Author It

AI skills for writers who don't want AI writing their novels for them...

Overview

This repository contains Claude Code skills for authors. These skills help you plan, develop, and refine your book — but they never write your story for you. Using these skills will classify your work as AI Assisted because these are NOT generative AI skills.

Requirements

Claude Code version 1.0.33 or later. Check your version with:

claude --version

To upgrade: brew upgrade claude-code (Homebrew) or npm update -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code (npm).

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Install as a Plugin (Recommended)

Installing as a plugin is the easiest way to use Author It. Skills are available across all your projects with a single install.

Step 1 — Add the marketplace:

/plugin marketplace add design1online/author-it

Step 2 — Install the plugin:

/plugin install author-it@author-it

That's it. Skills are immediately available.

Note: Plugin skills are namespaced to prevent conflicts with other plugins. Invoke them with the author-it: prefix (e.g., /author-it:create-story-bible).

Manage the plugin

/plugin disable author-it@author-it     # Disable without uninstalling
/plugin enable author-it@author-it      # Re-enable
/plugin uninstall author-it@author-it   # Remove completely

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Manual Installation (Alternative)

If you prefer not to use the plugin system, you can copy the skills directly into any project.

Global (available in all projects)

cp -r skills/* ~/.claude/skills/

Project-level (available in one project only)

cp -r skills/ /path/to/your/project/.claude/skills/

Note: Manually installed skills use short names without a namespace prefix (e.g., /create-story-bible instead of /author-it:create-story-bible).

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Skills

/author-it:create-story-bible

Usage: /author-it:create-story-bible [book-title] [premise]

Guides you through a systematic, question-driven process to build a complete story bible for your book. It never writes your story — instead it asks targeted questions to help you clarify your premise, characters, world, and market positioning until everything is crystal clear.

The skill creates a structured set of files in a story-bibles/[book-title]/ folder (or story-bibles/[series-title]/[book-number]-[book-title]/ for series). Files created include:

Folder	Files
story/	premise, genre, tropes, recommendations
characters/	protagonist, antagonist, relationship, distraction, emotion, reason, support, opposition
world-building/	geography, flora-fauna, politics, religions, resources, culture-conflicts
outline/	plot-centered, character-centered, romance, mystery, horror, or short-story beats
marketing/	analysis, similar-books, ad-copy

The skill works iteratively — it asks 1–3 targeted questions at a time, states its assumptions, and waits for your confirmation before moving forward. It will not generate final documents until all gaps and ambiguities are resolved.

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/author-it:dev-editor-recommendations

Usage: /author-it:dev-editor-recommendations [book-title]

Performs a full developmental editor pass on the story bible files created by create-story-bible. It reads all existing story bible documents for the book (and series, if applicable) and compiles a prioritized recommendations report saved to story/recommendations.md.

The report includes:

• Plot Holes — identified issues ranked by urgency with suggested fixes
• Story Inconsistencies — contradictions across characters, world-building, and plot
• Character Development Issues — passive or underdeveloped characters with fix recommendations
• Dev Editor Recommendations — prioritized list (urgent, high, medium, low) with detailed feedback and a checkable suggestion list
• Overall Developmental Feedback — strengths and weaknesses across all story elements with an overall rating
• Publishing Placement Recommendations — whether the book is a fit for traditional, small press/indie, or self-publishing, including sample query letters
• Marketing Recommendations — market fit analysis, niche vs. broad audience considerations

If a recommendations.md file already exists, the skill archives it with a date stamp before creating a new one.

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/author-it:writing-coach

Usage: /author-it:writing-coach

A step-by-step writing coach that evaluates the first paragraph or first chapter of your book (up to 5,000 words) and gives constructive criticism — without rewriting your content or training on your data.

The coach walks through seven evaluation stages:

1. Hook — Analyzes your first sentence for reader assumptions, questions raised, clichés, and overall hook strength (rated 1–5). Offers targeted word-level suggestions to improve it without rewriting.
2. Main Character — Evaluates whether the reader understands who the character is, what they want, their motivation, and what's standing in their way. Flags passive characters.
3. Setting — Checks for white room syndrome and evaluates how well the setting grounds the reader.
4. Sensory Details — Reviews all eight senses (sight, smell, sound, taste, touch, balance, external body awareness, internal body awareness) for presence and effectiveness.
5. Prose — Evaluates purple prose, sentence flow, readability, repetition, strong writing habits (adverbs, passive voice, show vs. tell), and word choice.
6. Spelling & Grammar — Lists all spelling and grammar issues with the sentence each is found in.
7. Overall Impression — Provides a full reader synopsis, un-put-downable analysis, unanswered questions, plot holes, conflicts, inconsistencies, genre, tone, tropes, target reader, and a final rating.

Each stage lets you dig deeper with clarifying questions or move on. At the end you can generate a downloadable summary of the full coaching session.