Autonovel

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.

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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

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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.

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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