Build a 4-page bedtime story in 10 minutes

What you’ll build

A 4-page bedtime story starring “Mira the fox”. Same character across all 4 pages — same fur, same scarf, same watercolor style. Last page exported to a downloadable PDF.

Step 1 — Create the character (2 min)

1. Go to /dashboard → Create Character.
2. Fill in:
   • Name: Mira
   • Description: A young red fox with bright amber eyes, a soft cream-colored belly, and a sky-blue scarf. Friendly, curious, slightly shy.
   • Art style: watercolor children’s book illustration, soft edges, warm palette
   • Reference image: skip — we’ll let Claude auto-extract a rich descriptor.
3. Click Create Character.

Step 2 — Refine identity (1 min, free)

1. On the Refine Identity step, click Auto-fill with AI with no instruction. Claude expands your one-line description into a rich identity descriptor (eyes, fur tone, scarf pattern, posture cues).
2. Click Continue to References.

Step 3 — Generate reference sheet (3 min, 5 credits)

1. Pick the default views: front · left_side · back · happy · sad.
2. Click Generate 5 Sheets. Front view goes first (~30s) then anchors the others. Total ~3 minutes.

Step 4 — Lock the character (10 seconds)

On the character detail page, click Lock. From now on every scene will anchor against this exact identity.

Step 5 — Generate the storybook (4 min, 4 credits)

Easiest path: use the storybook API endpoint via your terminal — it chains pages automatically so cross-page consistency stays tight.

# Grab MIRA_ID from the character detail URL after locking:
# /characters/<this is the id>
MIRA_ID="<your character uuid>"

curl -X POST https://steadyshot.ai/api/storybook \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ss_live_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "{
    \"character_id\": \"$MIRA_ID\",
    \"art_style\": \"watercolor children's book illustration\",
    \"consistency_check\": true,
    \"export_pdf\": true,
    \"pages\": [
      \"Mira sits at the edge of a moonlit pond, looking at the reflection of the stars.\",
      \"Mira tiptoes through a glowing forest, fireflies floating around her.\",
      \"Mira meets a sleepy old owl perched on a low mossy branch. They share a quiet smile.\",
      \"Mira curls up under a giant golden mushroom, scarf as a blanket, eyes drifting closed.\"
    ]
  }"

Response includes pages[] with the rendered image URLs and a pdf_url for the assembled book.

Step 6 — Open the PDF

Visit the pdf_url in your browser. Save it. Read it to a small human at bedtime.

What just happened

• One character, 4 pages, same identity. The rich descriptor + reference sheet were re-injected on every page so Mira’s fur, eyes, and scarf stayed consistent.
• Chained anchoring. Page 2’s prompt was rendered with page 1 as the visual anchor, page 3 with page 2, etc. That’s why lighting register and stylistic flourishes carried across — not just the canonical references.
• QA scoring. consistency_check: true means each page was scored by Claude Sonnet vision; any page below threshold was auto-retried.
• PDF assembly. export_pdf: true stitched the rendered pages into a downloadable PDF in the same call.

Take it further

• Multi-character story — pass character_ids: [“mira-id”, “owl-id”] instead. Costs 2 credits per page.
• Variation per page — after generation, hover any page and click Vary to produce 4 alternate framings. Useful for A/B testing covers.
• Share the character — list Mira on the marketplace (see Marketplace). Other parents can import her and build their own stories.