---
name: rough-outline
description: "Draft the rough outline of a film on untitled.movie, the shape of the story in sequences or acts, built on canon and the answered gatekeeper questions and written as an outline document with its holes marked. Use when the author asks for an outline, a structure or the acts of their story."
---

# Rough outline

The shape of the story in sequences or acts.

## Before you start

Work in a session: unless one is open in this conversation, call `start_session` with the author's request as `trigger` and read the brief it returns. You propose, the author decides.

## Steps

1. Build the outline on the touchstone, the canon and the answered gatekeeper questions. Where a gatekeeper question is still open, outline around it or show both branches. Don't decide it.
2. If the project already has an outline (`list_documents`), ask the author whether to revise it or to write a second version. Don't overwrite it.
3. Write it as a document with `create_document`, kind `outline`, in the project's language: one heading per sequence or act, and a few sentences each on what happens, what changes and whose turn it is.
4. Mark holes in the text, for example `[HOLE: why does she stay?]`, instead of filling them with inventions.
5. If the project has a roadmap: set the station `rough_outline` to in progress with `update_station` unless it already is, and add what you made with `add_outputs`. Leave marking it done to the author.
6. Tell the author which canon labels each part rests on, which holes matter most and what you would ask them.

If the author asks for something different from these steps, do what the author asks.