# Adventure Storyteller Planning Package

**Status:** Phase 0 complete; architecture selected; **Milestone M1 implemented and accepted (2026-09-02)**.  
**Production coding:** Underway, milestone by milestone. M1 is done; M2 is the next milestone to brief.

This package contains the current product requirements, final Phase 0 architecture decisions, detailed subsystem designs, acceptance tests, research evidence, and the production milestone plan for the local-only interactive-story project.

## Current Decision

Phase 0A static research and Phase 0B local validation are complete.

The production starting point is:

> **Fork AI-DnD at upstream commit `d72f7c1bda0f34fccd84afb7a25c34eb01c901de`.**

The selection is based on measured Phase 0B behavior, not feature count. AI-DnD already contains the highest-value structural machinery: browser UI, FastAPI service boundary, SQLite persistence, parent-linked story history, alternate takes, branch-aware state snapshots, local Ollama operation, branch-scoped memory, prompt/context inspection, streaming, export/import, and a substantial automated test suite.

The selected composition of ideas is:

```text
AI-DnD production base
  + ai-adventure state/event/commit/checkpoint/privacy patterns
  + Open Dungeon story-reading and future-media UX patterns
  + Chronicler memory-authority concepts
  + Interactive Fiction Framework canon/validation concepts
  + Gamentic provider-neutral media concepts
```

This is **not** a repository merge. AI-DnD is the ownership center. Other projects are implementation references only unless a later milestone explicitly reimplements a compatible idea.

## Phase 0B Findings That Changed the Plan

Phase 0B confirmed the fork choice while correcting several Phase 0A assumptions:

- AI-DnD's shipped Undo was destructive and had no Redo.
- A disposable spike proved non-destructive head-cursor Undo/Redo in three backend files while preserving branch-scoped memory isolation.
- A new continuation written after Undo can fork from the moved-back head while retaining the abandoned future.
- AI-DnD's current relative-delta world-state protocol can produce semantically wrong state under realistic context even when the proposal is syntactically valid.
- Production narrative state will therefore use explicit typed events/absolute assignments inspired by ai-adventure rather than AI-DnD's relative-delta protocol.
- AI-DnD requires offline hardening: `tiktoken` attempts a first-use CDN fetch and the SPA requests Google Fonts at runtime.
- AI-DnD's export format must preserve the active head position; otherwise export/import can silently redo an undone story.
- AI-DnD Story Cards are not a sufficient imported-knowledge store because they are not designed for the required classification, provenance, chunking, and lineage semantics.
- Open Dungeon remains useful for UX/media ideas but is no longer a serious production-fork candidate.
- ai-adventure is not the production base but is the strongest implementation reference for authoritative typed state events, head movement, checkpoints, replay, and narrow local-only behavior.

See `PHASE-0B-RECOMMENDATION.md` for the coding agent's evidence. That report is retained as research evidence; the planning documents in this package record the decisions made after reviewing it.

## Document Authority

Use the documents in this order when requirements appear to conflict:

1. `SPECIFICATION.md` — product requirements and required behavior.
2. Detailed behavior/design documents:
   - `STORY-BRANCH-SEMANTICS.md`
   - `CONTEXT-AND-MEMORY.md`
   - `IMPORTED-KNOWLEDGE-DESIGN.md`
   - `SECURITY-THREAT-MODEL.md`
   - `MEDIA-EXTENSION-CONTRACT.md`
   - `BROWSER-UX-SPEC.md`
   - `DATA-MODEL.md`
3. `V1-ACCEPTANCE-TESTS.md` — observable pass/fail contract.
4. `TECHNICAL-DESIGN.md` — selected implementation architecture.
5. Foundational ADRs (`001-...md` through the current ADR set).
6. `BUILD-MILESTONES.md` — implementation sequence; it does not override product behavior.
7. Phase 0 research reports — evidence and historical findings.

Candidate repositories and research reports are **not** specifications. In particular, ai-adventure is an implementation reference for selected patterns; its behavior does not override this package.

## Foundational Decisions

The following are settled for v1:

- browser-first UI,
- local-only runtime across user-controlled local infrastructure,
- Ollama inference with same-host loopback as default and explicitly configured trusted-LAN inference supported,
- single-user deployment,
- AI-DnD production base at the pinned Phase 0B commit,
- application-owned authoritative state,
- complete retained transcript/history,
- simple user-facing Undo/Redo/Retry/Save Point semantics,
- non-destructive head-cursor history internally,
- new write after moving backward creates a new continuation while retaining the old future,
- abandoned history is retained and marked disposable; **no automatic cleanup is required in v1**,
- named checkpoints remain until explicitly deleted,
- genre-agnostic core state,
- explicit typed narrative-state events/absolute assignments rather than ambiguous relative deltas,
- hybrid state model: validated events plus state snapshots/cache,
- branch/lineage-safe summaries and memories,
- imported knowledge is a separate first-class subsystem rather than an extension of AI-DnD Story Cards,
- knowledge classes: Canon / Reference / Inspiration,
- local lexical retrieval plus local semantic retrieval where practical,
- prompt/context provenance and inspection,
- export/import must preserve active branch **and active head position**, including an undone position,
- no cloud/Internet inference, telemetry, automatic web retrieval, remote runtime assets, shell/MCP/general plugin execution,
- LAN inference is distinct from LAN exposure of the storyteller UI/API; the latter is not required for v1,
- future local image/video/audio/TTS/STT support remains optional and decoupled from the story engine.

## Phase 0 Status

### Complete

- candidate discovery and triage,
- static architecture/privacy/licensing review,
- local clone/build/test validation,
- real Ollama testing,
- offline/network observation,
- AI-DnD strip-down/entanglement checks,
- Open Dungeon history-retrofit analysis,
- ai-adventure Ollama/service-boundary checks,
- AI-DnD non-destructive Undo/Redo spike,
- referee/state-protocol follow-up,
- export/import head-position follow-up,
- Story Card lineage review,
- Postgres removability review,
- production fork decision,
- production architecture decision.

### Deferred to implementation/release validation

These do not block the architecture decision:

- comparative recommendation of narrator/state models for real users,
- multi-hour/100-turn long-run behavior,
- detailed concurrency behavior beyond the single-user turn lock,
- actual future image/video/TTS/STT provider integration,
- abandoned-history cleanup UI/policy (not required in v1).

## Recommended Reading Order for the Next Implementation Stage

Do not convert this into a coding prompt until the package review is approved.

When implementation planning resumes, read:

1. `SPECIFICATION.md`
2. `TECHNICAL-DESIGN.md`
3. `BUILD-MILESTONES.md`
4. `STORY-BRANCH-SEMANTICS.md`
5. `DATA-MODEL.md`
6. `CONTEXT-AND-MEMORY.md`
7. `IMPORTED-KNOWLEDGE-DESIGN.md`
8. `SECURITY-THREAT-MODEL.md`
9. `BROWSER-UX-SPEC.md`
10. `V1-ACCEPTANCE-TESTS.md`
11. ADRs, especially the production-base and narrative-state-event decisions
12. Phase 0B reports only as supporting evidence

## Workflow From Here

```text
Phase 0 research and spikes         COMPLETE
        |
        v
Architecture/fork decision         COMPLETE
        |
        v
Planning package revision          COMPLETE
        |
        v
Approve planning package           COMPLETE
        |
        v
Milestone M1                       COMPLETE (2026-09-02)
  fork + offline baseline          see planning/reports/M1-*.md
        |
        v
Milestone M2                       NEXT — brief not yet prepared
        |
        v
Implement and review milestone-by-milestone
```

## Stop Rule

**One milestone at a time. Do not begin a milestone before its brief exists.**

M1 is complete and accepted; its evidence is in `reports/M1-BASELINE-REPORT.md`
and `reports/M1-IMPLEMENTATION-REPORT.md`. **No M2 brief has been prepared.**
The current action is to review the post-M1 planning corrections below before
writing one.

### Post-M1 corrections applied (2026-09-02)

Implementation evidence contradicted or under-specified six places in this
package, and a seventh was added on review. All seven are now corrected:

| Document | Correction |
| --- | --- |
| `DECISIONS/002-ollama-only-v1.md` | New section: a trusted-LAN Ollama may be HTTPS with a private CA; verify against the OS trust store; full certificate and hostname checking; no bypass option. |
| `DECISIONS/004-local-only-production.md` | New *Testing Consequence*: offline tests need a fresh cache and no route out. Vendored runtime artifacts should be integrity-verifiable. |
| `V1-ACCEPTANCE-TESTS.md` A05 | Pass conditions reworded around *accepted* history; explicit note that the user's submitted text is deliberately retained. |
| `V1-ACCEPTANCE-TESTS.md` A06 | Now requires a real second machine and an HTTPS endpoint with a locally issued certificate; a plain-HTTP LAN test is no longer sufficient evidence. |
| `V1-ACCEPTANCE-TESTS.md` §3 | Record CPU/GPU/RAM: cold model load on a CPU-only host exceeded the inherited 120 s timeout. |
| `BUILD-MILESTONES.md` | M1 marked COMPLETE with the capabilities it delivered; M2's endpoint-policy line reframed from inventing trusted-LAN support to narrowing it. |
| `TECHNICAL-DESIGN.md` §5 | Runtime boundary restated: the storyteller is loopback-only, inference may be same-host *or* trusted-LAN, and the two are independent. Adds the TLS/private-CA rule. |