First move
Tell the reader what to notice
stat-band, thesis, a concise chart.
Stories tell.
What does a Story motif look like when the real renderer draws it?
This Story is unlisted infrastructure. Every section below is authored in ordinary Musewoods Markdown and rendered by the production pipeline; the Developer Guide shows the source beside the result so the relationship between the two is never a matter of trust.
Developer Guide
One vocabulary, drawn by shape drawn by shape
A motif is named for what it looks like, not for the section that uses it. Any section can use any motif.
Movements 01–03 read as a short narrative. Movement 04 is a deliberate reference stack.
Begin01
Narrative motifs
The Story sets a scene and holds a line.
title-block opens an act; lede and lead carry opening prose; prose is the body measure.
The opening paragraph of an act can take a drop cap. A lede is ordinary prose with that one typographic difference, used where an act wants a formal beginning rather than a running start.
A lead sets its opening prose large without the drop cap — the same job as lede, one register quieter, for acts that begin mid-thought.
Body copy sits at reading measure. A prose block is the default shape a section falls to when it carries paragraphs and nothing tells the renderer otherwise, and it is the block every other prose motif is a variation on.
A frame is bounded editorial prose for a single proposition that should be read as an intact unit — no list, no fragmentation, one idea with a border around it.
The turn
A panel carries the weight of its act.
Where an `aside` is quiet, a `panel` is the section's main statement.
A panel takes a label, a title, a premise, and prose, and it is allowed to be the most prominent thing in the act.
A pull-quote lifts one phrase out of the prose for emphasis, using the shared quote type scale.
A thesis is a ruled quote shell — the same type scale as the pull-quote, given a rule and a little more gravity.
Signal · Pattern · Evidence · Provenance
An interlude renders inside another act.
interlude is a section with **Within:** pointing at a real chapter's anchor: it renders where it is declared, nested inside that chapter, separated by a rule rather than starting a new ground. A motif names a reusable editorial or analytical responsibility, not the section that first happened to need it — the same vocabulary serves a Narrative aside here or a Reference footnote elsewhere, unchanged.
02
Editorial motifs
The Story argues in structured moves.
summary maps the argument; evidence fixes one proof point; stat-band is a row of figures; editorial-cards are peer ideas.
2.1
A subhead opens a section one level down.
The same parts as a title-block, for an interlude or a nested act.
Three moves
A summary is an executive argument map: two to eight titled moves, each with optional number and note. It is never navigation.
State the signal
What should the reader notice first.
Show the pattern
Where the structure is.
Make it inspectable
The evidence a reader can check.
Peer objects
Last move
Make the interpretation inspectable
drilldown, ledger, note-list, source.
Narrative
Read as a story
A switcher is a tab strip plus one open panel, keyed on the item's name — never its position — so a saved tab still resolves after a reorder.
A callout places an argument beside its terms.
A callout is a two-column composition: prose in the wider column, a short nested block — most often chips — in the narrower one.
Signal · Pattern · Evidence
03
Shared media motifs
The Story pauses on an image, a voice, a sequence.
feature-band, quote-panel, and reel are one shared contract expressed in Story voice.
The shared layer landed across three fields
One normalized model, one renderer. The field owns only spacing, width, and accent — never the behaviour.
A quote-panel gives a whole voice room to speak; a pull-quote only lifts a phrase. They do different editorial jobs, and a Story keeps both.
The shared motif layerlib/motifs
A manual image sequence inside Story flow. Autoplay is off by default.
Where it started.
01
Author
Author writes Markdown
What does the author express?
02
Parse
Parser builds a node tree
What shape did they write?
03
Render
Registry renders the motif
What does Musewoods draw?
04
Reference stack
The rest of the collection motifs, in one place.
Each block below is the smallest valid example of its motif.
Roster item
A roster repeats items, each rendering its own fields, prose, and children.
Second item
Items are items only when each carries copy of its own.
Stacked row
Phase I
Tall ruled rows with an index column: the item's key, its timeframe, then the passage.
Second row
Phase II
The index column is the running key.
A dated row
2024
Ruled rows keyed by a timeframe in the left column.
A later row
2026
The timeframe is the key.
Short pairs
Title plus explanation
A ruled row of a short title and a line about it.
Another pair
Kept compact by design.
Comparison
Story
Grove
First person, narrative.
Grove
Institutional, place-making.
lib/render/motifs.mjs
Grove
lib/groves/motifs.mjs
A duo card
Two-column grid of short title-plus-note cards.
Its partner
Exactly two, side by side.
Signal · Pattern · Evidence · Provenance · Ground · Palette · Motif · Registry
- Discover the file
- Parse to a node tree
- Validate against the registry
- Render the motif
Essay
01
Long-form entries carry their own premise and question.
essays is for reasoning that needs room — a title, a premise, body prose, and a closing question.
QuestionWhen does a note need to become an essay?
An essays collection is the motif for that longer form, one entry at a time.
01
Musewoods RepositorySource
Representative notechannels is for outward publication rows — the motif Living Content latest-link enrichment attaches to.
References
Numbered references, not cards.
- A bibliography entry is an unclamped title link over a muted metadata line.
Musewoods Press · 2026
- 01
Story
First comparator
- 02
Grove
Second comparator
rollis a ruled, numbered register — quieter thanroster, keyed by the item itself rather than a title.
Observe
Name the condition before proposing a change.
Resolve
walkthrough pairs a short label with one passage per ruled step — narrower and quieter than sequence.
02
Result
Panel behaviour is identical to switcher; only the tab presentation differs.
02
Wide
Best for a small number of substantial, equally weighted choices.
EXHIBIT
exhibit frames one sourced presentation
Comparison Source
A small comparison, framed by the exhibit below.
Trait
Note
Shape
Note
Reusable structure.
Name
Note
A responsibility, not a section.
The analysis-grid above is not rendered twice — exhibit borrows it by **Source:**, framed with its own title and caption.
Source: Developer Guide specimen
End of specimen
Back to the Guide
Developer GuideThis Story is exercised by the Developer Guide's coverage tests. If a public Story motif loses its specimen here, CI fails.