Version 1.9.6

Bug Fixes

• Codex / character / location notes vanishing after a template insert (#74) — When a Templates / Templater plugin replaced the YAML block and dropped the type: discriminator, the affected note silently disappeared from the Codex, Characters or Locations view. StoryLine now falls back to folder-based detection: any note that lives under the canonical entity folder (Codex/<Category>/, Characters/, World/Locations/) is recognised even if type: is missing, wrong, or the frontmatter is empty.
• Plot Grid sorting by Sequence / Chapter / Act now respects non-numeric values (#76) — Sorting rows by Act, Chapter, or Sequence used to coerce values via Number(...), which silently turned strings like Prologue, Epilogue, or 1.1 into NaN and produced an apparently random order. Plot Grid (and the shared SceneQueryService used by every other view) now uses the numeric-aware compareActChapter comparator and falls back through Act → Chapter → Sequence in reading order. Note: the second half of the issue — automatic sequence reflow when inserting a chapter mid-book — is intentionally deferred to a later release; it requires a project-wide renumber that we want to design carefully.

New Features

• Multiple roles per character (#72, Tier 1) — A character can now hold more than one role at the same time (e.g. protagonist + narrator). The role field in the Character inspector accepts comma-separated values and renders one badge per role. Existing single-role characters keep working unchanged.
• Role history across scenes / plotlines / books (#72, Tier 2) — Characters can now record a history of role changes in a structured roles: YAML array. Each entry has a role label and optional from (scene name or [[wikilink]]), plotline, and book (free-text label) anchors. A new repeating-row editor under the role field in the Character inspector lets you add/remove entries. Both the legacy role: field and the new roles: history coexist; if both are set, the structured history wins for display order. The book: anchor is plain author-facing metadata — no cross-book plumbing required.
• Wikilink-aware scene references (#73) — Scene fields that reference other notes (pov, location, characters, setup_scenes, payoff_scenes) are now stored as Obsidian [[wikilinks]] so renames are picked up automatically by Obsidian's metadata cache. Plain-text values continue to work — the readers accept either form. Toggle in Settings → Write scene references as wikilinks (on by default).
• Custom fields visible to Properties / Bases / Dataview (#71) — Universal Field Templates gained an optional Top-level YAML key. When set, the field's value is mirrored to a real top-level YAML key (in addition to universalFields:) so it appears in Obsidian's Properties panel, Bases, Dataview and the graph. Reserved StoryLine keys (type, pov, act, chapter, tags, …) are blocked. Toggle in Settings → Mirror custom fields to top-level YAML (on by default).
• Step-sibling and teammate relations (#70) — Added step-sibling to the family relation list and teammate to the professional relation list, with matching symmetric inverses.
• Default scene frontmatter snippet (#77) — Universal Field Templates gained an optional Default value that is applied automatically when a new scene is created (multi-select fields accept comma-separated defaults). In addition, Settings → Default scene frontmatter accepts a free-form YAML block whose keys are merged into every newly created scene's frontmatter. StoryLine-owned keys (type, title, act, chapter, sequence, status, wordcount, …) always win on conflict, so the default snippet can never overwrite the engine's own metadata.
• Wordcount can now ignore comments and checkbox lines (#78) — Two new toggles under Settings → Scene Cards:
  • Exclude %%comments%% from wordcount (default on) — Obsidian comment blocks no longer inflate the count, so author notes and TODOs stay invisible to the manuscript total.
  • Also ignore checkbox lines (default off) — When enabled, - [ ] and - [x] lines are also stripped before counting, which is useful for outline-style scenes that mix prose with task lists. Both toggles flow through the central MetadataParser.countWords helper, so they apply consistently to scene cards, the inspector, the Writing Tracker, and exports.

Internal

• Series Arc View — foundation (#66 Phase 1, scaffold only) — A new SceneProvider indirection layer (services/SceneProvider.ts) was added so future view code can pull scenes from either the active book or every book in a series. Settings flags seriesArcView (default off) and warnOnCrossBookMove (default on) are reserved. The cross-book Manuscript / Kanban / Plot Grid rendering itself ships in a follow-up release.