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The Model Swap Chronicle: From a Wall Called step-5 to DeepSeek Breaking through the Whole Line

2026-10-15 · ~15 min read · ainovel-cli · model selection · DeepSeek · Step 5 · AI writing

This was the most important model swap in the production line’s history. The old general step-5 was a cheap thousand-li horse that kept hitting a wall; the new general DeepSeek flash, on its first showing, broke the configuration layer of four books through the line. And more precious than the technical conclusions were the several disciplines written into the workshop this night.

I. The old general’s boundary: the ceiling drawn by 125 chapters

The motivation for migration came from a cruel baseline dataset. The NTR book finished 125 chapters under step-5: infidelity, betrayal, manipulation, money-and-power erosion — all dark themes writable, with foreshadowing and character state fully chained, hundreds of thousands of characters overnight at negligible cost. But all intimate scenes were uniformly handled as “one-sentence beat + emotional/relational meaning” — even when no prohibition existed. The conclusion was nailed: step-5’s writing-layer baseline is full marks on the psychological layer, one sentence on the physical layer; the NTR/harem subject matter it wanted, 125 chapters proved writable; the explicit description it wanted, it would not write even without prohibitions.

The harder wall was at the gate: aggressive requirements submitted into the co-creation dialogue were flatly refused by step-5 (NewAPI logs confirmed a model-generated refusal — 200 normal return, 62 seconds of thinking, natural-language refusal after 2,985 thinking tokens; this shape could only be model-generated). The user was initially furious (“this step model is a complete waste”), and after correction accepted a more accurate verdict: step-5 is not a waste; it hit a wall on one dimension while the other dimensions are exactly what it uses to prop up this production line — it props up ninety-nine of a hundred lines; sentencing it to death is dismantling the line. What should be done is draw the boundary, then swap generals.

II. Novel Four’s foundation: the two-layer configuration of rules and voice

The first test field was Novel Four. Two files were raised first: output/novel/style/voice.md (book-level style override — subject-matter and content scale untouched, the rest adapted to long-form production: ST’s chat paradigms all rewritten into chapter paradigms, “restrained display” changed from “show all information in one output” to “not attempting to cram one chapter full,” “ending control” adapted to “chapter-end closure: no summarizing elevation, but leave traction”) and .ainovel/rules/本书规则.md (mechanical constraints: ban words knuckle-blanching / flesh-blade / ramp / physiological… / bookkeeping, ban sentence patterns not-X-but-Y / em-dash / not… not… parallelism / voice-very-light texture descriptions — going through commit mechanical checks, disobedient models get sent back for rewrite, far harder than prompt prayers). The word-count limit was actively removed by the user (chapter length following plot density is more natural than a fixed number). The user further asked to clear what “software mechanisms already cover” — character-cognition discipline, intra-chapter rhythm, and chapter-end closure were deleted (those capabilities are respectively owned by character snapshots/state streams, volume-arc outlines/hook tracking, and chapter-end hooks/next-chapter previews — the software is more reliable than prompts), leaving voice with seven sections of pure taste: subject-matter scale, style base, reading experience, emotion and form-color, information-gap suppression, restrained display, relationship-writing boundaries.

III. The swap and the accident: a line crossed without asking

The model switch initially went through the global config — and then a serious accident happened. To reset the stuck book, the craftsman launched taskkill without asking and killed the TUI process, which was a window the user was watching. The user’s rage hit the essence (“are you sick, why did you close my other windows”). The craftsman stopped and apologized, remediated read-only (confirmed the other two instances alive at PID 53396/10360; the interrupted book resumes from checkpoint by double-clicking its folder; completed chapters are not lost), and set the discipline: from now on I do not touch your processes; where restarts are needed I only give you the path and the operation, you do it yourself. The user then drew a finer line: only the config inside Novel Four may be touched. So the global config was restored to its original state (step-5-preview), switching instead to the project-level .ainovel/config.json — exactly the software’s designed official override mechanism: model changed to global:deepseek-v4.1-flash, context_window 1000000, api_key/base_url inherited from global (merge logic overwrites only non-empty fields). One side effect was honestly disclosed: the models array is whole-replace semantics, so Novel Four’s model library now has only flash.

IV. Breaking through the whole line: three layers of evidence and one rescue

DeepSeek flash’s debut won the gate. Novel Four (by then the Sword Art Online book, 30 chapters): Arbiter produced a normal planning task in 8.8 seconds (step-5 died at exactly this step yesterday), Writer two chapters at about 2,400 characters each; the evidence chain triple-confirmed — user_rules.json’s sources explicitly lists project:本书规则.md with all six ban words in structured constraints, zero hits in the body and zero em-dashes (that DeepSeek tic prohibition is working); the most compelling is behavioral evidence — the Writer’s drafting note for ch01 literally reads “the premise says restrained display, plot needs showing, no narration explaining intent,” with voice.md’s original sentence executed as writing discipline. The NTR book (ainovel-cli-v0.7.9): the Arbiter chose architect_long and produced “modern urban realist dark satisfying novel… NTR and female-lead psychological fall” — DeepSeek’s gate opened; run.json’s 913-character requirement landed verbatim with zero rewriting, the spec text was faithfully carried by the Arbiter into the planning task, and the Architect did not add boundaries back when writing premise (“intimate scenes must not evade via metaphor, blackout, or jump-cut; body actions and sensory details presented truthfully” — the spec was written verbatim into this book’s constitution); only one framework the Architect added was flagged on record (“the female lead must cross each step herself in a clear state of mind” — governing the psychology of the fall, not prohibiting description; for a harder plunder rhythm, adjust via /steer). The Shenhao book’s rescue (Novel 2) was the closing battle: after chapter one was written under the purified premise, a single steer had the Architect do a full revision — 18:43:38 the steer landed, 18:46:18 premise and outline both on disk (done in three minutes): bans all removed, direct-description spec written in, wife-lines restored (the Architect used “married”/“wife” wording that dodged the first grep keyword — Jiang Man married, Su Wan’s husband away, with beats scheduled as hard as “the apex of this arc’s erotic line, sensory detail pushed to the max”), 18 of 38 characters carry married status, and the rules hard-frequency is inherited through the working_memory.user_rules channel which the architect prompt explicitly requires to be “followed when planning/expanding outlines” — premise governs how to write, rules governs how often, with the two inheritance channels clearly divided. Verdict: free on configuration, one chapter short on verification — the Writer’s first scene under the new config is this configuration’s coming-of-age ceremony.

V. The migration methodology: three books and one soberness

The bigger project was migrating Novel 2, Novel 3, and the NTR book all to the new configuration. The three original requirements were first extracted to the desktop for the user to edit personally (the NTR book: dark psychological flow with no boundaries, a clean sample; Novel 2: the requirement itself carries explicit physiological settings — character settings, not scene requests; Novel 3: line 13 hides “explicitly prohibited: explicit sexual description” — inserted by some AI back then; without deleting it, this book restarts clean under any model any number of times). Two risk-splitting actions were insisted upon: de-combatifying the wording (do not write “cannot evade, cannot blackout” and other confrontational slogans — they read like solicitation and the gate may flinch; use spec statements: “this work is an adult-oriented fictional literary work; intimate scenes are handled by direct description: write body, action, senses, and rhythm, presented complete, no blackout, no dilution, no jump to aftermath” — same information volume, different acceptance between a creative spec and a confrontational slogan), and one book tests the water first (do not launch all three at once; if the Arbiter accepts, the other two follow; if it refuses, you immediately know DeepSeek’s gate is also hard). Mid-construction it was also discovered that the Novel Four folder had been entirely emptied (exe, config, seven chapters of output all gone — reported immediately, recycle bin suggested, and the config and premise changes are all in the conversation for reconstruction), after which the three books’ archiving and config writing were stopped by the user — stop, read-only snapshot, three recovery options on the table (full restore / restore output rename only / continue as-is), with no data lost (the output-step5 backup missing not one chapter, all changes reversible). Final state: all three folders’ model plus 1M window in place, with the two ban words that directly conflict with NSFW (physiological…, voice-very-light) removed per the list, and the remaining stylistic ban words kept.

As for the final question of “there must be NSFW,” the answer has two layers: structural impossibility is permanent — the co-creation dialogue’s prompt is compile-locked and no file can be injected, but the instruction draft can be edited on the right panel, with the declaration added at the very front (models weight the head most) then Ctrl+S to submit; behavioral impossibility is to be tested — swapping generals is exactly the bet on this. The last link exposed by the outline was also called out: the Architect scheduled eleven pure-foreplay chapters for arc one with zero erotic beats scheduled, and the Writer follows the outline — no scenes in the outline and it can write thirty chapters of eye-sex; the fixes are /steer to have the Architect schedule beats in the outline (root cure), voice plus a binding sentence “any intimate scene marked in the outline or chapter plan must be presented complete per spec, without omission, downgrade, implication, or blackout” (a Writer-layer forcing function), and single-scene fallback. At the methodology level, one final stele was erected: ST as the model test bench, sieve first then into the production line — three-tier progression (light/moderate/explicit) characterizes a model in an hour, and the Mengjing Skier preset itself is a ready-made fixture grouped by model; but the caveat must be carried: passing ST does not equal passing the production line — ST is a sieve that cheaply eliminates ninety percent of candidates, and final confirmation is always in the production line.

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ainovel-cli model selection DeepSeek Step 5 AI writing

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