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User Guide: Validation and Impact Analysis

PlotKing's validation system ensures that edits to one section don't break continuity in the rest of your story. When you modify a chapter, the system analyzes the impact and can automatically generate updated drafts for affected sections.

What Validation Does

When you validate a draft, PlotKing runs three analysis steps:

  1. Change Detection -- compares your draft against the checkpoint to identify meaningful semantic changes (ignoring trivial differences like whitespace)
  2. Structure Validation -- (for Chapters Overview only) checks that chapter numbering is correct and no chapters were accidentally added or removed
  3. Impact Analysis -- determines which other sections (Expanded Plot, Chapters Overview, other chapters) are affected by your changes

Triggering Validation

You can trigger validation from several places:

  • View mode -- click Validate Draft when viewing a draft
  • Manual mode -- click Validate after editing
  • Rewrite mode -- click Validate after a rewrite
  • Chat mode -- validation actions appear after a draft is created

Validation Results

After validation completes, you'll see one of these outcomes:

No Changes Detected

Your draft has no meaningful differences from the checkpoint. No further action needed.

Changes Detected, No Impact

Your changes are self-contained and don't affect other sections. You can apply them directly.

Changes Detected, With Impact

Your changes affect other sections. The validation panel shows:

  • A summary of what changed
  • A list of impacted sections (e.g., "Chapters Overview", "Chapter 5", "Chapter 8")
  • Action buttons to proceed

Responding to Validation

After validation completes, four action buttons appear:

Apply

Click Apply to have PlotKing automatically generate adapted drafts for all impacted sections. The system processes them in order:

  1. Expanded Plot (if impacted)
  2. Chapters Overview (if impacted)
  3. Individual chapters (in numerical order)

Each adapted section is saved as a GENERATED draft. If no sections are impacted, Apply saves the changes directly to the checkpoint.

Regenerate

Click Regenerate to re-run the validation analysis (useful if the results seem incorrect or you want to re-check after further thought).

Back

Click Back to dismiss the validation panel and return to the editing mode you were in (Manual, Rewrite, or Chat), keeping your draft intact for further editing.

Discard

Click Discard to dismiss the validation panel and discard the validation session drafts (GENERATED, ORIGINAL, CHAT). Your USER and FILL drafts are preserved -- only the validation-related drafts are removed.

Draft Review Panel

After Apply runs, GENERATED drafts appear for each impacted section. The Draft Review Panel lets you manage these drafts.

Reviewing Drafts

For each impacted section, you can:

  • Switch to the section using the section dropdown
  • Use View > Checkpoint to see the original
  • Use View > Draft to see the generated adaptation
  • Use View > Diff to compare them side by side

Accepting and Rejecting

The Draft Review Panel shows three lists:

  • Original Draft -- the section you originally edited (checkbox, usually pre-selected)
  • Drafts To Commit -- AI-generated adaptations for impacted sections
  • Drafts To Keep -- drafts you want to keep as USER drafts instead of committing to checkpoint

You can move drafts between the "Drafts To Commit" and "Drafts To Keep" lists using the arrow buttons. Drafts in "To Commit" will be saved to the checkpoint; drafts in "To Keep" will be promoted to USER drafts for further editing later.

Actions:

  • Accept All -- saves all drafts (original + generated) to the checkpoint
  • Revert All -- discards all generated and original drafts, preserving only USER and FILL drafts
  • Accept Selected -- saves selected drafts to checkpoint and promotes "Drafts To Keep" to USER drafts; unselected drafts are discarded
  • Regenerate Selected -- re-runs the adaptation pipeline for selected sections from the "Drafts To Commit" list

Selection helpers (per list): Select All / Unselect All buttons for quick bulk selection.

Force Edit

Force Edit bypasses validation entirely and writes the draft directly to the checkpoint. Use this when:

  • You're confident the change doesn't affect other sections
  • You want to make a quick fix without waiting for validation
  • The section is isolated (e.g., minor wording changes)

Force Edit is available in:

  • View mode (for USER and FILL drafts)
  • Manual mode
  • Rewrite mode

Overview-Specific Validation

When editing the Chapters Overview, an additional validation step checks:

  • Chapter numbering -- ensures chapters are numbered sequentially
  • Additions/Deletions -- detects if chapters were added or removed
  • Structural integrity -- verifies the overview follows the expected format

If structural issues are found, you'll see specific error messages and the validation stops before impact analysis. Fix the structural issues first, then re-validate.

Tips

  • Validate after every significant edit to catch continuity issues early
  • Use the Diff view to carefully review AI-generated adaptations before accepting
  • For minor edits that clearly don't affect other sections, Force Edit saves time
  • If the AI-generated adaptation for a section isn't good enough, you can reject it and manually edit that section yourself
  • The impact analysis considers narrative dependencies, so a change in Chapter 3 might impact Chapter 7 if they share a plot thread