ludo-npc-ai

A story deserves more than a wall of text

NPCs AI Studio turns a story outline into a visible authoring workspace. Establish the world's facts, build a cast, place characters in scenes, connect dialogue choices and rehearse what the player encounters. Use it for RPG quests, interactive fiction, narrative prototypes and NPC dialogue planning.

Your own AI can prepare the material through the bilingual Skills, or revise marked dialogue through local MCP. The built-in model connection can also generate focused candidates. Every workflow leaves you in control of the final text.

World brief → Characters → Scenes & appearances → Dialogue & events → Review → Rehearsal → Handoff

Inside the workbench

01 · Direct the scene

Arrange appearances along scene tracks and story time. NPC groups collect background characters while keeping each member's profile and dialogue independently editable. Muted green groups, plum events and copper character controls make the canvas easier to read.

02 · Write the branch, then try it

Connect dialogue cards and player choices. Put availability conditions beside the response that needs them, and see why a choice is unavailable. In temporary card play, adjust the player's test state and continue from the current card.

03 · Walk through the story

Global rehearsal presents a scene story flow: enter a location, read environmental text, approach an available character and choose a response. Advance story time and inspect the events, character state and available text on the bottom timeline. Source links take you back to the authoring material.

Your AI, working alongside your workbench

Use the AI assistant you already work with. The Skills explain how to translate prose into the tool's world, cast, scenes, relationships, appearances, events and dialogue structures.

Add one complete Skill folder to your AI tool's supported Skill location, or provide its SKILL.md and referenced resources as context. Choose the language you prefer; both packs have equivalent capabilities and include a bridge, Schema and runnable examples.

Try a prompt like:

Use the NPCs AI Studio Skill to turn this story into a new local project.
Start with one level, two scenes, a healer and a two-person background NPC group.
Give each NPC their own dialogue. Add a treatment choice gated by player injury.
Validate the project and rehearse both injured and healthy paths.
Explain your assumptions and tell me where to open the result.

An AI tool with local execution can use the bridge to validate, import and submit drafts. A cloud chat without access to your computer can prepare files for handoff; it cannot directly operate your local workbench. The bridge itself makes no model requests and does not need a platform API key. Supported collaboration Windows builds offer NPCsAIStudio.exe --skill-bridge; the standalone helper uses Python 3.10+.

Revise dialogue with your local Codex or Claude Code

Mark the dialogue in the editor, then ask your own agent to read the task. Local MCP provides the exact card IDs, saved text, world brief and relevant character/scene context. You can revise scattered cards together without copying passages, JSON or screenshots between tools.

Connect once

Open a saved project and choose Agent collaboration → Connect Codex / Claude. Merge the generated configuration into your client's MCP settings, keeping existing connections. The editor supplies the actual Python/executable path, service URL and project ID.

Your client starts the local stdio adapter; keep the editor running and the configured project open. No cloud server deployment or additional workbench model key is needed for the connection. Your agent uses its own model/account. Update the configuration when the project or local service address changes. Source checkouts use scripts/npcs_mcp.py; newly built Windows packages can use NPCsAIStudio.exe --mcp.

Mark → Read → Propose → Review

1. Edit and mark. In the role canvas or Quick text, choose Mark dialogue and select Current text, Selected cards or Entire dialogue flow. Shift-select cards on the canvas or use the task checkboxes. A flow includes disconnected branches and authored ending lines; one task can cover up to 200 cards.
2. Create the task. Write your instructions and choose Save and create collaboration task. This saves a local task; it does not automatically send a message to your agent. Ask the agent to read it in your own chat.
3. Submit a candidate. The agent reads the exact task and submits text changes through MCP. Candidates appear in Agent collaboration → Agent tasks and Draft Review.
4. Review each card. Compare original speech and player choices with the candidate, edit if needed, then adopt or reject. Adopting one card preserves other cards already reviewed.

For example, tell your agent:

Read the latest collaboration task in NPCs.
Use the world and character context to make the dialogue voice consistent,
while preserving the story information.
Only revise marked NPC speech and player-choice text. Submit candidates for review.

Specify the task ID when several tasks are active. This workflow changes text only: speakers, card titles, connections, conditions, effects and stable IDs remain intact. Changes to the author baseline require a fresh comparison. Existing projects remain readable without migration.

Finished tasks can be deleted quickly, with immediate undo or restoration from Deleted. Deletio