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)

• 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)

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