I’ve been unusually quiet.
My last newsletter went out on 5 July, and then… nothing.
There is a reason.
If something catches my imagination, I have a hard time letting go until I make it happen.
This time, I really did not expect what was coming.
It started on a rainy afternoon in June.
Normally I ride my bike to work, but because of the rain I took the car. On the way home, I was chatting with ChatGPT and started playing with an idea for a science-fiction plot.
Nothing serious. Just trying to make a boring drive more interesting. A what if…?
By the time I arrived at home, the idea had hooks in me.
Over the following days I kept coming back to it, and before I noticed the experiment became a project. The project became an obsession. And less than two months later, I had written a novel.
Echoes
Echoes is a science-fiction novel about memory, remembering, and what remains.
It follows two people separated by an enormous span of time.
Elias is a researcher. An idea begins to take hold of him: how do you leave something behind when records fail, institutions disappear, and even the people who knew you remember differently?
Nia finds a pattern in the ground beneath a wetland basin that should not be there. Every attempt to explain it away makes the pattern harder to dismiss.
At the center of the story is one question:
What survives of us when memory changes, evidence disappears, and the people who inherit our stories no longer know what they were meant to mean?
Some places remember. Some choices echo.
And then the experiment became something bigger
I didn’t want to simply ask an ChatGPT: “Write me a book.”
That approach falls apart surprisingly quickly.
A novel contains hundreds of interconnected decisions: characters, relationships, locations, timelines, mysteries, symbols, research, what each character knows, what the reader knows, and countless small details that matter later.
AI is very good at text.
But a book is much more than text.
So I started treating the novel like I would treat a software project.
I broke the story into many-many files. I gave everything reference IDs. I tracked characters, locations, calendars, canonical knowledge, reader knowledge, character knowledge, story facts and research separately from the manuscript.
I used Visual Studio Code to write, and GitHub to track changes. I created specialized AI agents and skills for different jobs. And I wrote scripts and workflows that could turn the source project into a manuscript, EPUB, print PDF, audiobook, scene images, video book and translations.
That system became StoryOS.
The basic idea is that you remain the author and creative director. You are the conductor. AI agents, skills, workflows and automation are the orchestra around you.
I made a video about the whole crazy experiment
I recorded a new video telling the story from the beginning, including the mistakes, the rejected versions of the novel, the technical workflow, and how StoryOS grew out of the process.
Vibe Coding 2.0: I Wrote, Voiced, and Published a Full Novel in 60 Days
The phrase I’ve kept coming back to throughout this project is:
Create the story only you can tell.
We all know AI can generate prose.
The interesting question is whether we can use AI to amplify our ability to create something deeply personal without giving up creative control.
Listen to Chapter 1
I also turned Echoes into an audiobook and a video book.
Every scene received its own illustration, so across the full roughly 9-hour book there are around 160 images accompanying the narration.
I published the entire first chapter on YouTube so you can experience it yourself.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, I did take a holiday…
I spent some time hiking in the Alps.
Which was probably a healthy counterbalance to spending far too many hours staring at Markdown files, terminal windows and AI conversations.
Though apparently I wasn’t particularly good at switching off.
Donnersbach, Ruine Ägydiuskirche
Working on Echoes and StoryOS. When you read the story, you’ll probably see where some of the inspiration came from.
There is something about sitting there, surrounded by mountains that have been around unimaginably longer than we have, while writing a story about memory, evidence and deep time.
It felt strangely appropriate.
Want the book?
You can find Echoes here:
Read a sample chapter, or get the book: Explore Echoes
The Gumroad edition includes the ebook translated into multiple languages including German, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Japanese, Dutch, Russian and Chinese. The English edition is also available as an audiobook and a videobook.
Want to experiment with StoryOS yourself?
I’ve also made the StoryOS framework available.
You can take the same underlying system I developed while creating Echoes, open it in your own development environment, study it, modify it with your AI agent of choice, and adapt it to your own story.
StoryOS and Echoes are available together as a bundle: Get StoryOS + Echoes on Gumroad
You can read more about how StoryOS works here: StoryOS
Want to create your own book with me?
There is one more thing.
In October and November, I’m running a one-time, eight-week StoryOS Cohort.
This is not a conventional writing masterclass. I am not a writer, I would not feel credible doing that.
It is a hands-on AI automation cohort where we will use StoryOS to work on your own book.
We’ll go from idea and story direction through:
- characters and world building
- scene planning
- first chapters
- full-manuscript generation
- editing and continuity
- EPUB and print PDF
- audiobook
- images and video
- publishing
The cohort runs from 3 October to 21 November 2026, with a live two-hour Zoom session every Saturday.
The project throughout the eight weeks is not a demo story.
It is your story.
StoryOS SYM Community Q&A
If you’re curious but not ready to jump into the cohort, I’ll also be hosting a StoryOS Q&A in the Sketch Your Mind Community in the coming weeks.
I’ll show more of the system, answer questions about how I built Echoes, and talk about what it actually takes to set up and use this kind of workflow.
I’ll share the date in the community as soon as it is scheduled.
Follow StoryOS in the community
So that’s where I’ve been.
I originally thought I was taking some time away from releasing software.
Instead, a rainy commute turned into a science-fiction novel, an audiobook, a nine-hour illustrated video book, eight translations, a new AI-assisted authoring framework, and now an eight-week cohort.
That was not the plan.
But those are often my favorite kinds of projects.
When something catches my imagination, I want to find out how far I can take it.
This one went considerably further than I expected.
I hope you’ll take a look at Echoes — or at least listen to the first chapter — and let me know what you think.
Happy sketching!
— Zsolt