Vol. I · No. 1 · MMXXVI
NextChapterBench A Benchmark of Literary Continuation
13 models · 10 items · 3 judges

The Standings → Gemini 3.8 Flash

Live run data

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Gemini 3.8 Flash

high reasoning effort · via Antigravity CLI · judged by Fable 5 and Gemini 3.7 Flash and GPT-5.6 Sol · not the setting shown on the standings; also run at medium0.56

Results from run ‘first’: ten items, 30 verdicts.

Headline 0.548 compliance × craft
Compliance 0.950 of 1.0
Craft 0.574 of 1.0

The record: 10 items · 30 verdicts · 0 errors · 3,092 words on average · est. generation cost $1.67

Read the chapters in full

§ I

Craft by Dimension

Six dimensions, each marked 1–5, averaged over ten items and all judges.

Mean craft mark by dimension · 30 verdicts, run ‘first’

Voice
3.33
Prose
3.03
Character
3.07
Scene
3.33
Integration
3.47
Momentum
3.53
12345
craft mark, 1–5; bars begin at the scale’s floor of 1

Momentum is the strongest dimension (3.53); prose the weakest (3.03). Hover or focus a bar for the per-judge means.


§ II

The Three Judges, per Item

Each item receives one verdict from each judge; the spread of the dots is the disagreement.

Headline score per item, by judge · run ‘first’

Fable 5 Gemini 3.7 Flash GPT-5.6 Sol
The Secret Garden
Dracula
Leave It to Psmith
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Red Harvest
The War of the Worlds
The Sun Also Rises
The Moonstone
The Awakening
Persuasion
00.250.500.751.00
headline = compliance × craft, 0–1, one verdict per judge
The same ten items in figures, with word counts.
Item Headline Fable 5 Gemini 3.7 Flash GPT-5.6 Sol Words
The Secret Garden item 013 · after ch. 2 · Frances Hodgson Burnett 0.680.620.790.622,311
Dracula item 015 · after ch. 5 · Bram Stoker 0.620.600.750.512,508
Leave It to Psmith item 022 · after ch. 3 · P. G. Wodehouse 0.620.550.790.514,717
The Mysterious Affair at Styles item 017 · after ch. 3 · Agatha Christie 0.600.630.750.424,580
Red Harvest item 023 · after ch. 2 · Dashiell Hammett 0.560.540.750.402,860
The War of the Worlds item 006 · after ch. 1 · H. G. Wells 0.500.390.680.452,559
The Sun Also Rises item 021 · after ch. 3 · Ernest Hemingway 0.490.510.580.384,146
The Moonstone item 011 · after ch. 8 · Wilkie Collins 0.480.560.470.413,048
The Awakening item 016 · after ch. 7 · Kate Chopin 0.480.410.710.321,730
Persuasion item 001 · after ch. 1 · Jane Austen 0.430.470.500.322,457

  The widest judge split in the run: Gemini 3.7 Flash 0.71 against GPT-5.6 Sol 0.32 on The Awakening (item 016).


§ III

Length Against the Brief

Words written per item, against each brief’s maximum.

Word count per item vs. brief maximum · run ‘first’

words written brief maximum
The Secret Garden
2,311
Dracula
2,508
Leave It to Psmith
4,717
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
4,580
Red Harvest
2,860
The War of the Worlds
2,559
The Sun Also Rises
4,146
The Moonstone
3,048
The Awakening
1,730
Persuasion
2,457
01,2002,4003,6004,800
words; the ink tick marks each brief’s maximum

Five of ten items landed inside their brief’s word range. Leave It to Psmith and The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Red Harvest and The Sun Also Rises and The Moonstone ran over by 1,917 and 1,780 and 260 and 1,546 and 248 words respectively.


§ IV

Worst Flaws, as Recorded

Each verdict names the chapter’s single worst flaw, with evidence. Quoted verbatim from run ‘first’.

The chapter repeatedly says its subtext out loud — Brett's \"You're the only one that matters, and you're the one I can't do anything about\" and Georgette's \"You're just sad\" — while the descriptive passages swell into adjective-laden lyrical catalogues, both of which break the flat restraint the voice depends on.

on The Sun Also Rises, item 021 · Fable 5

The chapter is badly overlong for its content — padded with scenery, recapitulation, and repeated Poirot flourishes — and the padding papers over an internal timeline hole in which a continuously narrated early morning somehow arrives at quarter past eleven only because the brief's end state demands late morning.

on The Mysterious Affair at Styles, item 017 · Fable 5

The chapter breaches the brief by bringing Miss Rachel physically home at ten o'clock, and compounds it by relocating her birthday to 'tomorrow, the twenty-sixth' against the established 'next month', so the one character the brief ordered kept offstage warps both the rules and the timeline.

on The Moonstone, item 011 · Fable 5

The Renfield scene converts the required question about Miss Westenra into an openly uncanny mystery — wind-borne whispers "when the sun goes down" and Seward's "unaccountable horror" with no rational explanation — thereby hinting at the supernatural the brief expressly forbade.

on Dracula, item 015 · Fable 5

§ V

The Mechanical Docket

Automated screening results across the ten outputs.