Session Prep

Prep your next session from unresolved threads

A prep outline: open threads, NPCs worth reusing, and hooks that pay off what your party already did.

By Greg H. & Greg W., co-founders of Archivist

July 30, 2026 • 2 minutes

Works in:

Claude
ChatGPT

Generic AI prep gives you a mysterious stranger and a collapsed bridge. It does not know your party burned down the tavern in session six. This reads the record first.

How it worksOne prompt · Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or Windsurf

Let your assistant read the campaign

With Archivist connected, the assistant finds the sessions itself and builds the outline as a document you can keep open and edit. You paste one prompt and answer one question.

Connect Archivist to your assistant

Nexus sets up Claude Desktop in one installer, ChatGPT has an official app, and Cursor and Windsurf take the server URL.

Paste this prompt

It calls list-campaigns-tool first and stops so you can pick the campaign.

Session prep prompt

Use the Archivist MCP to help me prep my next session.

1. Call list-campaigns-tool and ask which campaign I mean. Wait for my answer.
2. For that campaign, call list-sessions-tool and get-session-tool for the three most recent sessions. Also call list-quests-tool and list-characters-tool.
3. Draft a prep outline with these sections only:

OPEN THREADS — every unresolved thread, the session it started in, and where it stands. Flag anything untouched for two or more sessions as "going cold."
NPCs TO BRING BACK — NPCs with unfinished business with the party. One line each on why now.
HOOKS — three ways to open, each paying off something the party already chose to do. No new unrelated plot.
LIKELY QUESTIONS — what my players may ask about earlier events, with the answer from the record.
FORGOTTEN LOOSE ENDS — anything that looks deliberate but was never resolved.

4. Put the outline in a canvas or artifact (Claude Artifacts, ChatGPT Canvas) instead of a plain chat reply, so I can keep it open and edit it at the table.

Rules: use only what is in my campaign data. Label anything inferred as a suggestion. Do not invent NPCs, locations, or events. If a section has nothing, say so.

Keep the outline open

Claude puts it in an Artifact, ChatGPT in a Canvas: a document that sits next to the chat instead of scrolling past inside it. Ask a follow-up and it updates in place.

Why it is shaped this way

Named sections instead of “help me prep”: Open-ended requests produce essays. A fixed section list produces something you can scan five minutes before you start.
The cold-thread rule: Two sessions untouched surfaces the plot you meant to return to and forgot. Usually the most useful section, and it only works because the record goes back further than memory.
Something you keep open at the table: Ask Archivist in the app answers in chat. This prompt asks for a Claude Artifact or ChatGPT Canvas instead: something that stays open and updates itself when you ask a follow-up, rather than scrolling back through messages to find the last version.

Follow-ups

“Expand hook two into an opening scene I can read aloud.”
“Which player character has had the least spotlight lately?”
“What did we establish about this location the first time the party visited?”

Questions

Do I need to export anything first?

No. This reads your campaign live through the MCP server. If your assistant is connected, it already has access.

Why does the prompt stop and wait?

Assistants guess which campaign you mean and commit to it. If you run more than one table, you get prep for the wrong one. One extra message removes that.

Will it make things up?

The prompt forbids inventing NPCs, locations, and events, and requires inference to be labeled as a suggestion. That reduces invention without eliminating it, so treat anything surprising as a cue to check the session record.

What if my campaign only has one or two sessions?

It works, but open threads will be thin. The outline gets useful around session four, once the record holds things your party has forgotten.

Every recipe needs campaign data

Archivist turns your Discord sessions, audio, transcripts, or notes into the record these prompts read from.

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