Continuity check: the principle
What is this about?
The Illuminatio Engine checks with fixed rules whether your story fits the facts you have recorded yourself. Every hint names the objects involved and can be traced. The engine points things out and does not judge; you decide.
Protection goal
Contradictions in long stories should stand out, for example in locations, times, ages, abilities, possessions and knowledge. Your text and data should stay unchanged in the process.
How it works
The path is the same for every check: your entries from worldbuilding and the timeline go into fixed rules, and where a rule triggers, a hint with a reason is created.
- Hint instead of verdict: Every finding is a hint (flag). You decide whether it is a mistake, whether it is intended or whether you ignore it. The engine changes neither text nor data.
- No data, no check: Where entries are missing, the engine makes no statement. “No findings” therefore does not mean everything is fine. The check coverage shows where gaps are.
- When in doubt, in your favor: If a scene is dated only as a time span, the engine reports only what would not fit at any point of the whole span.
- Presence counts: For location collisions and travel times, characters marked as present in the scene count, not mere mentions.
- Left out: Scenes you mark as non-canonical (for example with an unreliable narrator) and sandbox branches are not checked against the objective canon in most checks.
- Optional: All fields are optional, and all core functions of Illumentis work without the engine.
The engine works rule-based. At the moment Illumentis has no AI features. As of October 2026.
Measures
- We rely on fixed, traceable rules so that every hint can be explained.
- We show every check with the objects involved, so that you can open it in worldbuilding or in the text.
- We provide the check coverage so that gaps become visible instead of an empty result being read as an all-clear.
- Every check rule has a functional test. Another test searches the code for rules that have none.
- The check runs online. Without a connection, Offline Validator Lite checks only simple writing mistakes.
What we do not promise
- The engine does not find every contradiction and judges neither the style nor the quality of your text.
- For travel times it says what would not be possible, not whether a schedule is realistic.
- Hints are suggestions. A hint can also be intended.
- We deliberately do not describe details of the check rules and their thresholds here.
How we check this
The check rules are safeguarded by functional tests, which the table below names. This article describes the principle and not details of the rules.
Evidence tests
| Test | What the test proves |
|---|---|
ContinuityDetectorFunctionalCoverageTest |
Every check rule of the Illuminatio Engine has a functional test, and a test finds rules without one. |
FunctionalCoverageManifestTest |
Every requirement in the product specification has at least one test that explicitly covers it. |
Change history
- : First version.