The original title is: The engineering problem hiding inside "AI writes a book"

Short summary

Generating books with AI looks simple in demos but requires sophisticated systems engineering. The core problem isn't prompt quality—it's orchestration (decomposing work into constrained stages) and state management (tracking facts across chapters to prevent contradictions). These patterns generalize to legal documents, courses, and documentation.

• •Decompose long-form generation into smaller, tightly-constrained steps: outline → character bible → chapters → reconciliation
• •State management and consistency checking are 80% of the work; the generation prompt is only 20%
• •Pattern generalizes beyond books to legal drafts, course material, and documentation

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.