Changelog

French and Polish interface — the app is now fully available in Français and Polski, bringing the supported interface languages to six (alongside English, Hungarian, German, and Spanish); pick yours from the language switcher in the header or footer

Admin broadcasts and direct messages can now be auto-translated into French and Polish for users who prefer those languages

Direct messages from the team — admins can now send you a personal message that arrives in your notification bell, and optionally by email, with the option to deliver it in your preferred language

Engine version stamp — worlds, AI-generated characters, and stories now record which version of the generation engine produced them, shown as a small "Engine v{n}" badge on each detail page so you know what made the content

The dashboard loads noticeably faster — it now fetches everything it needs in a single request instead of five separate ones, cutting the network round trips that dominate load time

Lighter dashboard data — the worlds and stories lists no longer download content they never display (the full World Bible text of every world and the complete narrative of every story turn), so the page transfers far less data and paints sooner

Returning to the dashboard is now instant — recently loaded data is reused immediately and refreshed quietly in the background

Upfront credit check — before every AI generation (story turns, World Bibles, characters, arcs, translations) the engine now estimates what the call will cost and stops it before spending if your balance cannot cover it, instead of letting an almost-empty account kick off an expensive job

Clearer "not enough credits" message — when an action would cost more than you have, you now see roughly how many credits it needs versus your balance, with a prompt to top up, instead of a generic failure

Auto-generated images (world covers, character portraits, story scenes) are now skipped quietly when your balance is too low rather than failing the surrounding action

The world-impact analysis that runs when a story finishes is now billed to the player who completed it, so its cost is attributed consistently like every other generation (the world still always accumulates its collapse pressure)

Resumable generation — if creating a story, generating a World Bible, or advancing a turn is interrupted (an AI error, a timeout, or running out of credits), your progress is now saved and a "Resume generation" button picks up exactly where it left off instead of losing the work

No more broken empty stories — a story whose first turn fails to generate keeps its arc intact and can be resumed, rather than leaving an unplayable shell; already-completed steps are never re-charged

Your choice is never lost — when a story turn fails to generate, the choice you selected is preserved so resuming continues without making you pick again

Unusable AI output is caught and retried — a turn that comes back with no choices, an empty World Bible, a malformed arc, or an incomplete character draft is now detected and regenerated automatically instead of being saved as-is

Interrupted generations are flagged on the story and world pages with a clear banner explaining what happened, plus a link to top up when you have run out of credits

Per-user model preferences — Creator and Architect subscribers can now override the AI model used for each generation feature (story turns, milestone arcs, branching arcs, character generation, World Bible, translation, and image generation) from Account Settings

Seven independent model selectors — each feature can be set to Haiku (×1 cost), Sonnet (×3.75), or Opus (×18.75); image features choose between Flux Schnell (×1) and Flux Dev (×8.3)

Platform defaults respected — leaving any preference unset continues to use the admin-configured global model; paid users can reset all preferences at once with a single button

Subscription plans — choose between Creator ($9/mo, 1,000 credits/month) and Architect ($29/mo, 3,500 credits/month) directly from the Usage & Plan page; subscription credits refill automatically each billing cycle and are consumed before your top-up balance

Plan management — upgrade, downgrade, or cancel your subscription in-place; upgrades take effect immediately mid-cycle with a credit top-up for the difference; cancellations keep access until the end of the billing period

Two-pool credit deduction — the engine draws from subscription credits first; your purchased credit balance is only touched once the subscription pool is empty

Subscription credit meter — a dedicated row in the Credits card shows your remaining subscription credits and reset date whenever you are on a paid plan

Credit purchase — buy credits directly from the Usage & Plan page via three fixed packages (500, 1,200, or 3,500 credits); payments are handled by Paddle with automatic tax and VAT; credits are granted reliably via webhook even if the browser is closed before returning

Billing success page — a confirmation page at /billing/success shows how many credits were added and polls until the webhook fulfills the purchase

Story translation — request an AI translation of any public story into a different language; translations are generated turn-by-turn in the background (2 credits per turn) and streamed into the story page as they complete

Story language switcher — once a translation is ready, a language chip row above the story appears; switch between the original and any available translation without leaving the page

Language filter on story library — filter public stories by world language to find stories written in a specific language

Drift language filter — filter the drift entry pool by world language; only characters from worlds matching the chosen language are drawn

Drift auto-translate — choose a target language when entering drift; the first turn is translated inline so the story begins in your preferred language immediately

World bible translation — world owners can commission an AI translation of the world bible and all six rule dimensions into another language (15 credits); completed translations are shown as badges on the world page

Atlas language badges — atlas cards now display the world language code; a translation indicator (⇄) appears when translations are available

Localization — worlds now carry a narrative language setting (17 languages supported: English, Hungarian, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Polish, Swedish, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Arabic, Turkish)

World language field — set a language when creating or editing a world; all AI-generated story text, choice text, character speech, place names, and story titles are written in that language

User language preference — account settings now include a default world language; new worlds you create inherit this preference

Fork language inheritance — forking a world copies its language setting; the fork confirmation modal shows the inherited language when it is not English

Language shown in world stats — world detail pages display the language name in the stats strip when the world is set to a non-English language

Fork World — one-click fork button on any world detail page copies the full rule set into a new private draft; edit rules, then generate a fresh World Bible and Contradiction Map from there

Divergence section — forked worlds show a six-dimension diff table comparing their rules against the parent; changed dimensions are bold with a "Changed" badge and an expandable before/after view; unchanged dimensions are listed as "Unchanged"

Fork Tree section — worlds with a parent display an ancestry breadcrumb (root → … → current); worlds with direct forks list each fork as a linked card with owner name and creation date

Fork count stat — world detail pages show "N Fork(s)" in the stats strip when at least one fork exists

Public world viewing — authenticated users can now view the detail page of any public world (not just their own), enabling the fork button for non-owners

Drift abuse prevention — world owners who repeatedly publish low-quality worlds (all public worlds excluded, count > 3) are automatically penalized; every subsequent world they publish is also excluded from the Drift pool until an admin resolves the penalty

Penalty review requests — penalized owners can submit a single pending review request from any of their excluded world pages; the request is visible to admins and shows their full public world portfolio with ratings

Admin drift review panel at /admin/drift/reviews — lists pending and historical review requests; admins approve by selecting a world to lift exclusion on, deny to maintain the penalty; approved requests grant a world override and clear the account penalty simultaneously

Admin world overrides — an admin-granted override row exempts a specific world from both rating-based exclusion and penalty exclusion in the Drift pool; overrides can be revoked, which re-evaluates the owner's penalty automatically

Penalty banner on world detail pages — when an owner's account is under penalty, a distinct purple banner replaces the standard exclusion notice, with a "Request Review" button that transitions to a pending state in-place on click

World ratings — after completing or abandoning a Drift story, rate the world 1–5 stars directly from your Atlas; ratings are one-per-user per world and update in-place without a page reload

Star rating control in the Atlas — each completed or abandoned card gains a five-star control; hover previews the new value, click submits immediately, and the aggregate line updates instantly

Drift pool exclusion — worlds with an average below 2.0 from at least five Drift travelers are permanently removed from the random pool; no admin action required

Drift Ratings section on world detail pages — owners see their world's average, vote count, and rendered star display under a new §VI section; shown only in the owner view

Exclusion warning banner — world owners whose world has been excluded from the Drift see a prominent banner explaining the exclusion and linking to the Fork action as the recovery path

"Excluded from Drift" badge on Atlas cards — a muted badge appears below the aggregate line when a world has been excluded, so travelers know its Drift status at a glance

"Start with a Demo" now works for first-time users — clicking it opens a guided three-step wizard (world creation → character creation → The Drift) so you arrive at The Drift with a character ready rather than hitting a dead end

Welcome modal dismissal is now stored server-side; users who have already dismissed it will not see it again on a new device or private browser

The Drift now shows a guided panel with two action paths when you have no characters and onboarding is not yet complete

The Drift auto-selects your newly created demo character and shows a "Step 3 of 3" banner when arriving from the demo flow

World creation form now shows contextual tooltips on the Religious/Cultural, Historical Divergence, and Era & Date fields for first-time users

Character creation form now shows contextual tooltips on the Background and Personality Traits fields for first-time users

Getting Started checklist step count is now dynamic and will stay correct if steps are added or removed

Missing profile row in the onboarding API no longer silently disables onboarding for new users

World cover images — the engine generates a cinematic ultrawide (21:9) landscape for each world once its Bible is written; regenerate any time from the world page

Character portraits — a 3:4 portrait is drawn for each new character from their attributes and world Bible; existing characters can be conjured or redrawn from the portrait rail

Story scene images — each completed turn receives a 16:9 scene image generated from the narrative text; images appear above the turn narrative in the chronicle

Character reference images — premium and dev/admin accounts with IMAGE_CHARACTER_REFERENCE_ENABLED can use a character's portrait as a visual reference when generating their story scene, keeping their appearance consistent across turns

Account Usage now shows an Images section tracking how many AI-generated images you have used this month against your quota

Story Critic — a silent second AI pass reviews each generated turn across five lenses: character behaviour, arc faithfulness, internal event consistency, world object consistency, and style adherence; if issues are found, the Critic quietly rewrites the narrative (and choices where needed) before the player sees it

Critic toggle — Story Critic can be enabled or disabled per-story from the Advanced section when starting a new chronicle, or set as a default in Account Settings; stories without an explicit setting inherit the account default (on by default)

Refined turn badge — completed turns revised by the Critic show a subtle sparkle badge at the bottom-right; hovering reveals the Critic's one-line note explaining what was corrected

Turn quality — in longer stories with established arcs and characters, the Critic catches continuity drifts that the Game Master's forward-only generation occasionally introduces

Character appearance — a dedicated appearance field captures build, physical features, hair, clothing norms, and world-flavored marks of station or labour; filled manually or generated by the AI at character creation

Appearance flows into story turns — the Game Master now reads each character's appearance when generating turn narrative, grounding physical descriptions in what is already established rather than inventing them fresh

Appearance in character extraction — when pulling an NPC from a story transcript, the AI synthesizes their appearance from any physical detail described in the text; the field is left null if the transcript says nothing

Character creation form gains a §05 Appearance section with three example prompts and the same AI-generate workflow as the other attribute sections

Character detail page shows appearance alongside personality, skills, and motivations; inline editing and the "evolved" badge from growth events both apply

Character growth analysis automatically includes appearance changes, so a story that transforms a character's look is captured in the growth log

The Atlas — a personal logbook of every world you have traveled through the Drift; each entry shows the world name, story type assigned, turn progress, discoveries logged, status, and time of visit

Atlas page at /atlas — authenticated, ordered by most recent visit; empty state with a direct link to The Drift when no worlds have been visited yet

World Browse page retired — /worlds/browse now redirects to /atlas; the global world directory has been replaced by the personal Atlas as the primary discovery surface

Community nav item now links to /atlas instead of the browse page, with updated copy reflecting the Drift-record concept

Drift entry page shows a quiet back-link to your Atlas when you have already visited at least one world

The Drift never repeats worlds — previously visited worlds are excluded from the random pool; the pool resets automatically once every public world has been seen, surfacing a note that you are starting over

Pool count display on the Drift entry page — a subdued line shows how many worlds are waiting; updates live as you change your party selection

Story type is now randomly assigned at entry from Adventure, Investigation, or Survival — the shape of the story is unknown until it begins

Turn budget is fixed and hidden: all Drift stories run for a randomly chosen length between 10 and 15 turns with a guided arc generated at entry

Style settings flow silently from your account defaults into every Drift story — no setup step; when your romance mode is Forbidden, the Drift LLM instruction is extended with a world-specific transgression directive

Multi-character party — select up to three characters for The Drift using the new checkbox selector; a party badge shows the count and a note appears when two or more characters will be locked

Locked characters are shown dimmed with a lock icon and the name of the blocking story

My Profile page at /profile — the unified home for all profile management: edit your bio, flip four independent visibility toggles (Public Profile, Show Worlds, Show Stories, Show Characters), and view your unlocked achievements without leaving the page

Independent visibility controls — worlds and stories on your public profile now have their own toggle, separate from the existing characters toggle

Manage account shortcut — a button on My Profile opens the Clerk account modal for username, email, and password changes without navigating away

Username prompt banner — if you have no Clerk username yet, My Profile shows a banner with a direct link to set one; the public profile preview link is hidden until a username exists

My Profile added to the user menu — the UserButton dropdown now includes a My Profile link at the top

/account/profile now redirects to /profile

Long stories stay fast — once a story exceeds 10 turns the Game Master now reads a compact summary of older turns rather than the full history, cutting prompt size by up to 75% and keeping turn generation time and cost stable as stories grow

Compact summaries are cached on the story and regenerated in batches every five turns, so long sessions add at most one small extra LLM call per five turns rather than growing linearly

Story mood & style settings — six controls (Narrative Voice, Tone, Romance, Prose Style, Pacing, Violence Level) now shape every story the GM generates; set global defaults in account settings and override per story at creation time

Style Block — all active settings compose into a single natural-language directive injected into the Game Master's system prompt; settings interact coherently rather than overriding each other

Narrative voice — choose whether the GM narrates in first person, third person, or omniscient third (entering any character's thoughts)

Tone — set the emotional register: Bleak, Melancholic, Satirical, Romantic (literary), Mythic, or Visceral

Romance mode — control whether romantic subplots appear and how they function: None, Subplot, Forbidden (transgression with consequences), Central (primary through-line), or Tragic

Prose style — choose the GM's literary register: Sparse, Lyrical, Journalistic, Epistolary (with in-world documents), or Philosophical

Pacing — set the narrative tempo: Slow Burn, Balanced, or Propulsive (thriller pace)

Violence level — choose how directly violence is depicted: Implied (off-screen), Realistic (honest consequence), or Unflinching (direct and unsparing)

Randomize style — one-click randomise button in the Style & Mood section sets all six controls to random values for unexpected storytelling combinations

Story Defaults section in account settings now includes all six style controls alongside Turn Length

Story creation form gains a collapsible Style & Mood section (§05) showing overrides relative to your account defaults

Default style register updated to Madách's signature voice — Omniscient narrator, Mythic tone, Tragic romance, Philosophical prose, Slow Burn pacing

Nine endings — each branching arc now has three named outcome variants (good, neutral, bad) generated at story creation; the ending shown on completion depends on both the dominant arc and an agency score accumulated across all choices

Agency score — a 0–100 score tracks whether characters acted with deliberate moral purpose (positive), submitted or complied (negative), or navigated ambiguity (neutral) across the story; it starts at 50 and shifts by ±8 per turn

Agency-influenced turn generation — the Game Master's arc directive is quietly extended with a tone modifier based on the current agency band, bending the narrative's emotional register without interrupting the arc's trajectory

Outcome reveal — the arc completion screen now shows the named ending your choices produced, a summary line, an agency score sparkline alongside the arc weight sparkline, and the other endings you could have reached on the same arc

Branching arcs — a new arc mode that generates three competing destiny arcs at story creation; each arc represents a distinct collapse trajectory with its own milestones and thematic outcome

Arc weight tracking — every player choice shifts a weight distribution across the three arcs; the arc with the highest weight becomes dominant, steering the GM's directives; when dominance shifts decisively (≥10 pp lead), an arc transition is signalled

Arc reveal — when a branching-arc story completes, the story page reveals the dominant arc name and description, a sparkline of how arc weights shifted across the story, and the two paths not taken

Three-way arc mode selector on the story creation page — choose between None (GM improvises freely), Milestone (single planned arc), and Branching (three competing fates)

Contradiction injection — each story is now anchored to 3 of its world's fault lines, selected at creation using weighted random sampling (weight = severity²); high-severity contradictions surface more often, ensuring the world's core collapse narrative stays prominent without crowding out edge cases

Contradiction severity — the AI now rates each world contradiction on a 1–5 scale (1 = minor friction, 5 = existential contradiction); severity drives both story selection weighting and arc planning focus

Drift world-impact freeze — world owners can now prevent Drift stories from accumulating collapse pressure on their world

Publishing to Atlas now opens a confirmation modal asking whether the world should be Live (Drift affects collapse pressure) or Frozen (Drift has no impact); both settings are applied atomically, eliminating any race window

Freeze toggle on the world detail page — owners can change the drift-impact setting at any time after publishing

Priority queue — premium and admin/dev users are now served before basic-tier requests when the story engine is under load; the global semaphore is replaced by an asyncio worker pool that dispatches requests in priority order

Queue-aware loader — if your story turn takes longer than 8 seconds, the loading screen now tells you the engine is busy and that your story is queued, rather than just spinning silently

Characters tab on world pages — lists all characters native to a world with their sigil, story count, growth count, and active-story indicator

World cards on the dashboard now show a character count alongside stories and contradictions

Character card extracted into a shared component, used consistently on the dashboard and the new world Characters tab

Story continuation page now uses the same ornate design system as story creation and settings — side navigation, §-section cards, brass toggles, gold slider, and the full-screen orrery overlay on submit

Continuation setup now lets you change story type, max turns, and narrative arc mode for the next chapter

Previous story summary is now passed to both arc planning and turn generation so the GM has full context of what happened before

Continuation context is clearly labelled "CONTINUATION — STORY SO FAR" in every LLM prompt, with explicit instructions to treat prior events as established history

World bible and continuation summary are now cached with Anthropic prompt caching, reducing latency and cost for continuation stories

Only one active continuation per story is now allowed — attempting to open a second one is blocked both in the backend (HTTP 422) and on the frontend with a notice and a direct link to the in-progress chapter

Achievements — 18 personal milestones across bronze, silver, and gold tiers unlock automatically as you build worlds, complete stories, and lose characters

Achievement badges — public profiles now display unlocked achievements grouped by tier (gold → silver → bronze)

"You Earned This" card — a dismissible dashboard card highlights achievements earned in the last 24 hours

Onboarding flow — first-time users see a welcome modal explaining the three-step workflow (build a world, create a character, start a story) with direct links

Getting Started checklist — a floating widget in the dashboard tracks five onboarding milestones and links to each action; dismissible once no longer needed

Contextual tooltips — brief hints appear on first visit to the World Rules and Character forms, explaining what each key field expects; dismissed per-field with "Got it"

Demo world "New Arcadia" — a pre-built public world available immediately in The Drift so new users can play a story before building anything themselves

Player profiles — every user now has a public profile page at /users/{username} showing their published worlds, stories, and living characters

Profile settings page at /account/profile — write a bio (up to 500 characters), toggle your profile public/private, and control whether your characters appear on it

Players browse page at /players — discover active community members sorted by completed stories or published worlds, with load-more pagination

Profile stats panel — worlds published, total and completed stories, living and fallen characters, shown at a glance on every profile

Post-Apocalyptic story type — a new genre exclusive to fully collapsed worlds; survivors navigate the ruins and power vacuums left behind

Emergent worlds — when a Post-Apocalyptic story ends with a new order established, an AI analysis runs and a new draft world is automatically forked from the collapsed one

The emerged world inherits the collapsed world's history but starts with rules shaped by what was built in the story, fresh at zero Collapse Pressure

In-app notification when a new order emerges: a "world_emerged" alert links directly to the new draft world

"A new order has risen" story completion banner — links to the emerged world with an AI-written summary of what was built

Story creation page now shows Post-Apocalyptic as a selectable type; the world dropdown filters to collapsed worlds only when it is selected

World Legacy — every completed story leaves a permanent mark on the world it was played in, accumulating Collapse Pressure over time

Collapse Pressure meter on world detail pages — a colour-coded bar (green → amber → red → black) shows how close a world is to collapse

Worlds enter Critical status at 80% pressure and Collapsed status at 100%; collapsed worlds are locked — no new stories can begin

World Chronicle tab — a reverse-chronological log of all story impacts, with AI-generated summaries, pressure deltas, and running totals

World impact generation runs as a background task after each story completion using the speed model, at no credit cost to players

In-app notifications — bell icon in the nav bar shows your unread count and updates every 60 seconds

Notification types: someone plays in your world, someone rates your story, and a low-credit warning when your balance drops below 10

Notification dropdown — click the bell to see your 20 most recent notifications with type icons, message text, and relative timestamps

Unread notifications are highlighted in blue; click any row to navigate to the relevant world or story and mark it read

"Mark all as read" button clears all unread notifications at once

Character relationships — define ally, rival, family, mentor, or stranger relationships between your characters

Relationships section on character detail pages: add, view, and remove relationships with a type badge and optional description

Relationship context injected into story turns when two or more characters with a defined relationship appear together

Story creation page shows a "Relationships in Play" summary when selected characters have non-stranger relationships

World Insights tab on world detail pages — owners can view play statistics: total plays, unique players, completion rate, average turns per story, Drift vs. own plays, story type breakdown, and most common final choices

Analytics computed on-the-fly from existing story data — no new tables required

Global search — find any of your worlds, characters, or stories from the nav bar with a debounced live-results dropdown

Search results page at /search shows all matches grouped by type with filter buttons (All / Worlds / Characters / Stories)

Public world search endpoint — unauthenticated visitors can search public worlds by name without seeing world rules

Contact page now shows the full header and footer for logged-in users, and a public header with a Log In link for guests

Story continuation — continue any completed story with an AI-generated summary of what came before

"Continue Story" button on completed story pages launches a setup flow to configure the continuation

Continuation setup page: review the AI-generated story summary, pick which characters carry forward, and optionally choose a forked world version

Parent story context injected into continuation turns so the AI narrative remains coherent across sessions

Continuations section on story detail pages lists all direct follow-on stories with status badges

Story titles — set a title when creating a story or edit it inline on the story page

AI title generation — one-click "Generate with AI" fills the title from the story's narrative content

Story ratings — logged-in readers can rate public stories 1–5 stars with an interactive star picker

Browse page: sort stories by Newest or Top Rated

Browse page: filter by genre (story type) or author username

Browse cards now show the story title, genre subtitle, and star rating

Characters are locked when participating in an active story — cannot be added to a second story until the first completes or is abandoned

Story creation character picker shows locked characters dimmed with a lock icon and a tooltip naming the blocking story

Character list cards show an "In story" amber badge for locked characters

Story count stat on character cards and detail pages — total stories the character has ever appeared in

Growth count on character list cards — number of stories that produced a growth event

Story Journey timeline on character detail page — chronological, story-by-story view of attribute changes alongside the existing growth history

Public Stories page — browse all published stories at /stories/browse, no account required

Stories nav link added to the header alongside the Worlds browser

"Browse" header link renamed to "Worlds" for clarity

Worlds with a World Bible but no Contradiction Map are flagged as Incomplete in the dashboard; a Generate Contradiction Map button appears on their detail page

Story creation now requires a complete Contradiction Map — incomplete worlds are excluded from the world selector

Delete worlds, characters, and stories from their detail pages — requires typing the name to confirm; cascades all associated records

Delete account from Account Settings — requires typing your email address; removes all worlds, characters, stories, and associated data

Admin: suspend users with a mandatory reason (10-character minimum); suspension details and scheduled removal date shown inline

Admin: remove suspended users permanently via two-step REMOVE confirmation modal

Inactive account auto-suspension: accounts with no activity for over one year are suspended automatically with a 30-day removal window

Privacy Policy and Terms of Service pages now accessible from the footer

Extract Character: pull any NPC from a story transcript into your character collection — AI synthesizes their role, personality, skills, and motivations from the narrative

Extracted characters link back to the story they came from via an "Extracted from story" badge on the character detail page

Characters grow automatically when a story completes — personality, skills, and motivations evolve based on what actually happened

Character death: characters can die mid-story or at completion; death is permanent

Death notifications appear inline during a story turn when a character falls

Memorial view for deceased characters: epitaph, date of death, link to the story where they died, and full growth history

Graveyard page listing all fallen characters

Growth history on character detail page showing how each story shaped the character

Drift character effects setting: toggle whether characters can grow and die in other users' worlds

Configurable max turns per story via slider (5 to platform limit, step 5)

Milestone arc generation: the GM plans a narrative arc before the story begins, steering toward a thematic conclusion

Arc opt-out toggle for open-ended stories with no pre-planned arc

Default max turns preference in account settings

Max story turns limit configurable in admin settings

App version displayed in landing page footer with link to changelog

Public changelog page listing all releases in reverse-chronological order