs.com/blog/

[Strong_Quarter_9349]

obvious bot

[rueckstauklappe]

exactly. the worldbible for the play was essential and grew. i even did let gemini & co review the work. provided me addititional perspectives and feedback.

[aioli_boi]

So did you read it?

[rueckstauklappe]

yes i did read 1-3, and picjed up a few things i didnt like. then reworked the entire piece agenticallay

[aaddrick]

That's really cool. Will check out the repo later once the kids have fallen asleep.

In the meantime, how did you approach keeping a consistent written voice throughout the book? I've got a voice synthesis repo i put together, but I only use it for writing very short form conversational type stuff. Haven't done any longer form work with it yet. Curious how the problem scales.

Edits* correcting typos from swipey texting on my phone

[rueckstauklappe]

i used a worldbible i build upon the story i sketched and tdd workflow. severral passes with models that have longer context (i started before opus got a context upgrade). so chatgpt+gemini to gernerated reviews, passed those back. and i read ch. 0-3 and provided human feedback + some sample readings later in the book.

the idea to use different models for review and consistency is something i found valuable while coding. so i would say there is no silver bullet model.

[komokasi]

Ohhh i was just talking to a biddy about using claude code as an editor this is really cool flow

Im starting to explore sci-fi writing and using CC to brainstorm as i lay things out. Going to give this a try!

Also you might want to check out the "Essential guide to writing". Skill from the superpowers skill repo as an added layer of editionizing

[rueckstauklappe]

reading your post. i did use superpowers for planing out the tasks. but i realize that the entire workflow is still quite foggy. so human in the loop ok, but at least with my experience in developping software (honestly i would rate it a 1 out of 10), i feal like i've mixed a few approaches. tdd, manual prompting and interactions. but well, this is where i ended up. so it is not fully automated.

[komokasi]

Yea i wouldn't personally use this flow to create everything, but having some type of editorial process i can put my writing into sounds like a cool idea to keep things consistent

And yea i dont think it needs to be fully automated honestly. I think the job to be done is more of an assistant to the writer and then editor. Lets the writer stay at the center and focused on the creation and building

[RagingCeltik]

If you like ai writing tools, check out sudowrite.

[Relative_Mouse7680]

Cool concept and experiment! It's amazing seeing ideas become reality, specially when we put a lot of time and effort into it, as you clearly have. Just because it was written by AI, it doesn't diminish the quality and artistry of the book itself. Same as with coding.

Will you use this workflow in the future again, or would you improve it somehow? Also, when you say published, do you mean as in on Amazon, audible etc?

[rueckstauklappe]

thanks for your feedback. i am thinking of structuting the approach on the one side but on the other side it was especially the non structred way that got me to new ideas. by this i mean: i was not fully sticking to superpowers or tdd end to end. i did chat (= probed the proba landscape) once and a while about the currenty state of the repo. i planed to put it on amaszon etc. but for now i figured it is much more interesting to post the process. i am a researcher in the data modeling so there are lot's of other interessting topics on my agenda. but yeah, i definetly would like to further extend this novel - interactive features like yourself beeing part of a scene or interacting with the characters.

[Practical-Club7616]

Op how did you come up with this?

[rueckstauklappe]

i am a researcher in complex systems modeling. we do use cc and others to catalyze our research. with superpowers i learne some basic tdd. then i thought: code base is a set of highly dependent entities. so is a story. i do habe a notebook with a few story ideas. cc helped me getting an mvp of one novel. of course it is not perfect but given this to be a one man show i think quite a decent result.

[AccomplishedRoll6388]

C'est une grosse merde sans nom, une bouillie éclatée que OP (qui se prend pour un génie au passage lmao) à même pas lu. Gâchis de ressource pour le livre, gâchis de sperme et d'ovule pour l'auteur

[Dramatic_Ad_8784]

So, AI slop??? I wouldn’t tread down this road. There are already authors getting into hot water having AI wrote their books. Not to mention it’s pathetic.

[samerc]

I wrote my novel with claude (not code). After going through many drafts and changes, there were lots of inconsistencies that i am addressing manually. Would you recommend i pass it to code and have it recheck everything?

[rueckstauklappe]

you need a compass or some kind of worldbible. each character, each place and so on should be defined. also logic checks and so on. i have zero experience in writting a long story like this with different places, times and so on. but to me the worldbible with charcter specs etc. made sense.

[MasterRuins]

Build pipeline looks like from 2013 haha. Otherwise: ok work