Heat & Intimacy

1.Why this exists

The first version of the Backroom treated heat as a single inferred number — one field, silently defaulted from the pen-name profile's free-text default_heat_level. The author's first real intake under the mafia pen surfaced the bug: heat is a deliberate, before-you-draft brand commitment, and it had been picked up without anyone being asked.

The fix isn't just "ask the question." Heat sits inside a system: a book either has a romance arc or doesn't (the upstream switch); a romance pen name commits to a band of heat levels it never breaks (the brand promise); a specific book commits to a point inside the band (the per-book craft choice); and the brand promise sets how much of an intimate-scene apparatus the subsystem activates. This page is the visual reference for that system.

Honest packaging beats hot packaging every time. — The author's own doctrine, which the machine now enforces

2.The two switches

Intake asks two questions, in this order. The first is the upstream switch — it can short-circuit the whole subsystem before heat is ever mentioned.

3.The 0–5 heat scale

Numeric, six levels, calibrated to publishing conventions. Replaces the prior free-text categorical (closed-door / open-door / explicit). The chili-pepper emoji are decoration; the number is canonical.

Old-to-new translation for anything still labeled on the prior 1–5 or categorical scale: old 1 (clean/closed-door) usually maps to new 0 when no sex appears on canvas, else new 1. Old 4 = new 4; old 5 = new 5. The intake skill carries this translation logic for back-compat.

4.The pen-name heat_band

Heat band is the pen name's brand promise — the unbreakable range of heat levels every book under that pen commits inside. A pen name banded 3-4 never publishes a 5 (too hot for the brand) or a 2 (too tame). The band is optional; pen names that don't write romance carry no band at all.

5.The four activation tiers

The pen name's heat-band ceiling determines how much of the spice subsystem activates. Build to the hardest book the band allows. A pen banded 3–4 activates at the 4-tier because some of her books will hit 4 — the apparatus has to be ready.

6.The four KICKBACK conditions

A KICKBACK is a brand-mismatch detected at intake. The Boss does not auto-settle these — they're a Family matter, surfaced to the author before the Intake review with four resolution options (change book heat / change pen-name band / change romance_arc / change pen name).

7.The six artifacts

Heat and intimacy work touches three layers. The Ick List sits at the voice layer (always built, alongside crutch-list.md). The four spice/ files sit at the pen-name spice layer (built per the activation tier). The book-level Dialogue Cards sit at the book layer (read the pen-name palette).

8.Where it lives on disk

D:\code\the-backroom\
├── templates/
│   └── pen-name/
│       ├── ick-list.md                # NEW — voice layer, always built
│       └── spice/                       # NEW — pen-name spice layer
│           ├── spice-style-sheet.md
│           ├── ai-context-block.md
│           ├── dialogue-flavor-palette.md
│           └── kink-setting-roulette.md   # full activation only
├── pen-names/
│   ├── mafia/                           # heat_band: 4-5 → FULL activation
│   │   ├── voice-bible.md
│   │   ├── crutch-list.md
│   │   ├── ick-list.md                # NEW — copied at Phase 4a
│   │   └── spice/                       # NEW — copied at Phase 4a
│   │       ├── spice-style-sheet.md
│   │       ├── ai-context-block.md
│   │       ├── dialogue-flavor-palette.md
│   │       └── kink-setting-roulette.md
│   └── test-pen/                        # non-romance — no heat_band, no spice/
│       └── ick-list.md                # still built (blanket guardrail)
└── pen-names/<pen>/<book>/
    └── the-arrangement.md               # carries: romance_arc + heat_level + core_dynamic

9.Build status

Schema, intake behavior, and pen-name-level templates are all built and in place. The drafting-time routing wrapper and per-scene heat distribution are intentionally deferred until the first romance book reaches the Job phase — they want to be shaped against a real scene being drafted, not against air.