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Add main/supporting characters, character arcs and open questions

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Three things the outline could not express before:

Main vs supporting. A new CharacterImportance sits alongside CharacterRole
rather than inside it — role is the part a character plays (protagonist,
mentor, foil), importance is how much of the book they carry, and a mentor can
be either. Characters start Supporting and get promoted. Listings put main
characters first.

Character arcs. A main character's arc is a flat ordered list of stages, the
same shape as a chapter's beats and for the same reason: an arc is a sequence
of changes, not a tree. A stage can be pinned to the chapter where it lands.
Nothing refuses an arc on a supporting character — demoting someone should not
delete their work.

Open questions. What the writer has not decided yet, hanging off a chapter
outline, a character, both, or neither. They can be resolved, reopened or
deleted, and resolving can append the decision to the notes of whatever the
question was attached to, so it lands where the writer will re-read it.
Resolved questions drop off the list unless asked for.

Also adds GET /api/characters/{id}/beats — every beat a character appears in,
in manuscript order, carrying each beat's chapter so the character page can
link straight into that chapter's outline.

Deletes are deliberately asymmetric: deleting a chapter unpins arc stages and
detaches questions rather than taking them, because a plan outlives a decision
about where the chapter break falls. Deleting a character or project does take
their arcs and questions.

All three capabilities are surfaced in the REST API, the agent toolset and the
MCP server, per the one-source-of-truth rule.

Two things worth flagging in the migration: EF's generated default for the new
Importance column was an empty string, which does not parse back to a
CharacterImportance and would have faulted every read of an existing dossier —
it now defaults to Supporting, verified by migrating a database seeded on the
old schema and reading the row back through the API. And the earlier migrations
were renamed to the namespace EF derives from the output folder, so future
`migrations add` runs stop drifting.

72 tests pass (28 new). The endpoints were also exercised over curl end to end:
arc stages resolving their chapter, a character's beats across chapters, and a
question attached to both a chapter and a character resolving into both sets of
notes.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01S56bfZMGe1hnhpWP4CjjNw
This commit is contained in:
James Wampler
2026-08-06 12:11:20 -07:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent 96021c5fee
commit 0358667679
34 changed files with 2638 additions and 13 deletions
Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files
src/Novelly.Api/Agent/NovelAgentToolset.cs
+165 -1
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@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@ using Novelly.Api.Chapters;
using Novelly.Api.Characters;
using Novelly.Api.Common;
using Novelly.Api.Projects;
using Novelly.Api.Questions;
using Novelly.Api.Scenes;
using Novelly.Api.Tags;
@@ -27,10 +28,12 @@ public record AgentTool(
public class NovelAgentToolset(
ProjectService projects,
CharacterService characters,
CharacterArcService arcs,
ChapterService chapters,
BeatService beats,
SceneService scenes,
TagService tags)
TagService tags,
OpenQuestionService questions)
{
private static readonly JsonSerializerOptions SerializerOptions = new()
{
@@ -123,6 +126,7 @@ public class NovelAgentToolset(
async (projectId, input, ct) => await characters.CreateAsync(projectId, new CreateCharacterRequest(
JsonInput.RequiredString(input, "name"),
JsonInput.Enum<CharacterRole>(input, "role") ?? CharacterRole.Supporting,
JsonInput.Enum<CharacterImportance>(input, "importance") ?? CharacterImportance.Supporting,
JsonInput.String(input, "age"),
JsonInput.String(input, "pronouns"),
JsonInput.String(input, "occupation"),
@@ -149,6 +153,7 @@ public class NovelAgentToolset(
new UpdateCharacterRequest(
JsonInput.String(input, "name"),
JsonInput.Enum<CharacterRole>(input, "role"),
JsonInput.Enum<CharacterImportance>(input, "importance"),
JsonInput.String(input, "age"),
JsonInput.String(input, "pronouns"),
JsonInput.String(input, "occupation"),
@@ -364,8 +369,162 @@ public class NovelAgentToolset(
JsonInput.String(input, "location"),
JsonInput.String(input, "prose"),
JsonInput.Enum<DraftStatus>(input, "status")), ct));
yield return new AgentTool(
"get_character_beats",
"Every beat this character appears in, across the whole book, in manuscript order. "
+ "Read this before revising a character — it is what they actually do on the page, "
+ "as opposed to what the dossier claims about them.",
new JsonSchemaBuilder()
.Str("character_id", "Id of the character.", required: true)
.Build(),
async (_, input, ct) => await beats.ListForCharacterAsync(
JsonInput.RequiredGuid(input, "character_id"), ct));
yield return new AgentTool(
"get_character_arc",
"Read a main character's arc: the ordered stages of how they change. Each stage may "
+ "be pinned to the chapter where it lands.",
new JsonSchemaBuilder()
.Str("character_id", "Id of the character.", required: true)
.Build(),
async (_, input, ct) => await arcs.ListAsync(
JsonInput.RequiredGuid(input, "character_id"), ct));
yield return new AgentTool(
"add_arc_stage",
"Add a stage to a character's arc. Arcs are for main characters — promote the "
+ "character first with update_character if they are still Supporting.",
ArcStageSchema()
.Str("character_id", "Id of the character whose arc to add to.", required: true)
.Str("title", "A short handle for the change, three to five words.", required: true)
.Build(),
async (_, input, ct) => await arcs.CreateAsync(
JsonInput.RequiredGuid(input, "character_id"),
new CreateArcStageRequest(
JsonInput.RequiredString(input, "title"),
JsonInput.Int(input, "sort_order"),
JsonInput.String(input, "description"),
JsonInput.Guid(input, "chapter_id")), ct));
yield return new AgentTool(
"update_arc_stage",
"Revise a stage of a character's arc. Only the fields you supply change.",
ArcStageSchema()
.Str("arc_stage_id", "Id of the arc stage to update.", required: true)
.Str("title", "New title for the stage.")
.Build(),
async (_, input, ct) => await arcs.UpdateAsync(
JsonInput.RequiredGuid(input, "arc_stage_id"),
new UpdateArcStageRequest(
JsonInput.String(input, "title"),
JsonInput.Int(input, "sort_order"),
JsonInput.String(input, "description"),
JsonInput.Guid(input, "chapter_id")), ct));
yield return new AgentTool(
"delete_arc_stage",
"Remove a stage from a character's arc.",
new JsonSchemaBuilder()
.Str("arc_stage_id", "Id of the arc stage to delete.", required: true)
.Build(),
async (_, input, ct) =>
{
await arcs.DeleteAsync(JsonInput.RequiredGuid(input, "arc_stage_id"), ct);
return new { deleted = true };
});
yield return new AgentTool(
"reorder_arc_stages",
"Renumber a character's arc to match the order given. Stages left out keep their "
+ "relative position after the ones listed.",
new JsonSchemaBuilder()
.Str("character_id", "Id of the character whose arc to reorder.", required: true)
.StringArray("stage_ids", "Arc stage ids in the order wanted.", required: true)
.Build(),
async (_, input, ct) => await arcs.ReorderAsync(
JsonInput.RequiredGuid(input, "character_id"),
new ReorderArcStagesRequest(
[.. JsonInput.Strings(input, "stage_ids")?.Select(Guid.Parse) ?? []]), ct));
yield return new AgentTool(
"list_open_questions",
"The decisions the writer has not made yet. Read this before proposing changes — an "
+ "open question is a place the writer is still thinking, not a gap to fill in for them.",
new JsonSchemaBuilder()
.Str("chapter_id", "Narrow to questions about one chapter outline.")
.Str("character_id", "Narrow to questions about one character.")
.Bool("include_resolved", "Include questions already settled. Defaults to false.")
.Build(),
async (projectId, input, ct) => await questions.ListAsync(
projectId,
JsonInput.Guid(input, "chapter_id"),
JsonInput.Guid(input, "character_id"),
JsonInput.Bool(input, "include_resolved") ?? false,
ct));
yield return new AgentTool(
"raise_open_question",
"Record a question the writer has not settled. Attach it to the chapter outline "
+ "and/or the character it is about. Prefer raising a question over guessing when "
+ "the writer has not decided something.",
new JsonSchemaBuilder()
.Str("question", "The question, in one line.", required: true)
.Str("detail", "The thinking around it — options, and what each costs.")
.Str("chapter_id", "The chapter outline this is about, if any.")
.Str("character_id", "The character this is about, if any.")
.Build(),
async (projectId, input, ct) => await questions.CreateAsync(
projectId,
new CreateOpenQuestionRequest(
JsonInput.RequiredString(input, "question"),
JsonInput.String(input, "detail"),
JsonInput.Guid(input, "chapter_id"),
JsonInput.Guid(input, "character_id")), ct));
yield return new AgentTool(
"resolve_open_question",
"Settle a question with what the writer decided. Set append_to_notes to also write "
+ "the resolution into the notes of the chapter and character it hangs off.",
new JsonSchemaBuilder()
.Str("question_id", "Id of the question to resolve.", required: true)
.Str("resolution", "What was decided.", required: true)
.Bool("append_to_notes", "Also append the resolution to the associated notes.")
.Build(),
async (_, input, ct) => await questions.ResolveAsync(
JsonInput.RequiredGuid(input, "question_id"),
new ResolveOpenQuestionRequest(
JsonInput.RequiredString(input, "resolution"),
JsonInput.Bool(input, "append_to_notes") ?? false), ct));
yield return new AgentTool(
"reopen_question",
"Put a resolved question back on the list. Anything already appended to notes stays.",
new JsonSchemaBuilder()
.Str("question_id", "Id of the question to reopen.", required: true)
.Build(),
async (_, input, ct) => await questions.ReopenAsync(
JsonInput.RequiredGuid(input, "question_id"), ct));
yield return new AgentTool(
"delete_open_question",
"Delete a question outright. Resolving is usually better — it keeps the decision.",
new JsonSchemaBuilder()
.Str("question_id", "Id of the question to delete.", required: true)
.Build(),
async (_, input, ct) =>
{
await questions.DeleteAsync(JsonInput.RequiredGuid(input, "question_id"), ct);
return new { deleted = true };
});
}
private static JsonSchemaBuilder ArcStageSchema() =>
new JsonSchemaBuilder()
.Int("sort_order", "Position in the arc. Appended to the end when omitted.")
.Str("description", "What shifts in the character here, and what it costs them.")
.Str("chapter_id", "The chapter where this stage lands, if it is pinned to one.");
private static JsonSchemaBuilder CharacterSchema(bool includeName, bool nameRequired)
{
var schema = new JsonSchemaBuilder();
@@ -377,6 +536,11 @@ public class NovelAgentToolset(
return schema
.Enum("role", "The part they play in the story.", System.Enum.GetNames<CharacterRole>())
.Enum(
"importance",
"How much of the book they carry. Main characters are the few the story is "
+ "about and are worth an arc; everyone else is Supporting.",
System.Enum.GetNames<CharacterImportance>())
.Str("age", "Age, exact or approximate.")
.Str("pronouns", "The pronouns this character uses.")
.Str("occupation", "What they do.")