Chord / Cookbook / Social / asking and telling

asking and telling

Asking and telling are deliberately minimal (ADR-230): the platform validates the social preconditions and reports an interceptable default, which is unknown_topic when the action is asking and not_interested when the action is telling. An on asking it clause on the person is where real dialogue hooks in; the topic slot is free text, resolved entity-first (ADR-231): a topic naming something in scope carries that entity along, and anything else (for example, ask the hermit about the weather) flows through as plain text. A topic is never scope-rejected.

The author writes:

create the Hermitage
  a room

  A driftwood hut above the tide line.

create the hermit
  a person
  in the Hermitage

  A weathered hermit mending a net.

  on asking it
    phrase hermit-answers
  end on

create the gull
  aka seagull
  a person
  in the Hermitage

  A herring gull with an air of officialdom.

create the player
  starts in the Hermitage

define phrases en-US
  hermit-answers:
    The hermit squints seaward. "Weather's turning. It always is."

The player sees:

> ask the gull about the hermit
The gull says, "I don't know anything about that."

> ask the hermit about the gull
The hermit squints seaward. "Weather's turning. It always is."

> tell the gull about the hermit
The gull doesn't seem interested.