Check the manuscript against settled facts

Canon is what your story says is true. Settle a fact (Mira · hair · auburn) and Asten weighs every later page against it. If chapter 19 says black, you get a red mark with both sides, never a rewrite.

Try the pre-alpha How Asten works

In short

Canon checks in Asten compare your manuscript against facts you have settled. A fact is an entity, a predicate, and a value, with a status, a modality, an optional span of story time, and a source. When two confirmed facts disagree, or the page says something different from what you settled, Asten marks it in red with code CANON-E013 and shows both sides. Asten reads plain attributes from your prose with fixed rules, not a model, and keeps dialogue, belief, dreams, visions, and frame stories in contexts of their own.

Facts with a source

Every fact records where it came from, so a mark can show you the sentence that settled it.

Statuses you control

Proposed, confirmed, deprecated, rejected. Confirmed against confirmed is an error, the page against a confirmed fact is a warning, and a clash that is only possible is information.

Room for lies and legends

Dialogue, belief, dream, vision, and frame stories are separate contexts. What a character says or dreams never contradicts the world, and contested facts stay quiet. A memory is weighed at the story time you give it.

Change over time

Give a fact a valid-from and valid-to in story time, and a dyed head of hair stops being a contradiction.

Stable codes

Every mark carries a code, like CANON-E013, that means the same thing every time.

Silence with a reason

Suppress a mark or a whole rule. Suppressions are stored with the project, so the decision is remembered.

Example: an attribute check

Your page

Mira pushed her black hair out of her eyes and listened for the bell.

Your canon

Mira · hair · auburn

settled in chapter 2

CANON-E013Mira’s hair was settled as auburn.

① Settled: Mira · hair · auburn
② Chapter 19 says: “black”
③ No event between an unplaced time and day 40 changes Mira’s hair.

Most likely slip: ② (93%)

What does “canon” mean in Asten?

In fandom, canon means what the source material says is true. In Asten it means the same thing for your own book: the details you have decided are true, recorded as facts.

Entity: Who or what the fact is about: Mira, the harbor at Veld, Captain Oren’s sword.
Predicate: The attribute: hair color, status, birthplace.
Value: What is true: auburn, dead, Veld.
Status: Proposed, confirmed, deprecated, or rejected. Only confirmed facts produce errors.
Modality: Established, inferred, contested, or author override. Contested facts stay quiet.
Story time: An optional valid-from and valid-to, for facts that change during the book.
Context: World, narration, dialogue, belief, memory, dream, vision, frame, or hypothetical. World, reliable narration, and memory (at the story time you give it) count against canon; the rest do not.

What does a mark look like?

A mark is short and specific. It names the rule, quotes both sides, and lists what you can do. It does not tell you which side is right, because only you know that.

CANON-E013Mira’s hair was settled as auburn.

① Settled: Mira · hair · auburn
② Chapter 19 says: “black”
Most likely slip: ②
Add an event · auburn holds until day 39 · Retire “auburn” · Silence this mark · Keep my sentence

Two confirmed facts that disagree over overlapping story time are an error. The page disagreeing with a confirmed fact is a warning: worth a look, not a verdict. A clash that is only possible, because a scene’s time is uncertain, is information; a merely proposed fact speaks only at the Thorough setting. Every mark reads as a numbered chain (①②③), names the statement most likely at fault, and lists repairs you own: add a change event, mark the scene a memory, retire the fact, or keep your sentence.

How do facts get into canon?

Add them directly in the cast or canon views.
Settle a world entry. Moving it from sketched to settled can mint a confirmed fact.
Add a fact with the status proposed to park it: it can raise a warning at most, never an error, until you confirm it.

Asten reads the page, not your mindThe reading is deterministic: fixed rules over words and cues, no model. It attributes an observation to a name in the same sentence, so a pronoun on its own is not weighed. Anything inside quotation marks counts as something a character says, not as world truth. What Asten reads (hair, eyes, height, age, where someone is, alive or dead, who is married to whom) is weighed against your canon and never stored as a fact; only you settle canon. You can also type an explicit reading into the prose, such as [[mira.hair_color=black]], and Asten weighs it the same way.

What if the contradiction is on purpose?

Unreliable narrators, lies, disguises, and legends are part of fiction. Mark a fact as contested and it stays on file without raising errors. Deprecate a fact you’ve abandoned. Or silence the mark for that passage, and the decision stays with the project.

About canon checks

How does Asten know a sentence contradicts my canon?

Asten compares the facts you have settled with each other, and compares them with plain attributes it reads from your prose (hair and eye color, height, age, location, alive or dead, relations), each attributed to a name in the same sentence. It uses deterministic rules, not an AI model.

Can Asten handle a character who changes over the story?

Yes. Give a fact a valid-from and valid-to in story time, and Asten only compares facts whose spans overlap, so auburn hair before the dye and black hair after it are not a contradiction.

Can I turn off a canon check in Asten?

Yes. You can suppress a single mark or a whole rule, and the suppression is stored with the project. The attribute check belongs to the Scribe pack, which is always available, but any individual mark can be silenced.

Other features

The desk Cast Two clocks World The compiler Method packs Word & Google Docs Local-first

Try the pre-alpha

Open the workbench in your browser on a sample novel, or download release 0.0.1b for Windows or Linux.

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