Prompt system specification

Every instruction a model is given by this plugin is a file, so that it can be read, changed or replaced without touching the code. They are Markdown files whose whole content is the prompt.

Where they are

<roleplay root>/prompts/<language>/<group>/<name>.md

The package ships the originals in prompts/<language>/ (English and Chinese). The first time a prompt is needed, and once at start, every prompt that is not in the roleplay root is copied there from the package. A file the person edited is used as it is and never overwritten. Deleting a file restores it: the next use copies the original again. A file that is empty is refused with the path (delete it to restore the original).

Group	What it holds
roleplay/	the game master's instructions (game-master, persona), the character's rules (character-rules, character-lookup, character-decide), the record keeper, the chronicler and its three tasks, the suggestion writer, the image author, the plot author, and the short notices added to a scene (rules, plot-hint, ooc-command, ooc-empty, input-refused)
world/	the world authoring assistant (persona, procedure, welcome) and the world author that makes up and fits in characters, places and things (author, consolidate)
import/	importing a character card: the classifier, the roster, one prompt per kind of thing written (character, place, faction, thing, lore) with their shared common-rules, the world's description and tags, and the texts that steer the authoring chat through the three steps

Prompts of a session and of a world

<session folder>/prompts/<language>/<group>/<name>.md
<world folder>/prompts/<language>/<group>/<name>.md

A session may carry any of the prompts, in the same structure, and uses its file instead of the one in the root; a prompt it does not carry (or one in another language) comes from the root. Nothing is copied into a session automatically, so editing the root still reaches every prompt a session has not overridden. A branch keeps the prompts of the session it was cut from.

A world may carry prompts the same way. When a session starts, they are copied into its folder. The start is refused (422, with each file) when a file is not a prompt the package has, is in a folder that is not a language, is empty, or uses a ${name} the original is not given.

Prose and rules. roleplay/persona, roleplay/style and roleplay/character-style set who the models are and how the story is written (the game master's persona holds ${style}; each character's persona carries its style). Every other prompt holds rules of the game or the tools' contracts.

The world authoring chat edits a world's prompts with list_world_prompts, read_world_prompt, write_world_prompt and delete_world_prompt (a delete moves the file to .trash/prompts/). Writing and deleting need the person's approval like any other change to the world files, and a write is checked as session start checks it. In the turn that has just imported a card, which runs without asking, the prose prompts can be written without approval and the rules prompts are refused outright.

Optional parts: the game master's prompt holds ${preview} on a line of its own, which is the text of roleplay/preview when the chat's preview.enabled is on and nothing when it is off (a line that holds only a variable given as empty text is dropped). A chat that shows no preview also has no preview_scene tool.

Variables

A prompt may contain ${name}. The code that uses a prompt gives it the values (for example ${name} of a character, ${max} for a limit, ${rules} for a shared block). A variable that is not given a value is an error that names the prompt and the variable, so keep the ones that are in the original. {{...}} is not used: DSH's own prompt assembly reads it as one of its variables.

Names of tools, fields and values that the code understands (activate_characters, resolve_round, succeeded, character, [PLAYER], ...) must stay as they are in every language; only the prose around them is translated.

Language

The language is a folder: en, zh. It is chosen where the work begins:

• a roleplay session: the chat setting Language of the instructions (prompts.language), set from the interface language when the session is started and editable afterwards;
• the authoring assistant and the card import of a world: the interface language at the moment the person opens the assistant or starts the import (kept per world in worlds/.authoring/);
• a language that has no folder in the package falls back to English.

A new language is a new folder with the same files; a test keeps the shipped languages the same set of files with the same variables.

What is not a file

Text that is built from the story's data on every request stays in the code: the scene notice, the briefs of characters, the keeper's brief and the results of tools. They are English whatever the language of the prompts; the instructions around them are the files above. Descriptions of tools and their parameters are English too.