A modular, agentic AI RPG. Compose mechanics as plugins and ship settings as portable world packs.
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Covel is an AI RPG framework and playable studio where NPC relationships, lore, quests, inventory, memory, stage direction, and media can evolve between turns. Its architecture has three clear layers: the kernel provides primitives and orchestration, plugins provide behavior, and world packs provide settings, resources, and a default plugin composition.
Current public release: v0.0.28, early access. APIs, world data, and plugin manifests may change between versions. Current binaries target macOS Apple Silicon and Windows x64 and are unsigned; read
docs/CHANGELOG.mdand back up custom content before upgrading.
- 🎭 Stage mode — a full-screen visual novel: scene backdrops, character sprites, typewriter dialog, and choice overlays. Backdrops for brand-new locations are generated on demand, mid-session.
- ⚙️ Composable plugin runtimes — combine LLM agents, deterministic functions, UI panels, data schemas, events, and lifecycle hooks in one capability-driven pipeline.
- 🎲 RPG mechanics built in — pre-rolled dice checks with visible receipts, an auto-tracked quest log, a player-managed inventory, and per-NPC affinity meters. All optional plugins; worlds can seed quests, gear, and starting affinity.
- 🧩 Plugins stay replaceable — the kernel discovers
capabilitiesandoutputKind; framework code does not branch on concrete plugin IDs. - 🌍 Portable world packs — bundle lore, character schemas, cast, rules, memory blocks, quests, items, portraits, scenes, and plugin defaults behind one
WorldDataimport protocol. - 🔄 One shared WorldIR — a post-turn fact projection lets quests, inventory, affinity, the codex, and relationship plugins reuse the same evidence instead of independently re-reading the story.
- 🔌 Bring your own model — OpenAI / Anthropic / DeepSeek / Qwen model slots. Local-first: SQLite on disk, API keys never persisted server-side.
| Stage mode (visual novel) | Story mode (text) |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| Backdrops, sprites, and typewriter dialog; scene art resolves and generates as you explore | Classic narrated turns with suggested actions, inline forms, and the per-turn agent timeline |
Worlds declare their default (defaultViewMode: stage); you can switch any time in-session.
| Layer | Owns | Typical contents |
|---|---|---|
| Kernel | Stable primitives and orchestration | scheduling, context assembly, tools, proposals, validation, persistence, rendering |
| Plugin package | Reusable gameplay behavior | agent/function runtimes, UI, schemas, tools, events, projections, lifecycle hooks |
| World pack | Portable setting and product composition | lore, characters, rules, plugin policy/settings, memory blocks, world data, portraits, scenes |
The boundary matters: a world can select a different narrator or omit quests without changing the kernel; a plugin can work in many worlds without knowing their IDs; and a world author can add genre-specific data without forking a plugin.
A plugin is not necessarily one autonomous agent. It may contain one runtime, several cooperating runtimes, no LLM at all, or only a UI/data contract.
| Form | What it does | Bundled examples |
|---|---|---|
| Agent runtime | Uses a model for narration or structured extraction | narrator, codex, core-quest |
| Function runtime | Runs deterministic, zero-token game logic | pregame, dice-check/roller, scene-cast |
| Mixed package | Combines deterministic retrieval with agent extraction | npc-graph, dice-check, image-generation plugins |
| Lifecycle hooks | Applies cross-cutting policy around scheduling, models, tools, and commits | cost-gate, story-guard, director |
| UI and data contracts | Declares panels, memory blocks, schemas, or world-data targets | memory, character-blueprint, character-presence |
PLUGIN.md frontmatter declares scheduling, tools, events, capabilities, and outputKind (story, plugin, or system). For an agent runtime, its Markdown body is also the model instruction. A multi-runtime package keeps package metadata at the root and puts executable manifests under runtimes/*/PLUGIN.md:
plugins/npc-graph/
├── PLUGIN.md # package identity and shared metadata
└── runtimes/
├── rag-retriever/PLUGIN.md # deterministic pre-turn retrieval
└── extractor/PLUGIN.md # post-turn relationship agent
The kernel connects these pieces through declared capabilities and typed outputs. That is what makes a narrator, image provider, stage director, or rules system swappable without framework branches for a particular plugin ID.
A world pack is the portable content layer. world.yaml describes identity, locales, presentation, character attributes, memory blocks, and the desired plugin composition. WORLD.md provides canonical lore. data/world.data.yaml maps typed sources into world metadata, characters, lorebook entries, media indexes, or plugin-owned namespaces.
worlds/my-world/
├── world.yaml # identity, pluginPolicy, pluginSettings
├── WORLD.md # canonical setting and opening premise
├── data/
│ ├── world.data.yaml # ordered source → schema → target imports
│ ├── dimensions.yaml
│ └── rules/
├── characters/main-cast.json
└── media/
├── portraits/
├── scenes/
└── presence and scene indexes
pluginPolicy chooses a preset and marks plugins as required, recommended, or excluded; optional choices remain player-configurable. pluginSettings supplies world defaults below player overrides. memoryBlocks adds genre-specific memory such as clues, suspects, signal logs, or countdowns without modifying the memory system.
WorldData is the shared import protocol, not a second world format. Its sources can be YAML, JSON, Markdown, text, or media and can target canonical characters/lorebook data or a plugin namespace that explicitly accepts world data. The in-app AI builder produces the same standard package: it can generate the manifest, lore, dimensions, main cast, lorebook, and rules from a structured creative brief. File-backed packs can include full media; browser/store-backed generated worlds retain a portable text fallback while media remains file- or asset-backed.
Covel ships with zh-CN and en-US UI catalogs. The selected locale is used consistently for interface labels, plugin metadata and prompts, world metadata, character fields, and WorldData sources. Short natural-language fields use I18nText maps such as { zh, en }; longer content lives in locale-specific files:
apps/web/src/i18n/locales/ja-JP.json # application UI catalog
plugins/my-plugin/PLUGIN.ja.md # localized agent instructions
worlds/my-world/WORLD.ja.md # localized setting document
worlds/my-world/characters/main-cast.ja.json
worlds/my-world/data/rules/core.ja.yaml
World packs declare defaultLocale and supportedLocales. The loader first tries the current language variant and then falls back to the canonical source, so a partial translation remains playable. Mistport demonstrates a bilingual pack with localized lore, characters, rules, and media metadata. Emberback Relay is the built-in English-default world pack (defaultLocale: en-US), with its manifest, setting, cast, rules, quests, and other starting content authored in English.
Players, world authors, and plugin authors can follow the i18n guide to add another language. Full application support requires adding a UI catalog and registering its locale; content support adds translated I18nText values plus PLUGIN.<lang>.md, WORLD.<lang>.md, and WorldData source variants as needed. Only natural-language content is translated—stable IDs, capabilities, tools, paths, and scheduling remain canonical. Run pnpm check:i18n to validate the result.
The built-in Trace Inspector groups execution by session and turn, then exposes each runtime and every flow, LLM, tool, message, block, state, and hook event. Expand a runtime to see its call sequence, token counts, timings, tool arguments, and results; open an event to inspect request metadata, prompt messages, available tool definitions, and the raw payload. Separate Session Data and Cost views make the same workspace useful for gameplay QA, plugin authoring, and provider-cost analysis.
A risky action resolves against dice rolled before the narrator writes, so the outcome cannot be retconned to fit the prose — and the arithmetic posts inline: 19 + 2 = 21 vs DC 16. Quest progress, gear changes, and affinity shifts land in the turn the same way, then accumulate into their own panels. Dice, quests, inventory, and affinity are four separate plugins; a world seeds the opening quests, starting gear, and initial affinity, or ships without any of them.
Open a side panel mid-play and you are reading the state carried forward from the world pack and this session: core memory (running plot, current scene, player state), the NPC relationship graph, the world codex, and the on-stage cast. World authors can seed characters, rules, quests, items, affinity, and media; plugins keep that state evolving as you play, then feed the relevant parts back into later turns.
Download the macOS Apple Silicon or Windows x64 build from Releases, then: open Settings → paste an LLM API key → pick a world → play.
Your data lives in ~/.covel/ (config, keys, SQLite, custom worlds, logs). If config.toml redirects data_root, that separate directory also holds data. See the desktop config guide and docs/CHANGELOG.md before upgrading.
pnpm install
cp llm.toml.example llm.toml # model IDs and endpoints
cp .env.llm.example .env.llm # provider API keys
pnpm dev # web :5173 + server :3001 (SQLite)Open http://localhost:5173 — debug tooling lives at /debug. PostgreSQL, in-memory mode, and other knobs: env registry.
- Mistport Chronicles (雾港·裂潮纪) — dark-fantasy investigation in traditional-story mode. Its custom plugin pack, bilingual lore, investigation memory, cast blueprints, rules, and portraits show how a world can specialize the framework without forking it.
- Haruka Academy (遥风学园) — school ensemble romance in stage mode. Dialogue policy, character relationships, memory blocks, transparent sprites, and day/night scene registries turn the same kernel into a visual novel.
- Emberback Relay — an English-default (
en-US) science-fiction frontier mystery in traditional-story mode. A lonely relay on a tidally locked world receives a distress call in your own voice from seventy-two hours ahead. Seeded quests, inventory, affinity, rules, character blueprints, portraits, and five check attributes make it the RPG-suite reference pack.
Use AI Create World in the world picker to turn a creative brief into a validated, playable world pack. Choose traditional narration or character dialogue, then include the cast, lorebook, rules, genre memory, and opening configuration you need.
Repository authors can also use the bundled helpers:
/create-world— generate and validateworld.yaml,WORLD.md, and WorldData files for~/.covel/worlds/./create-plugin— scaffold the right combination of runtime manifests, handlers, schemas, tools, UI, and tests for a capability package.
An official hub for sharing plugins and world packs is on the roadmap — for now, share via Gist or fork.
- Plugin authoring guide — start here; bundled plugins under
plugins/are working references - Architecture & turn pipeline — how a turn flows through trigger → schedule → agents → commit
- Reference: plugin registry · tool registry · HTTP API · full doc index
pnpm workspaces + Turborepo · ESM-only · TypeScript strict · React 19 + Hono + Drizzle. Repo layout and package list → CLAUDE.md.
- Linux / Intel Mac builds (macOS arm64 and Windows x64 already ship)
- Official community hub for plugins and world packs
- Plugin marketplace inside the desktop app
Issues and PRs welcome — please read docs/CONTRIBUTING.en.md first. Releases are tag-driven: pushing v* builds and publishes the macOS and Windows installers via GitHub Actions.
MIT © 2026 Covel Contributors