Docs/Overview

Overview

What World Knowledge is: a project-wide library of lore, facts and rules you can share with many NPCs. Learn how it differs from per-NPC knowledge, what audiences and visibility mean, how the draft → Deploy staging model works, and what is available today.

World Knowledge is your project's shared library of lore, facts, history and rules. Upload a document once and decide which NPCs have access to it.

Note
This page covers uploading documents, audiences, access rules, publishing, and Deploy. NPCs do not use these documents in conversations, so put knowledge a character must use in chat into that NPC's own Knowledge layer.

How it differs from per-NPC knowledge

Mistscale has two knowledge layers. They look similar but solve different problems:

Per-NPC knowledge

Up to 3 files attached to one specific NPC, inside the NPC editor. This is that character's personal memory.

World Knowledge

Project-level documents you can share with many NPCs at once, managed from the World Knowledge page in the dashboard.

Audiences

Named groups of NPCs (e.g. guards, tavern_folk) so you assign a document to a group instead of one NPC at a time.

Tip
Use World Knowledge for anything more than one character should know, such as kingdom history, faction politics, and shared rules. Keep truly personal details (a character's own backstory) in the per-NPC Knowledge layer.

Core concepts

Document
A piece of world knowledge (a .txt or .md file). It is ingested, split and embedded when you upload it.
Audience
A reusable group of NPCs. Assign a document to an audience and every member can read it.
Visibility
Either Everyone (all NPCs) or Restricted (only the audiences/NPCs you choose).
Published
Whether the document itself is live. An unpublished document is a draft no NPC can read.
Activated
Whether the access grants are live. Pending grants are staged; active grants are effective now.

Who can read it: Everyone vs Restricted

  • Everyone — every NPC in the project can read the document. Best for shared, public world facts.
  • Restricted — only the audiences and individual NPCs you assign can read it. Best for secrets, faction-only lore and hidden quest clues.
Heads up
A Restricted document with no audiences or NPCs assigned is readable by no one. After uploading a restricted document, open it and assign at least one audience or NPC.

Staging: draft now, go live later

Publishing and activating are separate on purpose, so you can prepare a whole batch of content quietly and flip it live in one move. Two switches control this:

  • Make it readable now (publish) — off by default. While off, the document is a draft nobody can read.
  • Turn on access now (activate) — off by default. While off, the access grants are staged as pending.

When you're ready, the Deploy button publishes every draft and activates every pending grant across the project in a single action — your "ship it" button.

Note
Grant status is colour-coded throughout the dashboard: amber = pending (staged, not yet readable) and green = active (readable now).

Where to next