Neverending Stories

This was a fun side project I created over several days to build out an interactive story-building platform. I loved Goosebumps as a kid, particularly the "reader beware... you choose the scare" choose-your-own-adventure style books - so this is an experimentation of using AI as a means to craft and share user-directed stories. After providing an OpenAI API Key (kept in cookies), you prompt a book with: Character(s), Plot, Environment, and an Image Style to create a "first chapter". Each chapter includes an image, a chapter title, roughly 2-5 paragraphs of text, and 4 actions that drive the plot forward. Clicking an action (and waiting 30-60 seconds) creates the next chapter, leading to a, well, neverending story. In the past i've appreciated the model of open source AI software where the user brings their own key for model calls, so i've adopted that in lieu of managing payments. Architecturally it's a Next.js application fully hosted on Vercel using their blob storage for persisting stories. It's still in it's proof of concept phase, but also pretty stable. Between jobs currently, so if it resonates with people i'll continue adding functionality. Happy to answer any questions you may have about it.