How StoryWeaver works

🚀 Getting started

Guests can read stories, follow branches, and use shared AI keys. Logged-in contributors can also edit their own pages and manage their own API keys.

Use 📚 Stories to return to the main list. Use ❓ Help any time you need a refresher on features or roles.

To begin, click Begin New Story. You can start manually, provide an optional Story Opening, add optional Story Guidelines, choose separate text and image AI models, mark a logged-in story private, and opt into automatic pictures when image generation is available.

On the story list, use the sort controls beside Stories to reorder cards by creation date, update date, title, author, or page count, with ascending or descending order.

Admins can also post a rich-text homepage News and Announcements panel above the story list for site news, events, or maintenance notes. The Archive button moves the current post into Past Announcements, clears the homepage post, and keeps the archive available to visitors from the News header.

📚 Story flow

Each story starts with a root page. Every later page belongs to the same story and records the choice that led there.

• Choice links open an existing child page.
• Pending choices do not have a child page yet, so following them creates the next page.
• Custom actions let you type your own next move in an AI-dungeon-style flow instead of choosing one of the listed options.
• Edit opens the rich-text editor for pages you are allowed to change.
• Story Settings on a root page keeps Title, Guidelines, Access, Theme, and Delete controls together at the bottom of the page.
• Access lets the story owner or an admin make a story private and share read/play access with exact usernames. Admins always retain access.
• Delete lets the story owner or an admin permanently delete the whole story, including all pages and generated images.
• Past Announcements is a public, hidden-from-list story arranged newest first. Visitors can read it; admins can edit and illustrate it like a normal story.
• Latest Page lets admins jump straight to the newest page in a story from the story list or while viewing that story.
• Mixed play means one story can freely combine tap-to-choose branches, typed actions, AI continuation, and hand-written scenes.

✨ AI tools

Story Opening is optional user-written text that becomes the first part of the root page. Story Guidelines are story-wide notes stored on the first page and carried forward into future AI continuation prompts so tone, premise, and constraints remain consistent.

• Generate with AI creates the next page and three choices when a text model is available.
• Preview Prompts shows the exact system prompt, story context, and image prompt that would be sent.
• Regenerate Story creates a candidate replacement for the current page and its unlinked choices, then lets you compare the old and new versions before deciding.
• Generate Image and Regenerate Image create illustrations for the current page. Image regeneration lets you compare versions side by side.
• Auto Pictures starts the normal image-generation flow after AI text and choices finish and the new page has loaded. The image dropdown beside Generate/Regenerate Image can turn this on or off for the story.
• Abort appears on long-running generation overlays so you can cancel if a provider stalls instead of waiting for the full timeout.
• Regeneration guidance lets you add optional steering text when regenerating story text or images. Image-gen Guidance in the image dropdown saves reusable image prompt guidance until toggled off.

🔑 Settings & AI controls

Open ⚙️ Settings to manage AI providers, prompt/schema controls, and your account.

• API Keys store provider, base URL, text model, image model, scope, and an optional fallback key.
• Fetch Models asks the configured provider for available models and fills the dropdowns.
• Edit lets you rename a key and change its settings without revealing the stored secret.
• Default Public API Key lets admins choose which shared All-scoped key guests and other users get by default when more than one shared key is active.
• AI lets each logged-in user edit their story system prompt text plus controls like temperature, top P, and max output tokens.
• Shared JSON Schema is appended separately to story-generation prompts. Admins can edit it, and can optionally extend that permission to editors and/or contributors.
• Reset to Defaults restores your AI settings, and for authorized schema editors can also restore the default shared schema.
• Profile updates your username and email.
• Password changes your login password.

Registered users are encouraged to bring their own AI API key. Keep it scoped to Self for private use, or switch it to All if you want to support the site by sharing it with everyone.

🛡️ Moderation, concerns, and quarantine

Any reader can flag a page for concern. Editors and admins can review those flags, move content to quarantine, restore it, or delete it.

• Concern Queue lists flagged pages awaiting review.
• Quarantine hides content from public browsing while keeping it available to authorized users.
• Authorized access includes editors/admins and the story owner, so quarantined work can still be continued and repaired.

🎨 Themes and visual style

StoryWeaver ships with multiple built-in themes. Admins can change the site-wide theme from the Admin dashboard, and story owners can set a per-story theme from the root page.

The active site theme affects application chrome and standard story styling. A per-story theme only changes that story’s pages.

👥 Roles

• Guest / Viewer — read and continue stories using shared AI keys.
• Contributor — edit your own pages and manage your own API keys.
• Editor — edit any page, rename stories, review concerns, and manage quarantine.
• Admin — manage users, site themes, all keys, prompt preview, the shared JSON schema, story access, story deletion, and story renaming.