The canon

A body of work that runs for years grows a world: the people in it, the places they go back to, what happened to them, and the channel itself — its marks, its palette, its voice, the words it never uses. The canon keeps that world as cards, and what a card knows as facts: one short statement each, with who may hear it, whether it is settled, where it came from and when it happened in the world.

A card is a note of a kind the profile gives sections — in the Studio profile a channel, characters, locations, objects, groups, events, themes and lore. Notes of those kinds live here rather than on the Notes screen; the note itself is still there, as the card’s free text. A craft whose profile names no kind of card has no canon and no Canon screen. The kinds and their sections are words of the craft, in the profile document.

The Canon screen

Canon in the menu opens every card: the list on the left, grouped by kind — the channel first, the heroes of single works last — the open card in the middle, its pictures and relations on the right.

The search finds a card by its name, its other names and its facts.
The chips narrow the list to cards holding settled facts, drafts to settle, or live zones. A card with drafts shows how many beside its name.
New card asks for a kind and a name; a card can live at one work — a hero of one song — from the start.

A card

Along the top: the card’s face (its newest portrait, or its initial), its name, its other names — the forms the texts use, comma separated, which is how kilna finds where it appears — and who may know it exists: known to all, internal only, or only in the works. The chips below jump to one section; All reads the whole card.

Every section is a list. + fact opens the editor: the statement, the layer, the state, the source, and when it happened. Ctrl+Enter saves, Esc leaves.

Layers

Every fact has one of three layers, marked A, B and C beside it:

A — public. Said anywhere: a cover, a release’s text, a reply.
B — internal. The works take the detail, never the name, the date or the address. “Lives above a bakery” goes into a verse; which bakery never does.
C — only in the works. Never said outside them; asked directly, the answer is the formula the channel uses.

A card has a layer too: a card that is internal does not exist for a cover or a public text, whatever its facts say.

States

Canon — settled.
Open — a live zone, left open on purpose: the next song is meant to settle it. The works read it; a cover does not.
Draft — proposed and not settled yet. Everything the assistant proposes arrives as a draft; Make it canon settles it.
Retired — no longer true. Retiring asks why, and the fact is kept crossed out with its reason, so the next picture or text does not bring it back. Bring back into the canon undoes it.

Source and time

A fact can cite a work and the line it was read off (the source links to the work), a decision, or a document. A fact can be marked as holding for one work only — an outfit for a single release.

When in the world is written as told — winter 2022/23, the summer before the flood — and kilna places it on the timeline from the words when it can: a year, a month, a season, a day. When it cannot, or places it wrong, type the place yourself as YYYY, YYYY-MM or YYYY-MM-DD.

Timeline, at the top of the screen, lays every dated fact of every card out in the order it happened, year by year, each under the card it is a fact of; the lens dims it the way it dims a card. Click a name to open the card.

Sections of other shapes

Most sections hold statements. Some hold more than words, which is what lets the channel be a card like the others:

Slots — a caption’s slot and its words; a template’s parts.
Details — a signature detail: its name, an English template for a picture generator, where it acts (covers, frames, scenes) and whether it is on by default. [[card:id]] in a template brings in that card’s description.
Palette — a colour and what it is for.
Marks — a variant of the mark: its code, what it means, its description for a generator.
House styles — bricks of the style dictionary.

The channel card lays these out as a board of panels rather than one column.

Relations and where it appears

Draw a relation joins two cards: a kind from the profile (family, neighbour, member, place…), a word for each side — neighbour one way, neighbour and first listener the other — and a layer of its own. A relation is one line between two cards; it shows on both, from each side.

Where it appears is counted, never typed: the works it is the hero of, the scenes that point at it, the texts that name it or one of its other names as a whole word, the covers that picture it, the works its facts cite. A hero of one work seen in three says it may belong to the whole channel; Raise to the channel lets it go of the work.

Pictures and the description

Paste a picture (Ctrl+V) or drop one onto the side panel. Each has a role — portrait, reference, outfit, mood, still, mark — and the newest portrait is the card’s face.

A picture generator does not know who the card is; it needs the card in words, the same words every time. The box For the generator holds that description, in English, under the section it is written from — a character’s looks. Describe asks the assistant to write it from the settled public facts of those sections and the reference pictures; you can also write it by hand. When one of those facts changes, the box says the description is stale. A scene or a template naming a card is given its description, never its name.

Through the eyes of a task

The switch at the top — Everything, Cover, The work, Public text — shows the card as that task sees it, dimming what it may not read:

The work — a lyric, a chapter, a script — reads every fact that is not retired, drafts and live zones included.
A cover reads only settled, public facts of a public card, in the sections the profile gave covers — a character’s looks, outfits, symbols and bans in the Studio profile.
A public text — a release’s text, a reply to a comment — reads only settled, public facts in the sections given to it. A card that publicly does not exist is not seen at all.

It is one rule, and everything reads through it: this screen, the assistant’s actions and an agent over MCP. A draft of a reply to a comment is given the canon a public text may see, and nothing more; a release’s fields read it the same way ({canon:public} in the profile document). Show what a task receives opens the very text the assistant is handed for the card through the lens chosen.

The assistant proposes

The assistant never writes the canon. It proposes, and you keep what you want:

On a song — Gather facts into the canon reads the text and proposes the cards, facts and relations it adds, each fact citing the song and the line it was read off.
On a selection — select lines in a version’s text and press To the canon in the version’s tools: the facts come back with that version and those lines as their source.
On a card — Gather facts from the note, in the card’s menu, turns its free note into facts under its sections; Describe for the generator, under the description, writes the description.

A proposal lists every item under a box: new cards, facts on cards old or new, sharper wordings of facts already there, facts to retire with the reason, relations. A fact that contradicts one the card already holds shows both, side by side, before anything is written. Keep all, or untick what you do not want and keep the rest. Waiting proposals for a card show in its side panel with Review.

An agent outside the window reads the canon through the canon tool and proposes through propose_canon; its proposals land in the same review. See the MCP server.

Undo, history and the trash

Every change to the canon is in the history and undone one at a time: a fact added, reworded, moved, retired; a relation drawn or changed; a picture’s role. Deleting a card sends it to the trash with its facts, relations and pictures; restoring it brings them back. A relation to a card that is itself in the trash waits there and comes back with it.