# A television series bible — the pitch document a producer reads first Recipe No. 5, Books and writing. From The know.sh Cookbook: https://know.sh/cookbook/show-bible - For: a screenwriter developing a limited series to pitch - You bring: a pilot script or a detailed outline, a logline you have said out loud to people, and a list of producers who have agreed to read - You get: a series bible as one document (logline and world, tone, characters, season arc and episode summaries), private working notes beside it, and one link with a password and an expiry per round of reading - Time: an evening for your assistant to lay out the material, two or three evenings to write the bible, then an evening per round of notes - Keep it: private while you work; share one document by a read-only link A producer who likes your pilot asks for the bible, and asks for it this week. It has to answer the questions a pilot cannot: where the story goes over six hours, who these people become, what it looks and sounds like, and why now. Most writers have all of that, spread across a pilot draft, a notes app and a dozen conversations. This recipe gathers it fast and leaves the writing to you. Give your assistant, Claude, ChatGPT or whichever you use, the pilot, the outline and your notes, and it lays out the bible as one document, because a producer reads one link: the overview for the logline and the world, then a section each for tone, the main characters, the season arc and every episode, each holding the raw material from your own pages. You write every section in the editor. Research, backstory and producers' notes sit in other documents on the same shelf, never shared. Between drafts, revisions keep every earlier version. When notes come back and the bible changes, you replace the link, and the old draft stops working. The scripts themselves stay in your screenwriting software. ## What you will use - **Shelf**: One shelf per project, *Low Water*, holding the bible and the working documents around it. - **Research document**: The bible as one document; beside it, private documents for research, backstory and producers’ notes. - **Finding**: A finding each for tone, every main character, the season arc and every episode, in reading order. - **Your AI assistant**: Lays out the bible’s sections from your pilot and outline, files research and producers’ notes, and checks the episodes against the characters. - **The editor**: Where you write every section of the bible in your own words, drag them into reading order and set their types. - **Revisions**: Every draft of every section, dated and marked as yours or an assistant’s, so draft 2 can be compared with draft 1 and anything restored. - **Public link**: One read-only link per round of reading, with a password, an expiry and the read count, replaced between rounds. ## Method ### 1. Give your assistant the pages, and have it lay out the shelf Give your assistant the pilot script, the outline and your notes, as files in a Claude or ChatGPT project or on disk for a local client. Ask it to make a shelf named after the project, *Low Water*, and four documents: the bible, *Research*, *What the bible does not say* and *Notes from producers*. Only the bible is ever shared. A single document for the bible keeps the logline, the characters and the episodes in one place and one order, because a producer opens one link. ### 2. Have it file the raw material, section by section Ask the assistant to give the bible a finding per section, `Tone`, `Ruth Calder` and the other main characters, `Season arc`, then one per episode, and to fill each with the raw material from your pages: the lines where a character is introduced, the beats your outline gives each episode, what your notes say about the look. Quoted and sourced, not written up. The secrets go elsewhere: the truth about the father, the actor you picture for Ruth, the second season you may never write all belong in *What the bible does not say*. ### 3. Write the bible yourself in the editor The bible is your pitch, so every word a producer reads should be yours. Open it, press **Edit**, and replace each section's raw material with your own page per main character and paragraph per episode. The overview comes first on a shared link, so it carries the logline in one sentence, two short paragraphs of world, the format, "Six hour-long episodes; a closed story", and a line on why now. A shared link shows each finding's type and importance, so choose them as a producer will read them: *Observation* reads neutrally, and **Key** shows as "high importance". Drag sections into order. ### 4. Research the world, and keep it out of the bible For texture, ask your assistant to research on the web how reservoirs are drawn down in a drought, what falling water uncovers and who decides the releases, and file it as findings with sources in *Research*. That needs an assistant with web search; Claude and ChatGPT have it, many local set-ups do not. Open the sources; research is for your ear, not for quoting. Then ask the assistant to check the bible against itself: which characters vanish for three episodes, who knows something before they could. ### 5. Share with a password and an expiry Press **Share** on the bible. Set a password, and an expiry two weeks after the meeting. Copy the link as it appears; know.sh shows it only once. Send the link by email and the password by text or phone, not in the same message. Notes and highlights on the bible never appear on the link, and you can leave out any section you are not ready to show from its own page. The panel tells you how many times the link has been read, which answers "did anyone open it?" before the meeting. ### 6. File the notes, revise, and replace the link After each call, paste your notes to the assistant and have it file each point in *Notes from producers* as a *Suggestion*, their words quoted, naming the section it is about. Then revise the bible in the editor. **Revisions** keeps every earlier version of each section, dated and marked as yours or an assistant's; **Restore** brings one back when a note turns out to be wrong. When draft 2 is ready, change the overview's last line to "Draft 2, 19 September" and **Replace** the link, which stops the draft 1 link working. Replacing resets the expiry and exclusions, so set them again. ## Prompts to try Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, read the bible “Low Water — a limited series in six hours” on my Low Water shelf and check the episode sections against the character sections. List every episode where a character knows or does something the character sections say they could not yet, and every main character absent for more than two episodes in a row. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, search the web for how drinking-water reservoirs in the western United States are drawn down during a drought, what falling water levels typically uncover, and who decides the release schedule. File what you find in the document Research on my Low Water shelf, one finding per point, each with its sources. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, compare the Season arc section of the Low Water bible with its version from before 1 September in its revisions. List what changed in plain sentences, so I can write a short “what is new in this draft” paragraph for the producer. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, file the notes I paste below from Tuesday’s call as Suggestion findings in “Notes from producers” on my Low Water shelf, quoting the producer’s words and naming the section of the bible each is about. Do not change the bible. ## Variations - Pitching a feature instead? Keep the overview and the character findings, and replace the episodes with a sequence-by-sequence outline. - Adapting your own novel? Start from its [series bible](/cookbook/series-bible), and let the show bible say what changes on screen and why. - Plan the pitch season as a campaign, which Claude Code can build with the plugin’s planning tools: an operation set per draft, and registration of the bible *blocking* the first link you send. - For a fantasy or science-fiction series, the [world encyclopedia](/cookbook/world-encyclopedia) holds the lore that the bible only sketches. ## Where it falls short - No images. Mood boards, lookbooks and casting references need another tool; the link carries words only. - No PDF. Many producers expect a PDF bible, and know.sh cannot make one; if a company asks for a file, copy the text into your layout tool. - Readers see each section’s type and importance beside its title, such as “Observation, high importance”. You choose them; you cannot hide them. - A password and an expiry limit who can open the link. They do not stop a reader copying what they read. - Assistants misquote and mistake dialogue for fact, and smaller local models call tools less reliably. Check every quote and page number your assistant filed; Revisions shows every change. ## A note on protecting unproduced work Before a bible leaves your hands, make a dated record that it is yours. The WGA Registry, run by the Writers Guild of America West and open to non-members, records the date a script or bible existed; registering the bible with the US Copyright Office gives stronger protection. Neither protects an idea on its own, only your expression of it. The revision history in know.sh is useful to you, but it is not a substitute for registration. This is not legal advice; ask an entertainment lawyer or your representative about releases and submissions. Send the link only to people who have agreed to read, give each round its own link (**Replace** it between rounds), and let links expire. The bible is your writing: let the assistant gather, file and check, never draft what a producer reads. If you work under a guild agreement, check its rules on AI-generated material, and disclose AI-generated text wherever you are asked. Indexed under: Show bibles, Loglines, Pitching, Episode summaries, Script registration, Password-protected links.