Feature Spotlight: Inside the Librarian

How the Librarian writes a card for everyone you meet, and why it now understands what you mean, not just the exact words you use.

The Timekeeper · 2026-09-30

Over the last few weeks we've talked a lot about the Ledger and how it tracks your inventory, injuries and exits.

But a living world is more than inventory. It's deep lore, hidden factions and interconnected histories. AI models can't hold a whole world's lore in their working memory without slowing to a crawl and costing a fortune. To solve this we rely on a background system we call the Librarian, which retrieves exactly the lore that matters, and the lore connected to it, each turn.

The Librarian has been running since day one. One of its most powerful, and we still believe unique, features is creating a lore card for an NPC the moment they enter the story. You never have to pause to write character sheets for the bartender or the street thug: the Librarian watches the story, picks out the details and builds the card for you in the background.

Recently, though, we gave it a major upgrade, so it understands what you're talking about even if you don't use the right words.

The problem with keyword search

Until now, the Librarian searched by exact words. If you typed "I inspect the glowing blade", it looked for "glowing" and "blade". If the lore card was saved as "Excalibur: a shining sword", it missed it completely, and the AI made something up instead. Keyword search is rigid: it doesn't understand context or synonyms.

Searching by meaning

We've upgraded our database to search by meaning. When a lore card is created, it's converted into a mathematical fingerprint of what it's about. When you type "that strange contraption on the deck", the Librarian finds the cards whose meaning is closest, recognises that "strange contraption" is very close to the "militaristic radio mast" card, and fetches it instantly.

The best of both

We didn't throw out keyword search entirely, because sometimes you do need an exact match for a name. The Librarian now runs both searches at once, checks the results, and hands the right lore cards to the storyteller just before it writes its next paragraph. It doesn't have to guess, and you don't have to remember exactly how to spell a character's name.

Have you ever had an AI game butcher a world's lore because you didn't use exactly the right term? Tell us on Discord.

In the manual: The Librarian · Memory & Context · The Directory

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