AI novel writing agent 🤖 Turns your idea into a complete first draft using Gemini. Features outlining, auto-writing, interactive AI editing, and CLI control. 📚✍️

📚 pulpgen: Your Ghostwriter in the Machine - An AI Novel Drafting Agent

What is it? pulpgen is a command-line tool that uses AI (Google Gemini) to automatically write a complete first-draft novel based on your idea/prompt. It handles outlining, chapter writing, and interactive AI-assisted editing.

⚡ Quick Start

1. Install: Requires Python 3.13+ and uv.

   # Clone or download the code first
   cd pulpgen
   uv sync
   

2. API Key: Create a .env file in the pulpgen directory with GEMINI_API_KEY=YOUR_KEY_HERE API Key can be created in Google AI Studio: https://aistudio.google.com/app/apikey

3. # Example using a prompt file:
   uv run python pulpgen.py --prompt your_idea.txt
   # Or run without --prompt to enter idea interactively
   

4. Run (Resume Project):

   uv run python pulpgen.py --resume path/to/your/project_folder
   

5. Output: Finds/creates a project folder (like YYYYMMDD-slug-uuid) containing XML state files and the final manuscript in final.html.

Usage

Launch the pulpgen agent from your terminal within the project directory:

uv run python pulpgen.py [OPTIONS]

Command-Line Options:

• --resume FOLDER_PATH: Point to an existing project folder (e.g., 20240315-space-opera-saga-f3a4b1c9) to continue a previously started job.
• --prompt FILE_PATH: Provide the path to a .txt file containing your book idea. This is only used when starting a new project (ignored if --resume is used).

Project Files

pulpgen keeps its work organized in a dedicated project folder (e.g., 20240315-robot-romance-a1b2c3d4):

• YYYYMMDD-slug-uuid/ (Project Folder): The main case file, named with the date, a slugified title, and a unique ID.
• outline.xml: The initial blueprint. Contains metadata (title, synopsis, your idea), character profiles, and chapter summaries gen