NousResearch

Autonovel — Data skill for Claude Code

Data community

An autonomous novel writing pipeline, by Hermes Agent.

How to install Autonovel

This entry records only its repository, not the path inside it, so there is no exact command to give. Open NousResearch/autonovel and copy the folder into ~/.claude/skills/, or the file into ~/.claude/agents/.

What Autonovel does

An autonomous novel writing pipeline, by Hermes Agent.

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README

autonovel

An autonomous pipeline for writing, revising, typesetting, illustrating, and narrating a complete novel. From a seed concept to a print-ready PDF, ePub, audiobook, and landing page — all generated by AI agents.

Inspired by [karpathy/autoresearch](https://github.com/karpathy/autoresearch): the same modify-evaluate-keep/discard loop, applied to fiction.

**First novel produced:** *The Second Son of the House of Bells* — 19 chapters, 79,456 words. See the `autonovel/bells` branch.

Quick Start

# Clone and setup
git clone  && cd autonovel
cp .env.example .env    # Add your API keys

# Install dependencies
uv sync

# Generate a seed concept (or write your own in seed.txt)
uv run python seed.py

# Run the full pipeline
uv run python run_pipeline.py --from-scratch

The Pipeline

Phase 1: Foundation

Build the world, characters, outline, voice, and canon from a seed concept. Loop until `foundation_score > 7.5`.

Phase 2: First Draft

Write chapters sequentially. Evaluate each one. Keep if `score > 6.0`, retry if not. Forward progress over perfection.

Phase 3a: Automated Revision

Adversarial editing → apply cuts → reader panel → generate briefs → rewrite chapters. Plateau detection stops the loop when scores stabilize.

Phase 3b: Opus Review Loop

Send the full manuscript to Claude Opus for dual-persona review (literary critic + professor of fiction). Parse actionable items. Fix the top issues. Repeat until the reviewer runs out of major items.

Phase 4: Export

Rebuild docs, typeset in LaTeX, generate art, produce audiobook scripts, build ePub, create landing page.

See [PIPELINE.md](PIPELINE.md) for the full technical specification.

Tools (27 Python scripts)

Foundation

Tool	Purpose
`seed.py`	Generate seed concepts
`gen_world.py`	Seed → world bible
`gen_characters.py`	Seed + world → character registry
`gen_outline.py`	Outline with beats and fore