End Matter

About the Author

Brian Edwards is a software engineer and writer based in Waco, Texas. He builds things with generative AI agents.

How This Book Was Made

This novel was written in a single session with Claude Opus 4.5, Anthropic's generative AI model, on December 27, 2025. The following describes the exact process.

The Planning Phase

The human provided three planning documents:

taste.md - A research document defining the prose style. Two authors were studied: Franz Kafka for structural method, Karl Ove Knausgaard for sentence-level technique. The document contained specific, actionable instructions. For Kafka: climax in the opening sentence, limited perspective, world-building through exclusion, unresolvable conflict, bureaucracy as antagonist. For Knausgaard: flatness over elegance, embrace of cliche, loping sentences, mundane detail, speed through density, anti-Proust forward motion.

rough_ideas.md - A list of 326 world concepts. Each world required a distinct scenario. The human generated these ideas and provided them to the agent.

outline.md - An execution plan organizing the 326 worlds into 14 chapters across 7 acts. Tables specified world ranges, themes, and writing instructions. The document included rules: transformation already complete at opening, establish world through what the protagonist doesn't know, present unresolvable demand, end incomplete.

The Writing Phase

The agent wrote one chapter at a time. Each chapter contained 15-26 worlds. Each world ran 500-800 words. The agent followed the outline exactly, writing world by world, applying the style constraints from taste.md.

The agent used a todo list to track progress. Items marked: "Write Chapter 1 (Worlds 1-15)" then "Write Chapter 2 (Worlds 16-30)" and so on through Chapter 14.

Each world followed a structure: - Open with the situation already transformed - Establish the world through dialogue and description - Show the protagonist attempting to navigate the situation - End before resolution

The agent did not deviate from the outline. The agent did not add commentary or meta-text. The agent wrote the worlds in order, from 1 to 326.

The Editing Phase

After completing the 326 worlds, the agent made a second pass. The editing focused on:

- Tightening prose by 15-20% - Converting flowing sentences to fragments where appropriate - Removing redundant dialogue attributions - Strengthening opening lines to place the climax first - Varying sentence structure to reduce repetitive patterns - Adding references to the protagonist's accumulated memory across realities

The agent read chapters from the beginning, middle, and end to identify patterns. Edits were made systematically: Chapter 1 first, then Chapters 2-4, then 5-7, then 8-10, then 11-14.

The Technical Details

- Model: Claude Opus 4.5 (claude-opus-4-5-20251101) - Interface: Claude Code CLI - Session length: Single continuous session - Output: 14 markdown files, approximately 180,000 words total - Time: Approximately 4 hours of agent execution

What the Human Did

The human: - Wrote the three planning documents - Provided the initial prompt - Monitored progress - Requested the editing pass - Requested this end matter and format conversion

What the Agent Did

The agent: - Read and interpreted the planning documents - Wrote 326 worlds following the outline exactly - Tracked progress with a todo list - Made editing passes to tighten prose - Created front matter and end matter - Converted to multiple formats

Reproducibility

The same output would not be produced by running this process again. Generative AI produces different text on each run. However, the structure would be identical: 326 worlds, 14 chapters, following the outline, applying the style constraints.

The planning documents are available in the plan/ directory of this novel's source files.

Colophon

Set in the reader's default system font.

Produced using Claude Code.

First published December 27, 2025.

Brian Edwards Waco, Texas December 2025