Routes & the Route Lab
How Auto Route hands you three concrete next moves after every Canon Lock, and how the Route Lab lets you try alternate directions without risking your Main Save.
Alcove never drops you onto a blank page. Two systems keep you moving: the Auto Route, which always knows where your story could go next, and the Route Lab, where you can try a different direction without touching the story you've already built.
The app proposes; the writer steers.
Auto Route — your story compass
The Auto Route (also called the Living Route) is the macro compass for your save file. After every Canon Lock, it re-reads what you've made permanent and hands you three concrete next moves — not vague prompts, but specific directions grounded in your locked canon: where your arc is heading, what a relationship is building toward, which threads you've planted that are ready to pay off.
It's living because it adjusts. A focused, one-arc story and a long slow burn won't be paced the same way, and the same plan steers differently as your story matures — beats that were "later" surface as "now" when the time is right.
You're never locked into the three moves on offer. Approve one as-is, tweak the Scene Brief behind it, or describe something else entirely. The route follows you.
Nexus Events
A Nexus Event is a pivotal crossroads in your story — the moment where things could genuinely go two different ways. A confession or a refusal. A betrayal or an alliance. The choice to break from a source story's canon instead of converging on it. These are the high-stakes turning points worth exploring before you lock them in, and they're exactly what the Route Lab is built around.
The Route Lab — try a direction, keep your canon
The Route Lab is where you explore a what-if without risk. You spin up a Test Save from your current canon, take it a different direction for a few chapters, and compare. When a direction wins, you promote it; otherwise you archive it.
Draft is not canon until you lock it.
The key promise: a Test Save never modifies your Main Save. It starts as a faithful copy of your real story — full cast, codex, route, and history intact — so the next chapter is grounded in real canon, not an empty shell. Promoting or archiving is always additive; your original timeline is kept, never overwritten.
The Route Lab is early and experimental. Today you can spin up a Test Save from your latest Canon Lock and explore forward. Starting one from an earlier point and blending two routes are on the way.
Spoiler-safe by design
A route may know more than you want to read yet. So route and spoiler detail are kept separate from the story you actually read — your chapters never get spoiled by what the compass is planning. You choose how much of the road ahead you see — from Blind Mode (no hints) through the default Guided Mode to a full Showrunner Mode view.
Next: see how Test Saves fit into your save files, or revisit the core loop.
Canon Lock
Canon Lock is the one deliberate moment that turns an approved draft into permanent story — applying state changes and updating your route, cast, and codex.
Story Codex & Cast Board
The two living references inside every save file — the characters you've met and the facts you've revealed, both built automatically from locked canon.