The Great Automatic Grammatizator
"It can produce any type of story I desire simply by pressing the required button." — Adolph Knipe, 1953
A command-line story machine inspired by Roald Dahl's 1953 short story. Works with any OpenAI-compatible API — local models, remote endpoints, whatever you're running.
Requirements
Python 3.8+. No other dependencies.
Quickstart
On first run it asks three questions:
Base URL [http://192.168.0.124:8888/v1]: ← your endpoint
API key [not-needed]: ← or a real key if required
Model name: mistral ← whatever your server serves
Then press buttons. Pull the switch. Collect your story.
Configuration
You can skip the prompts entirely with environment variables:
export GRAMMATIZATOR_URL=http://192.168.0.124:8888/v1 export GRAMMATIZATOR_MODEL=mistral export GRAMMATIZATOR_KEY=not-needed python grammatizator.py
Or edit the three DEFAULT_* constants at the top of the file.
To re-enter connection details at any time:
python grammatizator.py --config
The Control Panel
| Row | Purpose | Options |
|---|---|---|
| 1 — Master | Genre | satirical, romantic, humorous, philosophical, erotic, historical, political, straight |
| 2 — Basic | Theme | army life, pioneer days, civil war, wild west, seafaring, city crime, forbidden love… |
| 3 — Style | Voice | classical, whimsical, racy, Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, feminine, pulp magazine |
| 4 — Magazine | Target publication | Today's Woman, Reader's Digest, Saturday Evening Post, The New Yorker… |
| 5 — Length | Output size | flash (~300w), short (~800w), standard (~1500w) |
| Pedal — Passion | Emotional intensity | 1 restrained → 5 volcanic |
Note on the passion pedal: Mr Bohlen once pressed too hard. The result was outrageous. Use with care.
How It Works
Each story is generated by your model, guided by a prompt assembled from your button selections. The machine faithfully replicates Knipe's original design specifications, including his secret trick of inserting one long, obscure word per story so that "the reader thinks the man is very wise and clever."
The Story
Dahl wrote The Great Automatic Grammatizator in 1953 — seventy years before large language models existed. It ends with a writer, children starving in the next room, hand creeping toward the contract.
Give us strength, Oh Lord, to let our children starve.
A. Knipe / J. Bohlen Inc., Electrical Engineers