What is a world package?

A world package is a folder. It holds the setting and content of one world: what kind of place it is, which characters and rules it has, where the story begins, and which plugins it wants to be played with. Covel reads this folder and can start a game from it.

A world package has content only, and no code. You do not need to know how to program to make a world.

What is in a world package

my-world/
├── world.yaml           identity, languages, plugin set, character attributes
├── WORLD.md             the world's setting text, which the model reads every turn
├── data/                optional: lorebook, rules, quests, items and other data
├── characters/          optional: preset characters
└── media/               optional: cover, portraits, scene pictures

Only the first two files are required. The rest are optional. You can play without portraits, and you can play without preset characters.

File	The question it answers
world.yaml	What the world is called, which language it uses, which plugins start on, and which attributes characters have
WORLD.md	What the world is like, and where the story begins
data/	What material can be looked up during play, and which quests, items, and relationships exist from the start
characters/	Which characters are already set up
media/	What the world looks like

How worlds and plugins work together

A world does not implement gameplay. It chooses gameplay. The pluginPolicy in world.yaml says which plugins the world wants on, for example the narrator, dice checks, and a quest log. The player can adjust this choice on the session-prep screen.

A world can also prepare data for plugins. A quest plugin receives the starting quests, an inventory plugin receives the starting items, and an affinity plugin receives the starting relationships. You put the data files at the agreed paths, and the matching plugin reads them when it is turned on.

So the same world can be played in very different ways. With only the narrator on, it is an interactive novel. Add dice, quests, and an inventory, and it becomes a tabletop role-playing game.

Four ways to make one

Way	Good for	How to start
Create with AI in the app	Getting a playable world quickly	"AI Create World" on the world selection page. Fill in a creative brief
Import SillyTavern content	Existing character cards or lorebooks	Import guide
Write the files by hand	Full control over the content, or learning the package structure	The first world
Have a development agent write it	Working in the code repository with tools such as Claude Code	The repository includes a /create-world skill. See Use a development agent for tasks

All four ways produce the same kind of world package, and you can switch between them and keep editing.

In this chapter

Page	What you get
The first world	A world you can import and start, written in four files, in about twenty minutes
Art direction	A single visual style for the world, and what to check before you hand it off
Character portraits	Portraits generated for characters, shown in the game
Scene pictures	Day and night scene pictures for locations, used as backgrounds in stage mode

What to do next

What you want to do	Where to go
Preset quests, items, and affinity	Give the world preset quests, items, and affinity
Starting point buy and dice checks	Starting point buy and dice checks
Publish a world together with the plugins it needs	Collections

Find the details

What you want to look up	Reference page
How data files are imported, and what can be preset	World data
All the fields of world.yaml	world.yaml field table
The structure of characters, attributes, and the lorebook	World model
World state that changes as the story goes on	Dynamic dimensions
Time passing, and day and night	World time
Providing a second language	Multiple languages