st

st — Interactive menu launcher

Run st in the directory containing your story file and you get a keyboard-driven menu that walks you through the full workflow — no flags to memorize.

st               # open the menu (auto-detects *.json in current directory)
st topic.json    # open with a specific story pre-selected

The menus follow the natural top-down workflow:

Key	Menu	What it covers
g	Generate	Write a prompt, generate stories, run all AIs in parallel
v	View	Inspect stories and fact-checks
e	Edit	Revise story text, title, improve with AI
a	Analyze	Fact-check, cross-check all AIs, benchmark
p	Post	Publish to Discourse, export or print PDF
u	Utility	Charts, audio, remove stories
x	Settings	Default AI, voice, editor

Press a letter to enter a submenu, then a second letter to build the command. Press RETURN to run it, ESC to go back.

Keyboard shortcuts

These work at any menu level, at any time:

Key	Action
RETURN	Execute the current command
ESC	Go back to the previous menu (or quit if already at the top)
Ctrl+U	Clear the current command — the fastest way to undo a mis-press
← / DELETE	Enter edit mode — move the cursor and tweak the command before running
?	Redisplay the current menu
A	Cycle to the next AI provider (global, works in any submenu)
S	Cycle to the next story
F	Cycle to the next fact-check

About Ctrl+C

^C interrupts the currently running st-* command and returns you to the st prompt — it does not quit st itself. It's safe to use if a long-running job (e.g. st-bang, st-cross) takes too long or you realise it's the wrong command.

For simply undoing a mis-selected menu item (before pressing RETURN), use Ctrl+U instead — it clears the command line instantly without interrupting anything.

Options

Option	Description
file.json / file.prompt	Path to the story container or prompt file (auto-detected if only one exists in CWD)
--site {MMD,DIYRV,Shang}	Discourse site to use for posting; overrides DISCOURSE_SITE in config
-a, --agent {xai,anthropic,openai,perplexity,gemini}	AI provider to start with; overrides DEFAULT_AGENT
-b, --bang	Start the parallel generator (st-bang) instead of single-AI generation
-q, --quiet	Minimal output
-v, --verbose	Verbose output

Related: Onboarding st-new st-bang Command Reference

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For developers

st.py builds shell commands only — no business logic lives here. Every action calls a st-*.py tool directly. You can always skip the menu and run any st-* command by hand.

Adding a command to a menu

1. Add a label in the relevant submenu dict in menus (~line 40):

   "k": "Description shown in menu"

2. Add the matching case in execute_menu():

   case "k":
       cmd = f"st-mycommand {file_json}"

3. If the command writes to the .json container, add its name to POST_CMD_REFRESH at the top of the file — this tells st to re-read the file after the command finishes so story/fact-check counts stay current.