BookWriter

A domain-neutral, harness-agnostic book-production engine you drive with any AI coding agent.

You bring the book. BookWriter brings the operating system: frozen structure, per-chapter plans, status tracking, interview-before-drafting discipline, parking-lot triage, and publication gatekeepers. The agent reads plain markdown files from this repo — no plugins, no installers, no vendor lock-in. Works with Hermes, Claude Code, Codex, or any harness that can read AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md.

Quick start

1. Clone this repo anywhere:

   git clone https://github.com/adbertram/BookWriter.git
   cd BookWriter
   

2. Open your AI agent in this folder and say: "Create a new book." The agent loads skills/new-book/SKILL.md, interviews you about title, reader, voice, promoted tools, and publication targets, then scaffolds your book (default location: books/<slug>/, or any path you choose) and registers it in books.yaml.
3. Later sessions start with: "Work on ." The agent loads skills/select-book/SKILL.md, resolves your book from books.yaml, reads its rules.md, structure, and tracker, states the active chapter and next action, then works only that action.

Already have book material lying around? Say so — new-book also registers existing folders without touching their contents.

How it fits together

BookWriter/            <- the engine (this repo)
├── AGENTS.md          <- engine law: states, workflow, quality bar
├── books.yaml         <- registry: slug -> data path
├── books/<slug>/      <- default home for book data (yours may live elsewhere)
└── skills/            <- new-book, select-book

<your-book>/
├── rules.md           <- YOUR book's law: voice, style, promotion, publication target
├── structure.md       <- frozen chapter spine
├── status-tracker.md  <- single source of truth for progress
├── parking-lot.md     <- idea ledger
├── editors/           <- optional publication gatekeepers
└── chapters/
    └── 01-your-chapter/
        ├── plan.md    <- scope + owed specifics, written before drafting
        ├── draft.md
        └── images/

Engine = process that never changes. Your book = rules.md + content. The two never bleed into each other, so the engine stays useful for a LEGO selling guide, a novel, or a technical manual alike.