Content

Every NVS project is a folder of plain Markdown files organized into three pillars. Each pillar has a different purpose and a different access pattern; keeping them separate is what lets the engine do its job.

Where does this belong?

The single question this guide answers. Everything you write lands in one of these.

The three pillars

Scene - the narrative

Scenes are the work itself: dialogue, action, inner thought. They carry a stable scene_id in their frontmatter so the engine can track them across renames and reorders. Everything the engine learns

• who was present, what was promised, what changed - it learns from a scene and pins back to it.

Scene

World - the bible

World pages are the reference layer: one file per person, place, thing, or concept that the story returns to. A character page is the wiki entry for that person; a lore page is the codex entry for a faction or a rule of magic. The engine watches the story for anything that contradicts the declared facts - continuity errors surface as findings.

World

Custody - the chain

A Custody page tracks a single piece of information or a physical object through the story: who holds it, who learns it, when the reader discovers it. The Custody workspace draws the authored timeline so you can plan and verify information control - who knows the secret at each scene, and whether the reader finds out before or after the characters do.

Custody

One folder, three modes of reading

content/
 story/ read roughly in order (a sequence)
 world/ consulted at any time (a reference)
 custody/ planned by the author (a ledger)

None of this is a proprietary format. It is .md files with frontmatter, organized by a convention. The engine reads by content, not by path - so the layout is a strong default, not a cage.