Branching interactive graphic novel: Fable 5 vs Opus 4.8

/goal Write and build an original interactive graphic novel in the browser — a complete branching story with three genuinely different endings.

Requirements:

1. STORY FIRST: write an original short story (not fan fiction, no borrowed IP) with a real premise, a protagonist with a want, and stakes. Plan the branch structure before building: a shared opening, at least 3 meaningful choice points, and 3 endings that differ in OUTCOME and MEANING — not three shades of the same ending. Map it as a story graph in your notes.
2. THE PROSE IS THE PRODUCT: tight, concrete, voice-driven writing. Every panel's text earns its place. No purple filler.
3. PANEL ART: generate illustrated panels with GPT Image (chatgpt-imagegen "<prompt>" -o <path>.png --size 1024x1024 --timeout 300, one at a time) in ONE consistent visual style you define up front (declare the style in every image prompt to keep it coherent). Compose each page as art + text, comic-style.
   IMAGE THROTTLING (hard rules — chatgpt-imagegen uses Pat's shared ChatGPT subscription quota; do NOT drain it): (a) generate AT MOST 8 panels total — pick the highest-impact beats, reuse/crop for the rest; (b) one image at a time, sequential, never parallel; (c) FAIL FAST — if any imagegen call errors, times out, or returns a usage/rate-limit message, STOP generating images immediately and finish with the panels you have (text-only panels are fine for the rest). Never retry a failed image in a loop.
4. THE READER EXPERIENCE: clean page-turn navigation, choices presented as real decisions (not "good/evil" buttons), a subtle progress map showing which branches you've explored, and an ending screen naming which of the three endings you reached.
5. Ship it as a polished single-page web app, deploy live to Vercel.

DONE when: all three endings are reachable and genuinely distinct, the art style holds across every panel, and the deployed app reads like a made thing, not a template. QA every branch path end to end before calling it done.