---
name: worldbuilding
description: Designing coherent fictional settings - premise and scope, the worldbuilding iceberg, rules of the world, geography, history, cultures, factions, economy, technology or magic, internal consistency rules, and a world bible - for games, film, animation, and books. Load when inventing a setting, writing a world bible, checking a world for contradictions, deciding how much to build, or supplying setting facts to story and design work.
---

# Worldbuilding

Story track: `worldbuilding` -> `narrative` -> `character-design`. Visual track: `creative-direction` -> `art-direction` -> `visual-development`. Setting facts feed both.

## Purpose
Create a world consistent enough to generate stories, characters, and visuals without contradiction, building only what the work needs.

## Inputs
- Creative brief, tone, and pillars (`creative-direction`).
- The kind of stories the world must support.
- Source material or real-world inspirations.

## Framework
1. **Premise**: the one change or "what if" that makes this world different.
2. **Scope**: decide how much to build. Use the iceberg: the audience sees the tip; the submerged part (history, causes) exists to keep the tip consistent. Build deep where stories will happen, shallow elsewhere.
3. **Rules**: how the world works - physics, magic or technology, its costs and limits. Limits create tension; unlimited powers remove stakes.
4. **Place**: geography, climate, resources; how these shape settlement and conflict.
5. **People**: cultures, beliefs, language flavour, daily life, power structures, factions and what each wants.
6. **History**: a short timeline of events that explain the present, plus open tensions.
7. **Consequences**: for each major rule or feature, ask "and so what changes?" (economy, law, class, food, war).
8. **Consistency rules**: list canon facts, terms, and naming conventions; mark facts as fixed, flexible, or unknown.
9. **Story hooks**: conflicts and mysteries the world naturally produces.

## Output
```
WORLD BIBLE
Premise:
Tone and scope (deep / shallow areas):
Rules and limits:
Geography and climate:
Cultures and factions (wants, conflicts):
Timeline (key events):
Daily life and economy:
Consistency rules / glossary / naming:
Canon status (fixed / flexible / unknown):
Story hooks:
```

## Quality checklist
- The premise's consequences are traced through society, not only spectacle.
- Rules include costs and limits.
- Factions have conflicting, understandable goals.
- Canon facts are recorded and non-contradictory.
- Detail is concentrated where stories will use it.

## Anti-patterns
- Encyclopedia before story: lore nobody will encounter.
- Single-trait cultures (one planet, one personality).
- Rules invented on demand to rescue a plot.
- Copying a real culture as costume without its logic.
- Exposition dumps instead of revealing world through character and action.

## Handoff
- World bible -> `narrative` for plot built on its conflicts, and `character-design` for people shaped by their culture.
- Environmental and cultural facts -> `art-direction` and `visual-development`.
- Vision conflicts return to `creative-direction`.