How branching works
Canonical branches, alternates, merge requests
On Kostry, a story is a tree of chapters rather than a sequence. This page explains how that tree is addressed, who controls which parts of it, and what happens when two people write the same chapter differently.
Reading a branching story
You read a Kostry story the way you read any other — start at chapter one and continue. The difference appears at the end of each chapter, where instead of a single “next” link you see every continuation that exists. Mainline continuations are marked Mainline; reader-written parallel versions are marked Alternate.
To read the author's official version, follow only the mainline. To read a different version of events, take an alternate at any fork — it will have its own chapters, its own forks, and possibly its own ending.
Writing a continuation
- 1Open any published chapter and choose to write the next episode from it. You can branch from any chapter in any story, not only the newest one.
- 2Write your chapter. It becomes a child node of the chapter you started from, and it is attributed to you.
- 3If the story allows direct contributions, your chapter publishes immediately as an alternate branch. If the story requires approval, it becomes a pending merge request instead.
- 4The story author reviews pending merge requests. Accepting one promotes your chapter onto the canonical mainline. Declining leaves it published as an alternate branch under your name.
- 5Either way your chapter stays readable, and other readers can continue from it — including continuing your alternate branch further.
Glossary
- Chapter address
- The identifier shown on every chapter, such as 1, 3.1, or 3.A. The leading number is the chapter's depth in the story — how many chapters deep this path runs. A dotted number such as 3.1 marks a canonical fork; a letter such as 3.A marks an alternate branch.
- Canonical branch
- The official mainline of a story, controlled by the story's author. When a story author writes a chapter directly, or accepts a contributor's merge request, that chapter joins the canonical branch.
- Alternate branch
- A permanent, fully readable continuation of a chapter that is not on the mainline. Anyone can write one from any chapter without approval. Alternate branches can themselves be continued, so an alternate can grow into a long path of its own.
- Merge request
- A contributed chapter submitted for inclusion in a story's canonical branch. It stays pending and unlisted until the story author accepts it (promoting it to canon) or rejects it (leaving it published as an alternate branch).
- Branch map (universe)
- The complete tree view of a story showing every chapter as a node, every fork, and the author of each chapter. Reachable from any story at its /universe path.
- Open ending
- A chapter with no continuations yet. Every open ending is an invitation: it is a place where the story genuinely stops and the next reader decides what happens.
Common questions
What do the numbers in a Kostry chapter address mean?
The leading number is how many chapters deep the path runs — chapter 3 is the third chapter along its path. A dotted suffix such as 3.1 indicates a canonical fork, created when a chapter already has a canonical continuation and another is added. A letter suffix such as 3.A indicates an alternate branch written by a reader outside the mainline.
Can I continue a story without permission from its author?
Yes. Writing an alternate branch from any published chapter requires no approval — it publishes immediately alongside the existing continuations. Approval is only involved when a contributor wants their chapter to become part of the canonical mainline, which happens through a merge request the story author reviews.
What happens to my chapter if the story author rejects my merge request?
Nothing is deleted. A rejected merge request means the chapter does not join the canonical mainline, but it remains published as an alternate branch under your name, readable by anyone and open for other readers to continue.
Can an alternate branch have its own alternate branches?
Yes. Branching is recursive. Any chapter, canonical or alternate, can be continued by anyone, so an alternate branch can grow into a long path with its own forks. This is why a mature Kostry story is a tree rather than two or three variants.
How do I read only the main version of a story?
Follow the canonical branch. A story page lists canonical chapters in order by default, and every chapter page marks its continuations as either mainline or alternate, so reading only the mainline gives you the author-approved version of the story from beginning to end.