❓ Help

How StoryWeaver works

StoryWeaver is a flat-file fantasy storytelling app. Stories can be played in a mobile-friendly choose-your-own-adventure flow, continued AI-dungeon-style by typing custom actions, written fully by hand, or built from any mix of those approaches.

πŸš€ Getting started

Create an account, begin a story, and choose how much AI help you want.

πŸ“š Story flow

Understand roots, pages, choices, continuations, and custom actions.

✨ AI tools

Learn prompt preview, Scenario Essentials, regeneration, and images.

πŸ”‘ Settings & keys

Configure providers, models, fallbacks, and personal settings.

πŸ›‘οΈ Moderation

See how concerns, quarantine, approval, and roles work.

🎨 Themes

Apply site themes and story-specific themes for different moods.

🧰 Advanced help

Expand setup instructions for self-hosting the open-source app.

πŸš€ 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 πŸ“š 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, let AI generate the opening, or start with AI and then branch into manual or custom-action play whenever you like.

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. It starts expanded, then collapses automatically on later visits during the same browser session.

πŸ“š Story flow

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

✨ AI tools

Scenario Essentials are story-wide notes stored on the first page. They are carried forward into future AI continuation prompts so tone, premise, and constraints remain consistent.

πŸ”‘ Settings & AI controls

Open βš™οΈ Settings to manage AI providers, prompt/schema controls, and your account.

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.

πŸ›‘οΈ 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.

🎨 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.

πŸ‘₯ Roles

Advanced: install and self-host the open-source app

StoryWeaver runs as a flat-file PHP app. You do not need a database, build pipeline, or package manager.

  1. Clone the repository or upload the files to an Apache web host.
  2. Serve the storyweaver/ directory from a document root or subdirectory.
  3. Enable mod_rewrite and allow .htaccess overrides so private folders stay protected and extensionless URLs work.
  4. Make the storyweaver/ tree writable so the app can create users, stories, keys, and generated images.
  5. Visit the site and complete the first-run setup to create the initial admin account.
git clone https://github.com/ehewlett3/StoryWeaver.online.git cd StoryWeaver.online php -S localhost:8080

For Apache deployments, enable rewrite support and AllowOverride All. The built-in PHP server is convenient for local development, but it does not honor the private-directory .htaccess protections used in production.