Routes & your story plan

How the story outline is your visible plan, how Auto Route recommends your next three moves, and how branching a Test Save lets you try alternate directions without risking your Main Save.

Alcove never drops you onto a blank page. Three systems keep you moving: your story outline (the long-term plan you can see and steer), the Auto Route (three concrete next moves after every lock), and branching Test Saves (try a what-if without touching your Main Save).

The app proposes; the writer steers.

Your story outline — the plan you see

The outline is your save file's long-term story plan: seasons, arcs, and episodes laid out as a spine. What you see on the save's Plan page is the plan Alcove writes from — not a separate summary that can drift.

You can edit the outline directly: add or reorder beats, set who matters, choose where the story lands, and ask Alcove to expand a season or suggest a plot point. The AI proposes a first draft; you steer. Every edit is versioned, and prose generation always follows the current outline.

Choose your ending sets the outline's destination — where the long arc is headed. You can change it mid-story; unresolved episodes re-plan around the new landing.

The outline knows the whole shape of your story, so it is spoiler-bearing. Your spoiler mode controls how much future structure you see — from hidden destinations in Blind Mode to the full plan in Showrunner Mode.

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 and the outline's upcoming episodes.

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 it, or describe something else entirely. When Alcove is producing the chapter, you can steer the intent in the assistant or paste path. 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 — exactly the moments worth branching a Test Save for.

Branching timelines — try a direction, keep your canon

To explore a what-if without risk, branch a Test 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. Take it a different direction for a few chapters and compare. When a direction wins, promote it to become your Main Save; otherwise archive it.

Draft is not canon until you lock it.

The key promise: a Test Save never modifies your Main Save. Promoting is always additive — your original timeline is kept as an alternate route, never overwritten.

Over MCP you can branch a save at any locked chapter — the recovery path for a lock you regret — and promote a winning save when its direction proves out.

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.