liminal-union

Liminal Union Development Skill

Overview

This skill provides comprehensive guidance for AI assistants working on the Liminal Union Wesnoth add-on. It condenses the project's canon, lore, terminology, and workflow rules to ensure all generated content is accurate, consistent, and error-free.

Authority Hierarchy

All work must follow this strict precedence order (per docs/genai/GenAI_GUIDE.md):

1. /docs/canon/CANON_LOCK.md (highest authority — binding; wins all conflicts)
2. /docs/canon/STYLE_GUIDE.md (binding for tone, diction, terminology)
3. /docs/lore/HISTORY.md
4. /docs/lore/LORE.md
5. /docs/genai/GenAI_GUIDE.md (method file; does not create canon)

/docs/lore/SUMMARY is supplementary narrative.
GenAI support files (including this skill) are derivative and must never override canon.
Files that do not exist and must not be cited: TERMINOLOGY_LOCK.md, DIPLOMATIC_MATRIX.md, any docs/design/ path.

Core Faction Principles

The Liminal Union is an ancient southern commonwealth centered on Sayyon/Salem, characterized by:

• Anti-sorcerous agency: Forbids living spellcraft, hereditary magic, necromancy; permits lawful artifice, arcane matter, bound cores.
• Civic lawfulness: Public corps over feudal retinues; disciplined craft over occult cults.
• Threshold civilization: Ancient yet reforming, stern yet open, shaped by crossings of peoples and ideas.
• Founding character — the open threshold: Sayyon was built by peoples who fled tyranny and hereditary oppression. The law of the open threshold — mutual obligation to neighbour, stranger, and former enemy — is a foundational civic pillar. A fund of common provision (relief, shelter, support for the injured) is a standing public obligation under law, not charity. The lowborn hold full civic standing; the compact makes no birth distinction before the law.
• Universal education and mandatory literacy: Compulsory schooling for all children regardless of birth, class, or wealth; reading and writing are treated as the minimum equipment of a free citizen, withheld from none. The Halls of Inquiry in Sayyon are the oldest institutions of higher learning on the Great Continent, open by merit. Knowledge is civic property; the Union's people are unusually literate and capable through centuries of open public instruction.
• Universal military service: All citizens hold civic defense obligation (draft); rank by merit and oath, not birth. Even scholars and artificers serve. Military service is a mark of civic belonging.

Agent Roles and Behaviors

These roles are workflow guidance distilled from project practice. They do not create canon.

Canon Steward

• Purpose: Verify canon compliance
• Must: Identify contradictions, prefer uncertainty over invention
• Must not: Create new canon or harmonize incompatibilities

Lore Writer

• Purpose: Write faction descriptions, history, dialogue, flavor text
• Must: Use authoritative, archaic, civic Wesnothian voice; preserve Union as ancient, anti-sorcerous, lawful
• Must not: Use modern political labels, science-fiction diction, or turn Union into parody

Terminology Clerk

• Purpose: Vocabulary cleanup and harmonization
• Must: Use controlled terms like "anti-sorcerous", "warform", "Quickbound Golem"
• Must not: Force out legacy labels from technical contexts

Wesnoth WML Assistant

• Purpose: Produce conservative, maintainable WML/Lua code
• Must: Preserve namespace discipline (LIUN_ prefixes), existing structure, reuse conventions
• Must not: Invent WML tags, undocumented attributes, or assume refactors

Review Auditor

• Purpose: Code/documentation review and critique
• Must: Cite concrete problems, distinguish error types, identify canon/style issues
• Must not: Overstate certainty or report preferences as errors

Writing and Coding Rules

Safe Terminology (from STYLE_GUIDE.md)

Concept	Preferred
doctrine	anti-sorcerous; Ban on Living Spellcraft; hostile to living spellcraft
craft	lawful artifice; disciplined craft; lawful inquiry
materials	arcane matter; Arcanite; Pyrite; Kryonite; Uranite; bound core; sealed core; radiant core
polity	commonwealth; public corps; civic law; charter; compact
warforms	warform; Quickbound Golem; Corebound Warform
records	annals; sealed annals
stable place names	Sayyon / Salem
Ruby of Fire (Sayyoni)	Scarlet Faerie Stone

• Controlled exceptions (technical/UI/legacy contexts only): G9, NCM, AI, engineering/technology
• Avoid in lore prose: anti-arcane (if implying hostility to matter), cyborg/robot/android/AI/mechatronics, software/hardware/interface/protocol/algorithm, revolutionary, intersectionalist, fascist-like, socialist, free-market social-state, leader-principle, politburo, contemporary military slang

Tone Requirements

• Ancient rather than futuristic
• Civic rather than courtly
• Severe rather than flamboyant
• Rational without clinical sound
• Wesnothian rather than science-fictional
• Lawful, historical, institutionally self-possessed

Technical Guardrails

• Repository structure: Preserve existing layout (units/, macros/, factions/, etc.)
• Namespace: Maintain LIUN_ prefixes, avoid collisions
• Uncertainty marking: Use # [NEEDS REVIEW — uncertain WML/canon/terminology/style]
• Conservative changes: Smallest safe edits preserving functionality
• No invention: Never create unsupported WML, macros, file paths, or lore claims

Output Modes

• Canon check: Status (safe/drift/contradiction) + Why + Fix
• Lore drafting: Framing + polished prose + assumptions noted
• Technical drafting: Objective + code/patch + uncertainties + compatibility
• Review: Assessment + critical/important/minor issues + next actions

Workflow Protocol

For Any Task

1. Classify: Canon-sensitive, lore-writing, design-writing, code-facing, or review
2. Read upward: Check highest-authority files first
3. Draft conservatively: Minimal changes preserving canon/tone/terminology
4. Self-audit: Check for contradictions, drifts, inventions, modern framing
5. Propagate: Update dependent files if canon changes

Conflict Resolution

• Higher-order file prevails
• Mark lower-order content as stale
• Revise rather than compromise

Uncertainty Handling

• Prefer explicit uncertainty over confident invention
• Mark with review tags
• Stop drift early

Faction Pillars (Writing Guidance)

• Maiden Corps: Precision and anti-sorcerous arm; disciplined, exact, high-status public soldiery; severe, mobile, intelligent
• Marine Corps: Keepers of coasts/crossings/ports/river-gates; disciplined endurance, formation sense, practical command
• G9 Warforms: Ancient warforms — G9 Quickbound Golems directed by Neural Curie Mainframes (NCM). In lore prose: old golem-tech, lawful war-artifice; sealed, bound, inspectable; not sci-fi robots
• Phoinix Messengers: Living emblems of renewal/transition/memory; symbolic, civic, and military role; not deities, pets, or mascots

Diplomatic Baselines (from CANON_LOCK.md and LORE.md)

Power	Union Judgment
Crown-Realms of the Burning Standard	Lawful near-kindred, yet compromised by crown, sanctified power, and tolerated magi
Sun-Scar Necrodominion	Metaphysical affront to renewal and civic life — no concord
High Courts of Evercrown	Ancient and subtle, yet bound to blood and inherited gift
Emirates of the Veiled Moon	Disciplined and capable, yet constrained by sacred hierarchy and inherited standing
Horde-Realms of the Iron Banner	Strength without law
The Dominion	Caste and blood hardened into public order
Red Dawn Commonwealth	Equality hardened into doctrine
Vampire covenant (if in use)	Corrupted but non-necromantic; tolerable only under strict law

Necromantic doctrine is never tolerated under any framing.

Forbidden Inventions

• Union as anti-arcane in substance
• Rejection of Arcanite/bound cores/lawful artifice
• Ruby crisis (Scarlet Faerie Stone affair) as the origin of the Union's military order
• Union as analogue for a specific real-world ideology, state, religion, or historical regime
• Phoinix as deities
• G9s as sci-fi robots in lore-facing prose
• Normalizing necromancy within Union public life
• Moral equivalence of Loyalists and the Undead
• Inventing WML tags, macro names, or file paths not present in the repository
• Citing non-existent files (TERMINOLOGY_LOCK.md, DIPLOMATIC_MATRIX.md, docs/design/)

Validation Checklist

• Controlling file checked first
• No lower-order override of higher-order canon
• No forbidden diction in lore prose
• No sci-fi/real-world ideological framing
• Uncertainties marked, not hidden
• Downstream syncs identified

Purpose

This skill ensures AI assistance is reliable under canon, tone, terminology, and repository constraints — prioritizing accuracy over creativity to maintain the integrity of the Liminal Union setting.</content> <parameter name="filePath">/home/verwalter/.local/share/wesnoth/1.19/data/add-ons/Liminal_Union/.github/skills/liminal-union/SKILL.md