When the AI gets stuck
As you write, you hit spots where the AI workflow itself stalls. It’s not the chapter content that’s stuck, it’s the flow that stopped. Here are a few you’ll meet often, and the way out.
When the chapter gate fails twice
Section titled “When the chapter gate fails twice”When you finish a chapter, the AI-smell gate runs. On a fail it rewrites, but if it rewrites twice and still fails, the orchestrator stops and hands off to the user. It doesn’t rewrite endlessly.
At this point, read the chapter yourself. Usually the same cause repeats. Every line is in the same tone, the character description is filled with meaningless adjectives like “아름다운,” or the sentence lengths are monotonous. Point at the stuck cause, like “rewrite it distinguishing the dialogue by character,” and the score drops. It’s faster than a vague “rewrite it.”
When it says continuity drifted
Section titled “When it says continuity drifted”When continuity-check checks a chapter against the index and catches a contradiction, it records it in the per-chapter chapters/ch{NN}_continuity.md. This isn’t stuck. It’s the spot where a human judges whether the contradiction is an intended change or a mistake.
If the setup changed because the character got hurt, update the index by telling it “the setup changes from this point.” If it’s a mistake, fix the chapter. The detailed spot is in continuity.
When you picked the wrong book_type
Section titled “When you picked the wrong book_type”If, as you write, “this is more an essay than a novel” feels right, you can change the type. Say “change it to an essay” and it rolls back to Tier 1. But because changing the type swaps the whole set of turned-on skills, world-building or character setup you’ve already built can become meaningless under the new type. The AI helps sort out what to keep and what to discard. It’s a spot where a mid-way change works but isn’t free.
When a session broke and you don’t know how far you got
Section titled “When a session broke and you don’t know how far you got”If you reopened days later or got confused running several books, the session-start hook (session-start.sh) pulls the active book’s progress automatically. If you’re still confused, ask “which book, up to which chapter?” It pulls together books.json and the active book’s progress.md to tell you.
When you finish for the day, writing the next starting point into active.md makes the next time smoother. It’s also the spot stop-reminder.sh alerts you about when it’s empty.
If it still doesn’t resolve
Section titled “If it still doesn’t resolve”Copying the error message verbatim, pasting it into Claude Code, and asking “why is this happening?” is often the fastest. If that still doesn’t work, find the same symptom in troubleshooting, and if it’s not there either, open a GitHub issue.
A collection of common sticking points is in troubleshooting.