diff --git a/docs/superpowers/specs/2026-07-12-content-track-design.md b/docs/superpowers/specs/2026-07-12-content-track-design.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8bbec5f --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/superpowers/specs/2026-07-12-content-track-design.md @@ -0,0 +1,214 @@ +# Content track — design + +**Date:** 2026-07-12 +**Status:** approved (design); implementation = a docs restructure + one code/content item (currency) + +Folds the authored content of the game — lore, economy, items, quests, the map — +into a tracked, bounded track alongside the systems roadmap, so the authoring +work is countable rather than open-ended. + +--- + +## Problem + +`docs/roadmap.md` sequences **systems** (M0–M9). Content appears in it only +implicitly — "item seed-data", "the quest model", "shop economy" — never as work +with a size. `content/lore/canon-roadmap.md` tracks **canon** but is thin: an +"Authored" list and a three-bullet "Pending". + +So the content needed for a finished game — lore, an economy, every weapon, +armour piece, consumable and trinket, quests, the map — is untracked and +unbounded. It *looks* infinite, because nothing bounds it. That is the actual +problem to solve: not "write more content", but "make the content finite". + +## Approach + +**Demand-driven content, gated by the milestone that consumes it.** Content is +not authored to completeness; it is authored to the requirements of the next +system milestone. The cure for overwhelm is not a longer list — it is a list +with an end. + +Two roadmaps, cross-linked, with clear ownership. Rejected alternatives: + +- **One roadmap** (fold content into `docs/roadmap.md`) — the roadmap becomes + huge, and content that serves no milestone (pure lore) has no home. +- **Content-first** (author the world broadly, then build systems against it) — + authors content no system has yet demanded; the volume is the problem. +- **Content-type tracks** (separate lanes for lore / items / quests / map) — + mirrors how the work *feels*, and is the structure most likely to read as four + infinite parallel lists. + +## The slice + +The demand comes from a **vertical slice: one town + one dungeon.** The smallest +thing that is a *game*. Every system (creation, combat, dialogue, inventory, +shop, quest log, map) is exercised exactly once, against real content. + +Breadth afterwards is **repetition of a proven shape**, not invention. Adding a +second town becomes a known quantity of work against a known template. That is +what ends the overwhelm permanently — not this slice, but what the slice teaches +about the cost of the next one. + +Rejected: **one region** (3–4× the authoring, before the shape is proven) and +**systems-first with placeholder content** (tunes an economy with fake items, +tests dialogue with fake NPCs; every system pays a second pass when real content +lands). + +--- + +## 1. Doc structure + +| Doc | Owns | +|---|---| +| `docs/roadmap.md` | **Systems.** M0–M9, unchanged in shape. | +| `content/roadmap.md` | **Content.** Spine · Bill of Materials · Backlog. | + +- `docs/roadmap.md` gains one line per milestone M4–M9: **"Content it consumes →"**, + pointing into the content roadmap's BOM. +- `content/lore/canon-roadmap.md` **moves to `content/roadmap.md`**, leaving a + pointer behind. The move is load-bearing: an items-and-prices table does not + belong under `lore/`, and the file stops being only about canon. + +The content roadmap has exactly three sections, and **only one of them is ever +the work**: + +1. **Spine** — the slice's world. Authored once; gates everything downstream. +2. **Bill of Materials** — a countable checklist, per milestone, of what that + milestone consumes. Numbers, not vibes. +3. **Backlog** — everything the slice does not need. Named so it is not lost; + parked so it is not looming. + +### The rule + +> **Never author anything that is not in the Bill of Materials.** + +An idea that arrives goes to the Backlog, and is then no longer carried. The +Backlog is not a debt. It is where ideas go to be safe. + +--- + +## 2. The Spine + +Greywater Docks and one dungeon — the cosmology (`content/lore/cosmology.md`) +touching ground for the first time. + +- **The town** — **Greywater Docks.** A rot-black wharf where the river meets + the sea trade; everyone owes someone. **~6 NPCs:** Fenn (promoted from M2 test + fixture to real NPC), the harbourmaster, a fence, an innkeeper, a dock rough, + one more. +- **The chain** — **"The Missing Ledger,"** extended from the existing hook. + Town → road → dungeon → back. Four objectives. +- **The turn** — the debt Fenn cannot cover is a **blood** debt. The + harbourmaster is named in the ledger because he is the one *collecting*. The + dungeon is the harvest site. +- **The patron** — **Ghaul the Yoke.** He is already, by name, the king of debt + and bondage; a ledger of what men owe is his liturgy. This makes the quest + chain and the cosmology **the same object** rather than two things bolted + together, and gives `rule.blood-price` its first concrete instance. +- **The dungeon** — the harvest site. One enemy family (the yoked) + a boss. + +**Adopting Greywater, not replacing it.** Fenn is the NPC the aliveness question +was actually answered with (M2, live-proven): frightened, aggrieved, covering it +with irritation. The ledger hook already has teeth. The slice's job is to make +Greywater *deep*, not to make it *new*. + +--- + +## 3. Bill of Materials + +Countable. This is the anti-overwhelm device. + +| Milestone | Content it consumes | Count | +|---|---|---| +| **M4** creation | Origins, calling blurbs, the Bloodsworn's patron choice | ~4 | +| **M5** combat | 1 enemy family (4 units) + boss; abilities for the 3 POC classes | ~14 | +| **M6** dialogue | 6 NPCs — persona + `knowledge[]` + gated topics (§6) | ~6 | +| **M7** inventory | 6 weapons, 4 armour, 3 consumables, **1 cursed item** (+STR / −LCK — §7 says day-one) | ~14 | +| **M8** world | 3 map locations + the road; shop stock + the **price table in copper**; the quest chain | ~8 | +| **M9** flavour | Authored fallback per AI surface (§13); shrine + Luck-drift events; humiliation seeds | ~10 | + +**≈56 discrete authored pieces for a complete, playable game.** An estimate, and +likely optimistic — but an estimate with an end, which is the entire point. + +Explicitly **not** in the slice: rings, amulets, trinkets. A second town. The +other six kings and their cults. All parked in the Backlog. + +--- + +## 4. Economy — two systems (§18) + +The economy is not one thing. Per charter §18 ("when adding a system, state which +side of §2 it falls on — if it is both, it is two systems"): + +- **The loop is code** (§2: state) — purse, buy/sell, the ~40% fence rate, + gritty disabled-CTA reasons. Already sequenced as M8's *Shop economy*. +- **The numbers are content** — what a shortsword costs, a night at the inn, an + ale, the quest's purse. These live in the BOM as the **price table**. + +### Currency model + +``` +1 gold = 100 silver = 10,000 copper +1 silver = 100 copper +``` + +**Gold is scary.** At 10,000 copper to the gold, a peasant's whole life is +copper, a mercenary's fee is silver, and a gold coin is a plot point. The party +counting coppers for an inn bed is §3 grit, and Brannoc has an opinion about it. + +**This is a change, not a new thing — and it has a client consumer.** It lands as +its own small item **before M7**, cheapest now while `content/world/items/` +contains exactly two files: + +- A `Currency` value type — **store everything in copper**, format only at the + display edge (`12g 40s 8c`). +- `coin.json` → real denominations; all prices re-denominated. +- The Main Window shell's command-bar purse updated (it currently shows a flat + gold value). + +*§2: state · depends on nothing · goal: money that means something.* + +--- + +## 5. Process + +- Each BOM line is authored through the **`/world-building` skill** — it + reconciles against existing canon, writes the build tool's source format, and + verifies the build stays green. +- **Adopting Greywater means authoring it upward.** The hand-written JSON under + `content/world/{locations,quests,npcs,items}` becomes + `content/lore/greywater.md`, and `python -m content_build` emits `world/` from + it. +- **The build tool needs two new namespaces: `item` and `quest`.** Its legal + namespaces today (`tools/content_build/model.py`) are `town`, `place`, + `region`, `faction`, `person`, `rule`, `rumor`, `fact`, `secret`, `npc` — so + **locations are already modeled** (`town`/`place`/`region`) and only items and + quests fall outside it. Adding those two namespaces (model, emit, resolve) is a + prerequisite of the M7 and M8 BOM lines, and is done against content that + already has tests. +- **Moving or deleting generated content is a client change.** `content/world/**` + has a client consumer: `client/scripts/content/content_db.gd` (via + `client/scripts/harness/npc_harness.gd`) and its GUT tests in + `client/tests/unit/test_content_db.gd`. The Duncarrow lesson, applied + preemptively — check `client/` before any content move. + +--- + +## Consequences + +- Content becomes **countable and bounded**. "All the items" becomes fourteen. +- The cosmology stops being abstract — Ghaul, the blood-price, and possession all + land in the slice's quest chain. +- The build tool gains `item` and `quest` namespaces, completing the content + model (locations already exist as `town`/`place`/`region`). +- The currency change jumps the queue ahead of M4, because it is cheapest while + the item set is nearly empty. +- The Backlog absorbs everything the slice does not need, so it can be forgotten + without being lost. + +## Out of scope + +Authoring the slice's actual content — this spec builds the **container**. Each +BOM line is its own `/world-building` session. The Greywater canon session (town, +NPCs, the ledger chain's four objectives, Ghaul's harvest site) is the next +piece of work, not part of this one.