About Kostry
Collaborative branching fiction
Kostry is a collaborative branching-fiction platform where a story is a tree, not a line.
Any reader can write the next chapter starting from any existing chapter. When several people continue the same chapter differently, all of those continuations are published side by side instead of one replacing the others. The story's author chooses which continuation becomes the official mainline — and the alternates stay readable forever as parallel versions of the same story.
The problem Kostry solves
Every story has moments where it could plausibly go two ways, and conventional publishing forces the author to discard one of them. Readers feel this constantly — the chapter where a character makes the wrong choice, the ending that lands flat, the subplot abandoned halfway. On most platforms the only response available is to write a separate fan-fiction that almost nobody connects back to the original.
Kostry keeps the fork inside the work. The moment a reader finishes a chapter is the moment they most want to know what happens next — and that is exactly where the platform offers them every path already written and a button to write another one.
How branching works
Every chapter is a node in a versioned tree, and every node carries an address that tells you where it sits:
- CanonicalThe mainline path. Chapters the story author has accepted as official, addressed with numbers like
1,2,3.1. This is what a reader follows by default. - AlternateA parallel path. A different continuation of the same parent chapter, written by any reader, addressed with letters like
3.Aor3.B. Permanent and fully readable — not a draft, not a rejection. - PendingA merge request.A contributed chapter awaiting the story author's decision. Accepting it promotes it onto the canonical mainline; declining it leaves it published as an alternate branch.
The complete tree for any story is browsable as its branch map, which shows every node, every fork, and who wrote each one.
How Kostry compares to linear story platforms
Platforms like Wattpad, Archive of Our Own, and Royal Road publish linear stories: one author, one chapter sequence. Derivative work exists, but it lives as a separate story that readers have to find on their own, and the connection back to the original is social rather than structural.
| Aspect | Linear platforms | Kostry |
|---|---|---|
| Story shape | A fixed sequence | A tree with many valid paths |
| Who writes next | The original author only | Any reader, from any chapter |
| Competing versions | Separate, disconnected works | Published side by side in one work |
| Canon decided by | Nothing — there is only one version | The story author, via merge requests |
| Attribution | Per story | Per chapter, to its individual writer |
Frequently asked questions
What is Kostry?
Kostry is a collaborative branching-fiction platform. Unlike a conventional story site where one author publishes chapters in a fixed sequence, a story on Kostry is a tree: any reader can write the next chapter starting from any existing chapter, and multiple competing continuations of the same chapter are published alongside each other rather than one replacing the other.
What is a canonical branch on Kostry?
The canonical branch is the mainline timeline of a story — the sequence of chapters the story's original author has accepted as the official version. Canonical chapters carry plain or dotted numeric addresses such as 1, 2, or 3.1. When a story author accepts a reader's contributed chapter, that chapter is promoted onto the canonical branch.
What is an alternate branch, or fan-fiction branch?
An alternate branch is a continuation of a chapter that is not part of the official mainline. Any reader can write one from any chapter without needing permission, and it stays published permanently next to the canonical continuation. Alternate branches carry letter addresses such as 3.A or 3.B. They are not drafts or rejected submissions — they are parallel versions of the story that readers can follow to the end.
What is a merge request on Kostry?
A merge request is how a reader-written chapter becomes part of a story's canonical branch. When a contributor submits a chapter to a story that requires approval, it is held as a pending merge request. The story's author can accept it, which promotes the chapter onto the canonical mainline, or reject it, in which case the chapter remains available as an alternate branch.
How is Kostry different from Wattpad, Archive of Our Own, or Royal Road?
Those platforms publish linear stories: one author, one sequence of chapters, with derivative works living as separate stories that readers must find independently. On Kostry the branching is native to the work itself. A chapter and every competing continuation of it share one URL structure, one branch map, and one reading experience, so a reader reaching the end of a chapter sees every path the story can take next and can write another one.
Who owns a chapter written on Kostry?
Each chapter is attributed to the individual writer who wrote it, and that attribution is shown on the chapter page, in the branch map, and in the page's structured data. Contributing a chapter to someone else's story does not transfer authorship of that chapter; it adds a node to the story's tree under the contributor's name.
Do I need an account to read stories on Kostry?
No. Every published story, chapter, and branch map is free to read without an account. An account is only required to write chapters, contribute continuations to other people's stories, or interact with likes, bookmarks, and comments.
What is a branch map or universe on Kostry?
The branch map, shown at the /universe path of any story, is the complete tree of every published path through that story. It displays each chapter as a node, shows which chapters continue from which, and distinguishes canonical mainline chapters from alternate branches, so a reader can see the whole shape of a story at once and jump to any point in it.