Series & saga metadata

A series groups multiple projects under one banner. The saga metadata fields tell the AI what shape it's working inside, a 14-book Wheel-of-Time saga has a different context shape than a tight 3-book trilogy.

Series shape

One of:

  • Standalone series, one book that may grow.
  • Duology, two books.
  • Trilogy, three books.
  • Quartet, four books.
  • Pentalogy, five books.
  • Planned saga, known fixed length, 5+ books.
  • Open saga, ongoing, no fixed end (Wheel of Time, Discworld).
  • Serialized, episodic; each book stands alone (Bosch, Reacher).

POV strategy

  • Single POV, same protagonist throughout.
  • Rotating POV, structured rotation (GoT, Stormlight Archive).
  • Multi-POV, many POVs, freely interleaved.
  • One per book, new protagonist each book.
  • Ensemble, group of equals; no clear lead.

Continuity contract

  • Cliffhanger, each book ends mid-arc; read in order.
  • Arc-complete, each book wraps its own arc, larger arc continues.
  • Standalone, any book reads independently.
  • Episodic, shared world, episodic plots.

Audience ladder

  • Middle grade
  • Young adult
  • New adult
  • Adult
  • Middle grade aging up to YA (Harry Potter pattern)
  • YA aging up to adult

The other fields

  • Planned book count, number of books you intend to write. Optional but useful for sagas.
  • Time span, free-text in-universe time the series covers (“30 years across the saga”, “a single summer per book”).
  • Thematic argument, one sentence: what the saga is arguing about the world.
  • Logline + elevator pitch + 1 / 3-page synopses , same shape as the project-level fields, but for the saga as a whole.
  • Pen name, series-level byline that cascades onto child projects unless they pick their own.

How the AI uses it

Every AI action inside a project that belongs to a series can inject series-level fields into prompts via {{series_metadata}} (composite block) or individual tokens like {{series_shape}}, {{series_pov_strategy}}, {{series_continuity}}. Penny's context bundler reads them automatically when they're set.

Three modes when creating a project

  • No series, standalone book.
  • Existing series, attach to one of yours.
  • New series, opens an inline series creation modal; the new id flows back to the project wizard so you can finish your project create in one continuous flow.