A good after-action report is not a transcript of every notification. It is a history shaped around decisions, reversals, and consequences.
Choose the frame
Pick a narrator and a reason the history exists:
- an imperial archive justifying expansion;
- a democratic commission investigating a disastrous war;
- a spiritual chronicle interpreting signs and schisms;
- a machine log measuring deviation from the founding directive;
- an academic history written after the empire’s fall.
Build chapters from change
Use the Companion’s Chronicle source material to find clusters of events. A chapter usually needs:
- a starting condition;
- a decision or pressure;
- an irreversible change;
- a consequence that points to the next era.
Draft in the Companion or a connected AI app. Keep revision in chat until the voice and facts are right, then explicitly ask the client to save the approved passage back.
Edit for the reader
Preserve specific dates, names, and stakes, but remove repeated bookkeeping. If a battle matters, explain what it changed. If an election matters, show how policy or identity moved afterward.