Long stories drift. Understanding why makes it controllable.

What the AI actually sees

Recent scenes are sent in full. Older ones are compressed into summaries. Beyond that, nothing. The Memory Length slider decides where that line sits — 15 to 150 scenes, defaulting to 35.

Every scene held in full is re-sent on every turn, so memory length is also your largest ongoing cost.

Editing is the real tool

Summaries are not locked. Open Settings, find the summary, change it. Whatever is written there is what the story carries forward — so a summary is less a record than a set of instructions about what mattered.

Character memories work the same way, per character.

Practical habits

• After a major turn, check the summary caught it. Fix it if not.
• Write consequences, not events: "she no longer trusts him" beats "they argued".
• Prune contradictions as they appear, rather than letting them compound.

Note: if the AI keeps forgetting a betrayal from scene 12, writing it into the summary fixes it permanently. Repeating it in the story input only fixes it for one turn.