Creative Writing Skills

Write novels, short stories, and serial fiction with AI that maintains your voice, tracks your continuity, and gets better the more you use it. From first brainstorm to polished draft: specialized agents handle each mode of work (writing, critiquing, revising, exploring) while shared skills carry the craft methodology.

What you get:

• Brainstorm without committing: explore plot options, character arcs, and world mechanics with multiple AI perspectives before deciding anything
• Write in your voice: create style files from your existing prose, then draft new scenes that match
• Catch your own mistakes: structured critique, continuity checks, and simulated reader reactions
• Keep everything in sync: knowledge base updates as your story evolves

Quick Start

1. Install for your environment: meridian-cli, Claude Code / Cowork or Claude.ai.

2. Run project setup once, before you write anything. Agents never start it for you; you do:

   Environment	Run
   meridian-cli	meridian bootstrap (runs automatically in your first session)
   Claude Code / Cowork	/creative-writing-skills:project-setup
   Claude.ai	turn on project-setup and ask it to set up your project

   It interviews you about the project, collects writing samples, and creates your AGENTS.md, the kb/ layout and your first style files. Every agent reads those, so skipping this step makes them guess your conventions.

3. Start writing with muse, your creative partner: meridian (meridian-cli), claude --agent creative-writing-skills:muse (Claude Code), or turn on creative-writing-muse (Claude.ai).

Installation

Mars (meridian-cli)

meridian mars add haowjy/creative-writing-skills
meridian mars sync

Then run meridian to start a meridian-cli session with muse. First-time setup runs the bootstrap automatically.

@writer defaults to Opus at high effort.

Claude Code / Cowork

Claude Code and Cowork use the same plugin format.

Claude Code: add the marketplace and install:

/plugin marketplace add haowjy/creative-writing-skills
/plugin install creative-writing-skills@creative-writing-skills

Cowork: in the sidebar, Customize → Personal plugins → + → Create plugins → Add marketplace → Add from repository, enter haowjy/creative-writing-skills, then install the creative-writing-skills plugin. (Same flow as Claude.ai below — Cowork just also runs the agents.)

Once installed, start a session with muse as your agent:

claude --agent creative-writing-skills:muse

Run the one-time project setup to create your AGENTS.md, kb/ layout, and style files:

/creative-writing-skills:project-setup

Claude.ai

creative-writing-muse turns an ordinary Claude chat into a creative writing partner. Turn it on, tell it what you're working on, and it carries you from first idea to finished draft in one conversation — talking through ideas, drafting scenes in your voice, flagging what isn't working, and revising. The other skills (prose, scene craft, critique, structure) are the craft knowledge it draws on; you don't have to invoke them yourself.

First, add the skills to claude.ai — pick one:

• Add the marketplace (easiest): in the sidebar, Customize → Personal plugins → + → Create plugins → Add marketplace → Add from repository, enter haowjy/creative-writing-skills, and click Sync.

• Upload the files: download the .skill files from the latest release, then Customize → Skills → "+" → Upload skill for each one.

Then start a chat, turn on creative-writing-muse, and describe what you want to write — it leads from there. Adding skills one at a time instead? Start with creative-writing-muse, writing-principles, creative-writing-craft, and story-review.

Run project-setup once before writing. On claude.ai it returns the AGENTS.md, kb layout, and style guidance as text to save; in Cowork it writes them into the project.

Want to build the files yourself? Clone the repo and run python scripts/create_skill_zips.py to regenerate them in zips/. It packages the committed plugin/claude/skills tree; run mars build plugin first if you changed a source skill.

How It Works

flowchart TB
    You([You]) --> M[muse]

    M --> Explore
    M --> Draft
    M --> Maintain

    subgraph Explore ["Explore & Plan"]
        direction LR
        B[brainstormer] ~~~ CS[character-sim]
        CS ~~~ O[outliner]
    end

    subgraph Draft ["Draft & Revise"]
        direction TB
        W[muse drafts, or writer] --> CR[critic lanes]
        CR -->|findings or editorial memo| W
        M -.->|pivotal scenes| RS[reader-sim]
        M -.->|canon check| CC[continuity-checker]
    end

    subgraph Maintain ["Knowledge"]
        direction LR
        KL[kb-lead]
        SC[style-creator]
    end

    Explore -->|direction confirmed| Draft
    Draft -->|decisions & facts| Maintain
    Maintain -.->|context for next session| Explore

Explore: Fan out brainstormers for creative variety. Spawn character-sims to discover voices. Use outliners to shape structure once a direction is chosen.

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗