Safety & the Fantasy Contract
How Alcove keeps your story safe by default — fiction can go deep, you stay in control, and safety is never paywalled.
Alcove is built for stories that go somewhere — tension, stakes, heartbreak, high drama. The fantasy contract is our promise about how those stories go there: the difficult themes you want stay on the table, and the ones that would just hurt stay off it unless you deliberately invite them in.
The app proposes; the writer steers.
What the contract is for
Good fiction explores hard things. Alcove won't flatten your world into something toothless — drama is supposed to bite. The contract simply makes sure the bite comes from the right place, and that nothing painful happens to your story by surprise.
By default, Alcove keeps a protective set of guardrails on so the AI's suggestions don't blindside you. You don't have to configure anything for this; it's just on.
Where good drama comes from
When Alcove proposes a next move, it reaches for tension that earns its weight rather than cheap shocks:
- political pressure and the cost of power
- duty versus love
- jealousy, rivalry, and forced proximity
- misunderstanding and slow-burn emotional conflict
- danger, capture, and real stakes
What it won't spring on you — among other protective defaults — are things like a love interest's sudden death, an irreversible betrayal, a tragic ending out of nowhere, or cruelty for its own sake. Those don't appear unless you ask for them.
You set the tone
A simple romance and drama dial lets you steer how intense your save file feels, from Soft to Balanced to High Drama, with a separate Dark opt-in for heavier territory. Turn it up when you want the gloves off; leave it gentle when you don't. The choice is yours, per save file, and you can change it.
Nothing is canon until you lock it
Even with the dial turned up, a draft is only ever a proposal. You read the chapter and its state updates, then approve, tweak, or drop anything before it becomes real.
Draft is not canon until you lock it.
This is your strongest safety control: if a draft heads somewhere you didn't want, it simply never enters your story.
Safety is never paywalled
Safety, your boundaries, and your story's basic memory are part of Alcove for everyone — no plan, no credits, and no upgrade gates them. We will never charge you to keep your story safe.
Your story remembers itself, and it stays yours — written the way you choose to write it.