Payoff Debt System v2.1

The story owes its reader things. This system tracks what is owed, when it was promised, and whether it has been paid — so that long novels do not quietly accumulate unkept promises.

Types

Register every meaningful obligation with a stable ID:

PROMISE, FORESHADOW, MYSTERY, CHARACTER_SETUP, RELATIONSHIP_SETUP, CONSEQUENCE, WORLD_SETUP, POWER_SETUP

What to record

For each obligation: stable ID, type, origin (where and when it was created), expected payoff window, dependencies, priority, status, and disposition rationale. Record in obligations/OBLIGATION.md and index it in obligations/INDEX.md.

Status: OPEN, FULFILLED, TRANSFORMED, ABANDONED, BLOCKED.

A TRANSFORMED obligation has been honoured in a different form — a promise answered with a different question, a setup paid off by reversal. This is legitimate and often better than a literal payoff, but it must be recorded as a decision, because nobody reviewing the novel later will be able to infer that a promise was consciously kept in altered form.

Detection