PocketPlot Universe
Everything you need to know before you begin.
A tiered, interactive storytelling platform where you can create, roleplay, and experience unique branching narratives — from short bedtime stories to long procedurally generated adventures. The full procedural engine powers every story; the higher tiers add your own AI services for unlimited creative range.
No. PocketPlot Universe is an adults-only (18+) platform. The default engine produces original fictional content for adults. There is no child profile, no parental controls, and no COPPA-compliant path. If you're looking for kid-safe bedtime stories, this isn't it.
Every story is composed from in-house word pools by a deterministic procedural engine — the same seed produces the same story. It's not an LLM, so there's no chance of it reproducing copyrighted material. At the Creator tier you can opt to route generation through your own LLM (BYOB) for richer output; those responses still pass through our content filter before they reach you.
PocketPlot Universe is an adults-only (18+) platform, but it's not a "no rules" zone. We permit the kind of fiction adults actually read and write:
Allowed: light violence (action scenes, mild conflict, combat); light romance (flirting, romantic tension, kissing between consenting adults); mature themes (grief, betrayal, moral ambiguity, addiction, recovery); strong language in moderation; drug/alcohol use depicted in fiction; psychological horror; suspense and thriller.
Not allowed: explicit sexual content (NSFW, pornographic); graphic gore or violence-for-arousal; anything depicting minors in any sexual context (zero tolerance, no exceptions); hate speech targeting specific protected classes; content that would get Stripe, Apple, or Google to ban us.
This isn't a wishy-washy line. It exists because we need to keep the platform on Stripe and the App Store, and because the writer-audience for "no rules" creative fiction is much smaller than the audience for "good stories, no sleaze". The validation system filters both pre-generation (prompt) and post-generation (output) for the disallowed list.
"Adults" doesn't mean "everything goes". It means we don't treat you like a child. Adults can absolutely enjoy light violence and light romance without needing explicit content; in fact, the audience for tasteful adult storytelling is broader than the audience for explicit content. By drawing a hard line at NSFW, we keep the platform open to more payment gateways, more app stores, and more writers who'd rather not have their work associated with that category.
The original PocketPlot is a separate product: a kids' bedtime-story app with parental controls and educational layers. PocketPlot Universe is the adults-only sibling, with a different brand, different content rules, and a different codebase. If you had an account on the original PocketPlot, it's still there; that product hasn't changed. We just built a second product for a different audience.
The original PocketPlot (the children's bedtime story app) remains a separate product. PocketPlot Universe is the adults-only sibling — different brand, different content rules, different audience. If you had an account on the old PocketPlot, it's still there; this is a new product.
Pro ($7.99/month or $79.99/year) gives you unlimited stories up to 3000 words, full theme/tone/world control, Story Worlds (branching narratives), and PDF + shareable URL export. Creator ($19.99/month or $199.99/year) adds the ability to bring your own LLM and image APIs (BYOB/BYOG), raises the word ceiling to 5000, and grants API access for mobile clients.
Yes — Pro annual is $79.99 (save ~16%) and Creator annual is $199.99 (save ~16%). Existing Pro subscribers grandfathered at $4.99/month keep that rate for the life of their subscription.
Bring Your Own Brain. Creator-tier users can plug in their own OpenAI-compatible LLM endpoint (OpenAI, OpenRouter, LiteLLM, Together, Groq, Mistral, local models with a shim, etc.). You bring your API key and base URL; we route the request. We never see or store your prompts or the responses beyond what validation requires.
Bring Your Own Graphics. Same idea, for image generation: plug in any OpenAI-compatible image endpoint (OpenAI DALL-E, Together, OpenRouter image models, custom Stable Diffusion deployments). Generated images are returned as URLs (or base64 data URIs) for you to use.
Encrypted at rest using PBKDF2 + HMAC-based authenticated encryption (a stdlib-only implementation — no third-party crypto libraries required). The encryption key is derived from the POCKETPLOT_API_ENCRYPTION_KEY environment variable. We log only the first 7 characters of any key, never the full key.
Yes — 100 external-API calls per Creator subscriber per day. The limit is configurable via POCKETPLOT_CREATOR_DAILY_LIMIT. We describe it as "generous" rather than "unlimited" because the word "unlimited" is a hosting-cost bomb and a marketing claim we won't make.
Content that targets identifiable minors, real people with private info attached, or specific protected classes with intent to harm. Everything else — violence, romance, complex morality, grief, romance between adults, horror, drug/alcohol use in fiction, strong language — is allowed in an adults-only platform.
Two layers: a pre-generation prompt check (rejects obviously-bad inputs before they cost anything) and a post-generation sanitizer (rewrites banned phrases to neutral placeholders). Both layers are logged to validation_log so the admin can review rejections. The filter is not a coherence checker — it's a safety net, not a guarantee. Adversarial prompts can still get through; that's a known limitation, not a hidden one.
No. Every BYOB response passes through the same validation pass before it reaches you. Paying for Creator tier doesn't unlock content that would violate platform policy. We think this makes the platform safer, not weaker.
Email, the name and age of the person using PocketPlot (a creative-writing persona you choose), your story preferences, and — for Creator tier — your encrypted API keys. We don't collect photos, biometrics, real names, addresses, or any data we don't need to run the service.
No. We don't sell your writing, your prompts, your API keys, or your email. The only party that sees your API keys is PocketPlot, and only when your request actually goes out.
Yes. Stories can be exported as plain text (every tier), PDF (Pro and Creator), or a shareable URL (Pro and Creator). Worlds can be exported as a single markdown document. Account data deletion is on the roadmap.
Coming later. The platform is API-first today — every critical function is exposed under /api/v1/* with cookie or Bearer-token auth. Mobile clients can hit that surface without touching the web UI.
Yes. PocketPlot is a single-file Flask app. The README.md has setup instructions; the Dockerfile has a one-line build. SQLite is the database; no Redis, no separate worker, no surprise infrastructure.
You keep your stories (they're exportable). If you've configured your own API keys via BYOB, they're stored encrypted in your local SQLite database — they don't go anywhere unless you send them somewhere.