Agent skill

Discovery Drafting

by danjdewhurst in danjdewhurst/story-skills

This skill should be used when the user asks about "pantsing", "discovery write", "write without an outline", "discovery draft", "write into the dark", "story kernel", "reconcile a chapter", "dead…

MITAuto-check: notesBusiness, Finance & HR

Install Discovery Drafting

skills CLI
$ npx skills add danjdewhurst/story-skills --skill discovery-drafting -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install danjdewhurst/story-skills discovery-drafting --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/danjdewhurst/story-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/discovery-drafting .claude/skills/discovery-drafting && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
discovery-drafting
GitHub stars
279
Used in
1 other repo
Token cost
~2k tokens
SKILL.md length
1,000 words
Files
5 (incl. references)
Skills in repo
24
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

This skill should be used when the user asks about "pantsing", "discovery write", "write without an outline", "discovery draft", "write into the dark", "story kernel", "reconcile a chapter", "dead…

  • Works in 6 steps: Write the story kernel. Consult… → Draft forward. Create the chapter with → Run the reconcile loop. After each… → …
  • Asks about pantsing
  • SKILL.md covers Overview, Prerequisites, When to Use and Workflow, plus 4 more sections
  • Calls node

What it does

Discovery Drafting is an agent skill from danjdewhurst/story-skills. This skill should be used when the user asks about "pantsing", "discovery write", "write without an outline", "discovery draft", "write into the dark", "story kernel", "reconcile a chapter", "dead end", "drafting sprint", "writing cadence", or wants to draft a story by discovery with retrospective bible reconciliation. NOT for outline-first drafting, or mysteries and other clue-dependent genres where setup must come before payoff (use chapter-writing), or a reverse outline of an existing linear draft, a subplot…

Its SKILL.md is about 2k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 5 other files, including reference files (for example `references/dead-ends.md`, `references/drafting-cadence.md` and `references/reconcile-loop.md`).

It sits in Business, Finance & HR, covering Accounting and bookkeeping, Retrospectives and Creative writing and fiction. The repository describes itself as: Agent Skills for end-to-end story writing in markdown, packaged as Codex and Claude Code plugins. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Asks about pantsing
  • Discovery write
  • Write without an outline
  • Discovery draft

Example prompts

  • “pantsing”
  • “discovery write”
  • “write without an outline”
  • “/discovery-drafting”

Workflow steps

6 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

  1. Write the story kernel. Consult references/story-kernel.md and
  2. Draft forward. Create the chapter with
  3. Run the reconcile loop. After each chapter, follow
  4. Batch review every 3–5 chapters. Re-read post-hoc notes, sweep the
  5. Hold the cadence. Keep the agreed target (see
  6. Close the loop on mode. When the draft is complete, every

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 1df23f9. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    Shell commands in SKILL.md call:

    • node

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Discovery Drafting loads about 2k tokens when it runs, and up to ~5.8k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 153 tokens; SKILL.md has 1,000 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~153
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~2k
With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them
~5.8k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check: notes

The automated check noted patterns worth knowing about, such as sudo or a known installer.

  • NoteMentions a .env fileSKILL.md:104
    `bunfig.toml` (which can run code) and `.env`, and a package script runs from the checkout's root. If no CLI is availab

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from danjdewhurst/story-skills at commit 1df23f9, republished under its MIT licence (© danjdewhurst). 1,000 words, ~2,028 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/discovery-drafting/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 4 other files; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
discovery-drafting
description
This skill should be used when the user asks about "pantsing", "discovery write", "write without an outline", "discovery draft", "write into the dark", "story kernel", "reconcile a chapter", "dead end", "drafting sprint", "writing cadence", or wants to draft a story by discovery with retrospective bible reconciliation. NOT for outline-first drafting, or mysteries and other clue-dependent genres where setup must come before payoff (use chapter-writing), or a reverse outline of an existing linear draft, a subplot cut, or another revision pass on existing chapters (use revision-continuity).

Discovery Drafting

Overview

Draft by discovery ("pantsing"): start from a one-paragraph story kernel rather than a beat sheet, write forward, then reconcile each chapter back into the story bible through a structured loop (extract entities → reverse outline → diff against the bible → reconcile). This is the complement to chapter-writing's outline-first workflow. The bible is maintained after the prose, not before — which the repo's import-style entity extraction and continuity checks already support.

Prerequisites

A story project must already exist (created via the story-init skill), with at least a story.md and one character. No plot structure is required to start — arcs get built during reconciliation.

When to Use

  • The user wants to draft without outlining first, or identifies as a discovery writer
  • Starting a project from a situation/character rather than a plot
  • NOT for mysteries or other clue-dependent genres where setup must precede payoff (use chapter-writing; see genre-craft)
  • NOT for revising existing chapters, including a reverse outline of an existing linear draft or cutting a subplot as a revision pass (use revision-continuity). The reverse outline inside the reconcile loop, and cutting dead ends in a batch review, stay here
  • The user can switch modes per project or per chapter; record the mode so audits know which discipline applies

Workflow

  1. Write the story kernel. Consult references/story-kernel.md and draft the one-paragraph kernel with the user (character in a situation, a want, an obstacle, a tone signal). Store it in story.md under ## Story Kernel and set draft-mode: discovered in frontmatter.
  2. Draft forward. Create the chapter with story add chapter 'Title' --number N --mode discovered so story next flags it until it is reconciled (in a draft-mode: discovered project a drafted chapter with no mode is flagged too). Write the chapter from the kernel using the session shape in references/drafting-cadence.md (re-read → write → close with a next-session note). Write forward only; park bible questions as [TODO: check bible] inline rather than stopping. Follow the prose craft in chapter-writing/references/writing-guidelines.md and the scene-grain tools in the scene-craft skill as usual, and write in the voice and house style recorded in style-sheet.md — discovery changes planning order, not prose standards. Write in the language set in story.md (a missing field means en); the craft references' word-level advice is English, so in another language keep its aims and follow the style sheet's conventions.
  3. Run the reconcile loop. After each chapter, follow references/reconcile-loop.md exactly:
    • Extract new entity/promise candidates (import-style, user-approved), keeping names as the prose spells them. Ids stay ASCII kebab-case: Cyrillic and Greek names get one automatically (Пётр gives petr), and a name in a script with no transliteration table (李明) needs story add character '李明' --id li-ming, with the id agreed with the user
    • Reverse-outline the chapter into the chapter file and scenes/ records
    • Diff against the bible (new / contradiction / enrichment / dangling)
    • Reconcile: update the bible or revise the chapter — never neither
    • Add post-hoc chapter notes above ## Chapter Text (below it they count and ship as prose); set chapter frontmatter mode: discovered
  4. Batch review every 3–5 chapters. Re-read post-hoc notes, sweep the promise/question ledgers for dangling setups, and cut dead ends per references/dead-ends.md (abandoned ledger entries keep a recorded reason; cut characters get status: cut, not deletion).
  5. Hold the cadence. Keep the agreed target (see references/drafting-cadence.md) and log each session with story progress . --log; at midpoint and draft completion, hand the batch to revision-continuity for developmental checks before continuing.
  6. Close the loop on mode. When the draft is complete, every mode: discovered chapter must have post-hoc notes and a completed diff — story next lists any without post-hoc notes under Reconcile discovered chapters; finish those, then hand the manuscript to revision-continuity for revision passes.
Show full SKILL.md (393 more words)Show less

Conventions

  • story.md frontmatter draft-mode: discovered marks a discovery project; per-chapter mode: discovered / mode: outlined tracks mixed projects.
  • Chapters carry a ## Chapter Notes (post-hoc) section, above ## Chapter Text, recording what was discovered, what was cut, and open questions — the project's memory of why the bible looks the way it does.
  • Entity candidates extracted from prose are presented for user approval before bible files are created (same discipline as story import).
  • Cut threads are logged, not erased: abandoned promises/questions keep status: abandoned with a reason; cut characters keep their file with status: cut.
  • Bidirectional links and kebab-case ids follow the shared story conventions exactly — discovery changes when the bible is written, not how.

CLI Maintenance

Use the Story CLI when it is available. If story is not installed, use the bundled fallback node ../story-maintenance/scripts/story.js with the same arguments. Use node <checkout>/bin/story.js instead only when the user names a Story Skills repository checkout or you are working in one. Write the script as an absolute path (resolve the fallback relative to this skill folder) and run it from the folder you would run story from, so . and other relative paths keep their meaning. Use Node, not Bun or a package script: Bun would load that folder's bunfig.toml (which can run code) and .env, and a package script runs from the checkout's root. If no CLI is available, perform the registry, backlink, and word-count checks manually.

After each reconcile loop:

shell
story reindex .
story wordcount . --write
story check .

Reference Files

  • references/story-kernel.md - The one-paragraph kernel: character in a situation, want, obstacle, tone signal
  • references/reconcile-loop.md - The core loop: extract entities/promises → reverse-outline → diff against the bible → reconcile; mode: discovered flag
  • references/dead-ends.md - Recognizing and cutting dead ends: cut/fold/prune, abandoned ledger entries, the darling log
  • references/drafting-cadence.md - Daily targets, batch reviews, session shape, recovering a broken cadence

Shared Conventions

Every story skill follows the shared conventions in ../story-maintenance/references/conventions.md, resolved relative to this skill folder. Read it before creating, renaming, or linking story files. If that file is missing because this skill was installed without story-maintenance, the essentials are: kebab-case ids and filenames, YAML frontmatter on every story-project file, _index.md registry tables that story reindex rebuilds (never edit them by hand), bidirectional links between entities, characters for who is on the page and mentions for who is only referred to, status: deceased plus died-in: chapter-{NN} for deaths, and no project-local generator or build scripts (run only the installed or bundled Story CLI).

© danjdewhurst, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 4 other files (references) in skills/discovery-drafting of danjdewhurst/story-skills.

  • SKILL.md
  • references/dead-ends.md
  • references/drafting-cadence.md
  • references/reconcile-loop.md
  • references/story-kernel.md

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 1df23f9

Used in 1 other repository

We found 1 copy of this SKILL.md (exact, near-identical or edited) in other folders, from 1 other GitHub owner. This page covers the copy in danjdewhurst/story-skills, which our catalogue first saw on October 7, 2026.

Compare with similar skills

Discovery Drafting next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Discovery Drafting compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Discovery Drafting this skilldanjdewhurst/story-skills2791 repos~2kAutomated safety check: NotesMIT
Lean Startupgetagentseal/founder-playbook724—~4.6kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Lean Startupwondelai/skills2.4k—~4.2kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Sync Upstreamnyaruka/phonenumbers1.6k—~2.8kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Longbridge Value Investinghelsome/folio2692 repos~1.2kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Radiology Tablehuang-sir1/radiology-skills1.9k—~1.3kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence

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Questions about Discovery Drafting

What does Discovery Drafting do?

This skill should be used when the user asks about "pantsing", "discovery write", "write without an outline", "discovery draft", "write into the dark", "story kernel", "reconcile a chapter", "dead…. Discovery Drafting is an agent skill from danjdewhurst/story-skills. This skill should be used when the user asks about "pantsing", "discovery write", "write without an outline", "discovery draft", "write into the dark", "story kernel", "reconcile a chapter", "dead end", "drafting sprint", "writing cadence", or wants to draft a story by discovery with retrospective bible reconciliation.

When should I use Discovery Drafting?

Discovery Drafting fits situations like: asks about pantsing; discovery write; write without an outline; discovery draft.

How do I install Discovery Drafting in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add danjdewhurst/story-skills --skill discovery-drafting -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/discovery-drafting in danjdewhurst/story-skills) into .claude/skills/discovery-drafting in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Discovery Drafting in Codex?

Run `npx skills add danjdewhurst/story-skills --skill discovery-drafting -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/discovery-drafting in danjdewhurst/story-skills) into .agents/skills/discovery-drafting in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Discovery Drafting in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add danjdewhurst/story-skills --skill discovery-drafting -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/discovery-drafting, .gemini/skills/discovery-drafting, .github/skills/discovery-drafting and .opencode/skills/discovery-drafting in your project.

What does Discovery Drafting need to run?

Going by SKILL.md and its folder, Discovery Drafting needs the command-line tools its instructions call (node).

Does Discovery Drafting access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Discovery Drafting safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found notes only (mentions a .env file), nothing it rates as a warning. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Discovery Drafting use?

Discovery Drafting is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Discovery Drafting use?

About 2k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 8.1k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full. Its references folder adds about 3.8k tokens, read only when the agent opens those files.

What are the alternatives to Discovery Drafting?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Discovery Drafting: Lean Startup (getagentseal/founder-playbook, 724 stars), Lean Startup (wondelai/skills, 2.4k stars), Sync Upstream (nyaruka/phonenumbers, 1.6k stars) and Longbridge Value Investing (helsome/folio, 269 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Discovery Drafting?

danjdewhurst (a GitHub user) maintains it in danjdewhurst/story-skills, which has 279 GitHub stars. The repository holds 24 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on October 8, 2026.

Source: danjdewhurst/story-skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.