Writing Artifacts

Artifacts live in two places: durable project knowledge in $MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/ and temporary work scratch in $MERIDIAN_WORK_DIR/. This convention defines what each directory means, who writes it, and how artifacts flow between orchestrators. Every orchestrator shares this understanding — it's how story direction survives the handoff from brainstorming to drafting to revision.

$MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/ — Durable Project Knowledge

The agent-maintained knowledge layer. Both humans and agents read it. Quality bar: readable prose with clear structure, not agent shorthand. Decisions baked inline with reasoning — a character entry includes why that age was chosen, a timeline entry includes why events are ordered that way.

$MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/
├── styles/              # style reference files (style-creator output)
├── characters/          # character state + decision annotations
├── world/               # locations, lore, systems, factions
├── timeline/            # chronology, event ordering
├── canon/               # established facts from written chapters
├── issues/              # tracked writing problems (tics, inconsistencies, structural concerns)
└── graphs/              # relationship maps, knowledge graph output

What Goes Where

styles/ — How to write, not what to write. Style files capture the patterns a writer needs to match the project's voice. The style-creator determines how to organize these based on analysis of the source text — the structure follows what the prose actually does rather than a predetermined taxonomy. Each file is self-describing so an orchestrator can read it and know when to load it. See the style-creator agent for the analytical approach.

characters/ — Current character state: where they are in the story, what they know, their emotional trajectory, key relationships. Updated by the chronicler after chapters are written. Includes decision annotations — "character is 8 at story start [decided in session X, alternatives considered: 6, 10, rejected because...]".

world/ — Locations, systems, lore, factions — anything about the world that multiple chapters reference. The chronicler and session-miner both contribute here.

timeline/ — Event chronology. When things happened, in what order, with citations back to chapters. The continuity-checker's primary reference.

canon/ — Facts established by written chapters. Not a copy of the chapter — a synthesis of what the chapter established as true. "Chapter 4 established that the protagonist can sense a new ability" with a citation.

issues/ — Writing problems worth tracking across revision cycles. Mechanical tics, scene-type inconsistencies, structural concerns, patterns that need the author's attention. Critics, the style-creator, and the continuity-checker all contribute here. See the writing-issues skill for conventions.

graphs/ — Mermaid relationship diagrams, knowledge graph output, connection maps. The graph-maintainer keeps these current.

$MERIDIAN_WORK_DIR/ — Work Scratch

Temporary, scoped to the current work item. Archived when work completes. Durable knowledge gets promoted to $MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/ before closing out.

$MERIDIAN_WORK_DIR/
├── outline/             # current outline being worked
├── drafts/              # draft iterations (v1, v2, etc.)
├── critique-reports/    # critic output for each round
└── brainstorm/          # brainstorm captures and synthesis

What Goes Where

outline/ — Scene briefs, beat breakdowns, chapter structure. The outliner writes here; the writer reads from here.

drafts/ — Draft iterations. Each revision gets a new version. The draft-orchestrator tracks which version is current.

critique-reports/ — Individual critic reports and orchestrator synthesis. The draft-orchestrator writes the synthesis; the writer reads it for revision.

brainstorm/ — Brainstorm outputs from fan-out sessions. The story-orchestrator synthesizes these before presenting options to the author.

Who Writes What

Promotion

When a work item completes, the orchestrator promotes durable knowledge from $MERIDIAN_WORK_DIR/ to $MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/:

• •Story decisions discovered during brainstorming → baked inline into relevant $MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/ entries
• •New character state from a drafted chapter → $MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/characters/
• •New canon facts → $MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/canon/
• •Timeline updates → $MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/timeline/
• •Writing issues discovered during critique → $MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/issues/

The knowledge-orchestrator handles promotion by dispatching chronicler, session-miner, and graph-maintainer. Don't promote raw brainstorm captures or draft iterations — those stay archived in the work item. Promote the knowledge extracted from them.

Author's Space vs Agent Space

Agents maintain $MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/. The author maintains story/, wiki/, and future/. The wiki-editor is the one agent that writes to the author's space (wiki/), producing polished, reader-facing reference pages. All other agent output goes to $MERIDIAN_FS_DIR/ or $MERIDIAN_WORK_DIR/.

Agents don't reorganize the author's manuscript structure or planning files. They read from the author's space and write to their own.

This Convention Is Swappable

A project can replace this skill with its own artifact conventions — different directory names, different flow, different files — without touching orchestrator or agent bodies. The convention is a skill, not hardcoded structure.