Lore CI: Treat Your World Bible Like Code (and Stop Shipping Plot Holes)

•Urdr Team

Software teams don’t rely on memory to keep large systems correct.

They use CI (Continuous Integration): automated checks that run every time the code changes.

Worlds are systems too.

If your story spans months of writing, dozens of locations, factions, rules, and historical events, you are maintaining a living system — and you need something like CI for lore.

We call it Lore CI.

The Problem: Canon Breaks Quietly

Most continuity errors aren’t dramatic.

They’re small and invisible until a reader (or a player) spots them:

  • a character’s age changes
  • travel time doesn’t match geography
  • a faction suddenly has resources it never earned
  • a magic rule is violated because it would make the scene easier

When this happens repeatedly, trust erodes.

Lore CI in 5 Steps

This is the simplest “CI pipeline” you can run today.

1) Define Canon as Facts

A fact is a statement you can verify.

  • "Teleportation requires line of sight"
  • "The Crown Guard controls the north gate"
  • "Asha was born in 1062"

If a statement can’t be checked, it isn’t a continuity anchor.

2) Store Facts Where You Can Retrieve Them

If your canon is scattered across:

  • a doc
  • notes
  • chat logs
  • notebooks

…you can’t reliably check anything.

Pick one home. Better yet, store canon as structured entities and attributes so it’s searchable and queryable.

3) Run “Checks” on Every Change

Every time you add a new scene, chapter, or lore update, check it against:

  • timeline (dates, ages, durations)
  • rules (magic/tech/laws)
  • geography (distances and travel)
  • relationships (who knows what, who hates whom)

4) Treat Exceptions as Design Decisions

If you break a rule, you have two choices:

  • the rule was wrong → update it
  • this is a true exception → document the exception

The worst option is “ignore it and hope nobody notices”.

5) Keep a Small “Failure Log”

When a contradiction is found, write down:

  • what conflicted
  • what you changed
  • what is now canon

This prevents the same mistake from coming back in Book 2.

Where Tools Help (Without Killing Creativity)

The hard part isn’t writing.

The hard part is remembering everything you wrote six months ago.

Urdr is built to store worldbuilding as structured entities (Actors, Groups, Locations, Objects, Systems, Events, Species). On top of that, we’re building a Consistency Engine that can surface relevant prior facts when you add new ones — so contradictions are caught earlier.

If you’ve used developer tools, you already understand the value:

  • you still write the code
  • but the checks help you ship without breaking the system

A Practical Starting Point

If you want to adopt Lore CI with minimal overhead:

  • Start tracking only: Characters, Rules, Timeline, Places
  • After each writing session, add 3–10 facts that changed
  • Once per week, run a “canon review” and resolve conflicts

Next Step

If you want your world bible to behave like a system you can trust: