Build Log · July 16, 2026
Aalok Onboarding — Narrated Deck & the forgekit-narrated-deck Package
Built a real onboarding book for ForgeKit's first tech partner — book-style, first-person, narrated in Zeb's own voice — and extracted the narration engine that produced it into a genuine reusable package.
- Onboarding
- OS
- Extraction
- Docs
- new packages/apps produced
- 2
- narrated slides generated
- 22
- chapters in the narrated deck
- 10
- artifacts shipped for Aalok (deck, plain-text backup, cheat sheet)
- 3
new packages/apps produced
narrated slides generated
chapters in the narrated deck
artifacts shipped for Aalok (deck, plain-text backup, cheat sheet)
Timeline
Start
Audit what exists for Aalok
Found docs/bick-onboarding-guide.md (wrong audience) and a dead reference to a non-existent USER_GUIDE_OS.md
Early
Wrote a technical review brief
Mechanism-first doc, evidence-led from engine-health.md, named the real weak spots (AI Route Gate theater, spin-recording drop)
Mid
Redirected to book-style + narration
Zeb wanted first-person voice, chapter structure, and floated reusing Flyback's narration capability
Mid
Investigated Flyback narration — found it wasn't reusable as-is
Two disconnected prototypes: SlideShow.jsx (no audio) and static voice-kit HTML (real TTS, but hand-authored per deck, not data-driven at runtime)
Mid
Built packages/forgekit-narrated-deck
Generic manifest -> OpenAI TTS generation (content-hash skip) -> data-driven HTML player
Late
Wrote and generated the actual deck
10 chapters, 22 slides, real OpenAI TTS audio, first-person Zeb voice
Late
Wrote the cheat sheet, then expanded it twice on request
Added engine-health-check walkthrough, Anvil Check explainer, Crucible explainer, and an honest section on how triggers actually fire (behavioral, not mechanical)
Close
Staged only this session's files, wrote retro
Left pre-existing modified/untracked files (ignition.md, anvils.md, strikes.md, experiments/arcade/) untouched — not this session's work
What shipped
docs/aalok-onboarding-guide.md — technical review brief (plain-text backup, now points to the deck as primary)
docs/aalok/ — the narrated onboarding deck: manifest.json, index.html player, audio/*.mp3 (22 files), cheat-sheet.md
packages/forgekit-narrated-deck — new reusable package: generate-audio.mjs, build-deck.mjs, player/deck.html, README.md
forgekit-os/patterns.md — added Narrated Slide Deck Engine entry (marked LIVE) and updated Last Updated date
“The right thing to do always trumps any fear of session scope creep or time concerns.”