Who it’s for
If you’ve only wondered
Readers keep saying it should be a show
You don’t need to know how television gets made. Bring one book and find out in plain words whether it has what a series runs on. Every TV term comes with a plain-English definition.
If you’re getting serious
You’re thinking about a pilot or a pitch
Find where the pilot starts and whether the show still runs in season three before you spend months writing it. You leave with the one-page Series Architecture, the page a working manager reads first, with the evidence behind every line on a second sheet.
Choose your path
Being a novelist right now feels like the cold open of a Black Mirror episode, the one where the machines have opinions about your second act. This version comes with a fork in the road. Bring in the robot reader and let it argue with your book, or keep every page to yourself and do the thinking alone. Both roads end at the same tests and the same two sheets.
Path one · the robot reader
Let the robot argue with you
Paste a synopsis or a chapter list, and the opening chapters if you like. The robot reader scores each book, finds the chapter where your pilot starts, names the character the book kept small, and gives you three readings for every finding, each one quoting your own pages. You pick.
We don’t store your pages, and they’re never used to train the model. The robot won’t write a word of your pilot, either.
Path two · just you
Keep the book to yourself
The tool asks what the robot would ask: which chapter the engine starts running in, whose story the B story is, whether season three still works. You answer, it runs the same tests, stamps the same verdict and draws the same two sheets.
Nothing you type leaves your browser. No robots were involved in the making of your verdict.
What the robot reader adds
You know your book too well to read it cold. You know why chapter one matters and which character you’d defend to the death, and a stranger brings none of that to the page. Neither does the robot reader. It scores every book against the same rubric, and when it says your strongest engine is the book you like least, it tells you why.
Everything it claims comes with a line from your own synopsis, so you can check it, and anything it invents is marked as a proposal. Each finding arrives as three readings, and you pick one or write your own.
One finding, from the sample novel
Where does the pilot start?
The guest in room 6 dies the night of the first storm, and Mae finds the second ledger.
Chapters 1 to 8 become backstory and the season-one mystery of who Walt really was.
Evidence Chapter 9: “Going through his things, Mae finds the second ledger.”
Four tests decide which book has a show in it
Every book you bring is scored on all four. Open any test to see what a five, a three and a one look like.
four on engine beats five on world
Engine
The rubric
Whether the situation makes new story without the author pushing
- 5
- A job, a place or an arrangement that brings a new problem through the door every week
- 3
- A long quest with episodic stops
- 1
- One event, resolved, and then it is over
World
The rubric
Whether the place has rules that make trouble, and room to come back to
- 5
- Rules the audience learns, that characters break at a cost
- 3
- A vivid place with no rules that bite
- 1
- Scenery
Ensemble
The rubric
Whether anyone besides the protagonist could carry an episode
- 5
- Three or more people with wants of their own
- 3
- One strong second
- 1
- A single point of view and a cast of functions
Ownership
The rubric
Whether the screen rights are clean
- 5
- Yours alone, nothing signed
- 3
- A co-author, both willing
- 1
- A publisher holds film and TV, or a prior option exists
New to TV? The words, in plain English
- Engine
- The situation that keeps handing the show new stories without anyone forcing them. A motel where every guest lies about their name has one built in.
- Pilot
- The first episode, the one that sells the show. It often starts later in the story than chapter one, wherever the engine starts running.
- A story and B story
- The A story drives the season. The B story is a second story that belongs to someone other than your lead, has its own trouble, and gets in the A story’s way.
- Ensemble
- The cast beyond your lead. A show needs several people who could each carry part of an episode.
- Promoted
- A minor character who gets a much bigger part in the show than they had in the book.
- Comp
- Short for comparison: a show already on the air that shares something with yours. It tells people in one breath what kind of show you mean.
- Buyer
- Who would make it: a network, a cable channel or a streaming service. Each runs a different number of episodes and allows different things.
- Logline
- The whole show in one sentence a stranger could repeat.
- The season-three test
- Whether the show could still be running in its third year without turning into a different show.
- Series Architecture
- The one-page plan of the show this tool prints: the engine, the pilot, the stories, the buyer and five seasons at a glance.
What you leave with, on two sheets of letter paper
You make every choice; the reader offers three readings for each one. The pilot stays yours to write.
The full read
$99
One payment, everything in it
- Three full reads, each on up to three books
- Each full read stays open for a day, so you can work through all five modules
- Both paths: the robot reader, or just you
- The two-page Series Architecture, as often as you print it
- The pack, to run the same reader in your own Claude or ChatGPT
Checkout by Stripe. Your personal link appears the moment the payment goes through.