# Candidate Inventory and Triage

**Historical status:** Phase 0A triage. The final production disposition was selected after Phase 0B; see ADR 009.

**Phase:** 0A — Static research  
**Date:** 2026-09-01

## Executive result

Three projects should advance to local validation:

1. **AI-DnD** — strongest implementation of the hardest required backend capabilities.
2. **Open Dungeon** — strongest direct product/UX fit and strongest near-term media path.
3. **CaoRuiming/ai-adventure (Local Adventure Engine)** — strongest authoritative-state, replay, checkpoint, and privacy architecture.

Everything else should remain available as a design/source reference but should not consume local build-validation effort unless one of the three finalists fails.

## Triage table

| Project | Browser-first | Ollama | Durable branch/rollback | Long memory | Local knowledge | Future media | Static disposition |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI-DnD | Yes | Yes | **Strong** | **Strong** | Story cards + memory | Not core | **Finalist #1** |
| Open Dungeon | **Yes** | **Yes** | Weak / destructive linear tail today | Summary-based | Limited | **Strong; local image generation already present** | **Finalist #2** |
| ai-adventure | No; CLI | LM Studio today | **Strong** | Summary + lore FTS | **Strong deterministic local lore** | No | **Finalist #3** |
| Chronicler | Yes | Yes | Not the focus | **Excellent memory model** | Memory-centric | No | Reference |
| Gamentic | **Yes** | llama.cpp/OpenAI-compatible | Game-state oriented | Strong | World bible | **Excellent image/voice provider design** | Reference |
| Interactive Fiction Framework | **Yes** | **Yes** | Not established as required story-tree model | Canon/scene/character memory | Story Bible | Not core | Reference |
| Sonder Engine | **Yes** | **Yes** | Persistent variants/checkpoints, but much more agentic | **Very sophisticated** | Character-scoped retrieval | Not primary | Reference |
| Corvus Story Core | **Yes** | OpenAI-compatible | No equivalent branch tree established | Summaries + state | World/state | ComfyUI + TTS | Reference |
| aiMultiFool | No; terminal | **Yes** | Rewind, not target architecture | Vector chat | RAG-oriented | No | Reference only |
| SillyTavern | **Yes** | Local backends | Chat-oriented | Extensions/lorebooks | **Excellent lorebook UX** | Broad extensions | Reference only |
| RisuAI | **Yes** | Local/remote ecosystem | Chat-oriented | Hypa/SupaMemory | Lorebooks | Broad media | Reference only |
| KoboldAI | **Yes** | Local ecosystem | Traditional save/load | Memory/World Info | World Info | Limited | Reference only |

## Why the shortlist is only three

### AI-DnD advances because
It already implements the expensive correctness work: a parent/lineage story tree, alternate takes, non-destructive retry, state snapshots and rollback, branch-aware context, summaries, embedding retrieval, story cards, exact prompt inspection, export/import of the complete tree, and a substantial automated test suite.

### Open Dungeon advances because
It is almost exactly the desired product shape: browser-first, simple interactive fiction, Ollama, local SQLite, streaming narration, visual character continuity, and local image-generation hooks. Its key weakness is architectural rather than cosmetic: its current message schema is linear and its retry/erase operation deletes the selected message and the rest of the tail.

### ai-adventure advances because
Its core philosophy most closely matches the required trust model. SQLite and typed events are authoritative; the model proposes changes; validation occurs before atomic commit; undo/checkpoint/restore/branch work by replaying parent-linked history; lore is local; and the privacy documentation explicitly minimizes network and executable-extension surfaces.

## Projects eliminated from fork contention

### Chronicler
Excellent source for memory semantics, but the application is centered on long-running roleplay and YantrikDB cognitive memory rather than the simpler interactive-story product. Its memory-tier design should be borrowed conceptually.

### Gamentic
Technically impressive and very useful for future media design, but it is intentionally a multi-agent RPG with image and voice infrastructure, tuned around a heavier local stack. Forking it would mean removing more game/agent behavior than necessary.

### Interactive Fiction Framework
Its Story Bible, validation, and application-owned-state design are highly relevant. However, it is oriented toward contributor-authored, schema-driven stories and planner-approved choices rather than the unrestricted natural-language story continuation and branch history required here.

### Sonder Engine
Strong engineering, but its core differentiator is separate fictional minds with strict perception/knowledge boundaries and a multi-stage agent pipeline. That is substantially more complexity than v1 requires.

### Corvus Story Core
Useful image/TTS and state-extraction reference, but its persistence is JSON/JSONL-oriented and the static review did not establish the required non-destructive branch/checkpoint model.

### aiMultiFool
Useful local vector-memory ideas, but it is a terminal character-roleplay application, its context-pruning approach is not the desired immutable-history architecture, and GPL-3.0 complicates direct code reuse into a permissively licensed fork.

## Sources

See `SOURCE-INDEX.md` for repository/source links.