Imported from Thedougler/ai-co-dm (.agent/skills/session-beats/SKILL.md). Install upstream with npx skills add Thedougler/ai-co-dm --skill session-beats. Copyright stays with the author.

Session beats

Use a Beat Chart as a pacing palette, never as a script. Prepare pressures, factions, clues, locations, offers, and hazards that can become beats. Let what players do select which prepared situation fires, what it means, and whether a new situation replaces it. Never force the next scene because a slot is empty.

Pressure-point installation

Choose the pressure mode deliberately. Mystery hides information so the players dig; surprise hides the bomb until it goes off; suspense reveals that a bad thing is already moving and puts weight on choices under a fuse. For sustained tension, install suspense rather than defaulting to mystery or surprise. A pressure point is ready when the threat is visible enough to act on, the fuse advances without permission, the clean answer remains uncertain, and every response costs something.

Run the chart

1. State the promise and starting situation. Name the experience, question, pressure, and player-created goals that matter now. Keep hidden truth, mechanics, clocks, and unused possibilities in GM notes.
2. Set a flexible budget. Treat roughly 30 minutes of real play as one Beat. Reserve Hook, Climax, and Resolution for about 90 minutes together; fill additional time with alternating Development/Cliffhanger pairs. Adjust for table speed, not the clock alone. Each live beat that run-guide will render carries Scene ends when plus two cut lines: If behind (what to skip so the beat still ends) and If ahead (one extra complication only if it is fully inlined). run-guide builds that beat in two passes: mechanical cockpit plus empty titled [!narration] stubs, then TotM fill. A Hook with a cover endpoint does not also run unbounded travel; the walk to the next landmark is the next beat (Sly Flourish: Watch the Time).
3. Prepare situations, not outcomes. For each candidate, record trigger, actors, stakes, visible information, fuse, costs, at least two viable responses, and what changes afterward. For a suspense candidate, require three materially different response paths, a delay consequence, and a partial success shape. Mark the candidate as a Hook, Development, Cliffhanger, Climax, or Resolution only when it fires.
4. Fire one Hook at the start. Present an actionable problem, offer, threat, discovery, or opening. If the Hook is action-heavy, make the next beat a Development; if it is cerebral or conversational, make the next beat a Cliffhanger. Offer choices whenever the fiction allows them.
5. Alternate the middle. Use Developments for non-action change—clues, talk, revelation, planning, or character change. Use Cliffhangers for action, peril, pursuit, fights, ambushes, and immediate obstacles. Do not place two Developments or two Cliffhangers consecutively. A player-caused pause, detour, or departure is not a license to force the next prepared beat.
6. Recompute after every beat. Update actors, knowledge, resources, routes, clocks, relationships, and player goals. Drop obsolete candidates, promote emergent situations, and change labels or order as the new state demands. Treat a failed beat as a real world change, not a cue to replay it.
7. Build fair obstacles. Put enough clues in the current or earlier fiction for a Trap or Puzzle to have a solution; provide multiple approaches where possible. Resolve Contests with transparent player skill, choices, or rolls, never GM fiat. Give players a chance to notice Betrayal or Sabotage before it becomes irreversible. Keep Second Chance, Back from Dead, and Heroes Escape rare, costly, and unable to erase meaningful consequences.
8. Escalate pressure without stacking fights. Advance visible clocks and change the problem when players delay; do not turn an undisclosed trigger into a hidden punishment. Early opposition may be weak, partial, or avoidable; later opposition may be tougher or more consequential. Keep Cliffhangers short and legible, save the strongest pressure for the Climax, and interleave social, investigative, travel, and recovery beats.
9. Earn the Climax. Before an action Climax, end the preceding beat with a Development; before a cerebral Climax, end it with a Cliffhanger. Define the Climax as the highest-stakes confrontation the players' choices made inevitable. Negotiation, retreat, prevention, sacrifice, or reframing can be the climax; do not require a final battle.
10. Resolve the changed world. Follow Climax with one Resolution. Show the consequences of player choices, including costs, altered relationships, opened routes, unresolved danger, or new opportunities. Make any sequel follow the fiction; do not preserve an antagonist merely to demand a rematch.

Agency gates

• Prepare situations and clocks, not required outcomes.
• Reveal a moving threat before asking players to pay for choices; hide the clean answer, not the problem.
• Accept clever solutions that were not prepared; update the world and let the opposition adapt later.
• Offer two or more meaningful options when the fiction supports them: routes, alliances, bargains, fights, retreats, investigation, or refusal.
• Let players ignore a Development, fail a Cliffhanger, or pursue a goal they create. Apply visible consequences and recompute; do not hide a correct path.
• Let the chart shrink, branch, pause, or end early when the new state warrants it.
• Make player-facing prose a theatre-of-the-mind pass 2 fill of the empty stubs run-guide placed. Use dungeon-design for sites, routes, pressure procedures, and decision graphs. Retrieve setting canon with qmd-retrieval; if the vault is silent, use a marked stub rather than inventing canon. Never paste WotC proprietary text.

Beat order audit

Before play, write Hook → (D/C pairs as needed) → Climax → Resolution and mark whether the Hook, each transition, and the Climax prelude satisfy the polarity rules. During play, cross out or rewrite candidates after each recompute. A chart is healthy when it creates pressure and openings without deciding what players must choose.

Read references/agency.md for the recompute loop and anti-railroad tests. Use references/beat-types.md for practical cards, then copy references/session-skeleton.md for preparation. Run evals/evals.json against drafts.

Session ritual

Pre-session (30-40 minutes): review PC goals/abilities and attach at least one possible limelight moment to each PC; pick a strong purposeful start from the cliffhanger or agreed plan; prepare a floating bank of about ten secrets/clues; write a hiccup list; keep a parachute file of off-map one-shots; and leave the chart as a skeleton. Prep only what is uncomfortable to improvise, as modular pieces findable in under 30 seconds.

In session: use shorthand, keep clocks/fronts visible as scales, and give players useful roles (watcher, caller, mapper, negotiator, recorder) when a procedure benefits from them. If an optional recording exists, route it through session-transcript-ingest; never make a transcript the session plan or handoff.

Table-craft gates

Practice silence discipline: state the actionable situation, ask what the players do, and wait. Do not panic-fill a quiet table; players learn that play advances when they act. If they choose not to act, show the visible consequence of inaction and return the decision, rather than inventing a rescue or forcing a beat. Keep the flexible prep toolbox ready so waiting is safe for the DM.

Before play, audit: spotlight players, pause when they should drive, build rails from stated PC backstory and public stakes, honor the agreed tone, frame one striking image with visible energy, and ensure every choice or silence has an echo in the fiction. Cinematic framing never moves secrets or DCs into [!narration].