Docs/Overview

Overview

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

Workload is your project's shared world knowledge — the lore, facts, history and rules that many NPCs draw on. Upload a document once, decide who can read it, and it becomes part of the world your characters live in.

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.

Workload

Project-level documents shared with many NPCs at once — the common world brain, managed from its own dashboard page.

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 Workload for anything more than one character should know — kingdom history, faction politics, 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 so NPCs can recall 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 An unpublished document is a draft no NPC can read.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