Project Image Pipeline

Owns

Everything that makes a picture or changes one, from a look nobody has settled to a file the project references: the brief, the request the generator receives, the paid run and its keeper, the edit to a picture that exists, and the export. It never decides whether the result is usable — that verdict belongs to a reader who did not make it.

Phases: DIRECT → PROMPT → RUN → REFINE → DELIVER. Enter at the earliest phase whose decision is still open, and stop at the last one asked for.

Before starting

• Name the phase you enter and the one you stop at. A request for a candidate stops at RUN; a request for a file in the project reaches DELIVER
• Know the budget. Generation and generative refinement share spend, including failed/refused attempts with unknown billing. A run without a budget is a run with no end
• Open the phase's page before acting in it. Each carries its own checks, rules and done condition; this page only routes

• Size it before anything else, first match wins. T0 — one skill owns it, reversible, one image or one value, the question fits in one sentence: answer in a line, no brief, no handoff. T1 — a T0 condition fails: settle the brief first. T2 — two or more skills own parts of it: route it. T0 drops the paperwork, never the evidence. Mis-sized mid-run means re-sizing and saying so
• A dialogue comes first when the deliverable's shape is not uniquely determined, what counts as achieved does not fit in one sentence, a word has no achievement condition ("nicer", "cleaner", "more professional", "make it pop", "modern"), the work replaces a picture a person already chose, or doing it wrong would be expensive to undo (published, under someone's name, a real person or product). Looking at what exists is not executing
• Settle standard in that dialogue — what the image is judged against. Without one, every candidate is arguable and the loop has no exit. excludes may not be empty and execution waits on an empty open_questions (_image/SIZING.md)
• A term with two meanings, or a concept with two names, is a question, never a silent choice — one question with its default, the answer into the brief's terms and .agents/glossary.md, and the glossary's names only from then on (_image/SIZING.md § Terms)

• Retained generated candidates carry a recipe: engine, reported model (or unreported), prompt verbatim, excluded, size requested/on disk, inputs, output. Capture the request at invocation; persist for candidates shown, kept or passed onward, not immediate discards. References and text-only outputs need no invented generation fields. IRREPRODUCIBLE limits exact pixel regeneration, not reuse or editing the source (_image/RECIPE.md)

Decide first

Situation	How to proceed
The look is not settled — subject, mood, art style, what a reference gives	direct, with subject-and-frame and reference-reading
The picture is decided and needs wording, exclusions, a canvas or variants	prompt, with structure and exclusions
A settled prompt must become files	run, with batching and selection
A picture exists and is close but wrong	refine, with locate-then-change and edit-ladder
A reviewed picture must land in the project	deliver, with format-choice and naming
The picture changed after its last review, and delivery is next	Stop. Selection is not approval: image-review reads it first, and an approval never carries over to a regenerated or edited picture
Two generators are installed and neither was named	Ask. They take different size arguments and one writes JPEG — the choice is the user's, and the recipe records which one ran
A claim here would be expensive to get wrong	refute — put it to the engines that did not make it, asked to break it rather than to agree. Unrefuted is n engines finding nothing, never proof

• Ties break by _image/VALUES.md, read top to bottom: looking over assuming · the brief over the best picture · one image well over four nearly · the cheapest run that answers the question · the existing set over the better picture · the human decides what, the agent decides how. Against all of them: a harness that is correct and avoided has failed — when the ceremony costs more than the decision, say so rather than performing it

Always / Never

• Always: view pixels before describing, comparing or exporting a picture. File facts from imgfacts are measured mechanics, never a visual check
• Always: capture the sent request at invocation and keep a recipe for each retained candidate and each generative edit. Memory cannot restore it; mark that loss IRREPRODUCIBLE
• Always: get permission first before a batch over the stated budget, a real person, brand or living artist in the picture, or replacing a file already referenced
• Never: report a picture as matching the prompt on the strength of the prompt
• Never: quietly reword past a refusal, or keep generating with no question the next run would answer
• Never: deliver a picture that changed since image-review last read it

Verify with

Open the pixels of every picture described, compared or written, and read its dimensions and format off the file (measured), not off the request. The phase's page says what else it owes.

• Each phase entered reports its own done condition, and a phase skipped is named with why it was already settled
• Spend is reported: runs made, runs of budget, what the next one was for

• Grade every claim: measured names the measurement method or a located, repeatable visual observation, not aesthetic certainty. inspected is reasoned judgement where measurement cannot settle the decision; say why. Header inspection is not viewing pixels. asserted never supports completion: the prompt asked for 3:2, it does not report what came back
• The unit is the decision, not the batch. Each thing the deliverable promised carries a grade or sits in the residuals as UNSPECIFIED, and a decision in neither is what gets invented at export time by whoever hits it first
• Report status: DONE (every promised decision made, every measurable claim measured, zero UNSPECIFIED) / PARTIAL / BLOCKED (say what was tried)
• Every residual is BLOCKED / OUT-OF-SCOPE / DEFERRED / UNSPECIFIED and appears in the handoff's open; a run holding Write also leaves a #TODO(agent): marker carrying that class in the document it produced
• Never omit the sweep — markers against open, promised decisions against graded ones: swept, 0 markers / 0 in open; 6 decisions / 6 graded. While either pair disagrees the status is not DONE (_image/CONTRACT.md)

Done when

The last phase asked for has met the done condition on its page, every retained candidate has a recipe with measured on-disk sizes, attempts and refusals are accounted for, and nothing was delivered unreviewed after its last change.

• Say what the moment needs. Start: one line naming what will be made and what is excluded. Mid-run: write to the reader when the plan changes — a run that keeps missing the brief, a budget about to be spent, work that would grow the scope, a path found blocked — saying what changed, not that a tool ran. Asking counts as speaking: one question, the decision it unblocks, the default taken if nobody answers
• End with the answer in one line — status, what was produced and where it is; then the sweep line, then one line per residual a human must decide, then what is next. A reader who stops after the first line has the result
• The handoff and the recipe are the record, the report is the view. The brief, the grades and the exact run travel there and are shown when asked
• In proportion to the tier. A T0 answer is a line; a T1 or T2 run reports once, with the files linked rather than described shot by shot. Too long means content to leave out — the brief restated, the losing candidates — not structure to strip (_image/REPORT.md)
• Not bigger than it is. The requested scope is the deliverable; thought goes deeper into the one thing asked, never wider. A real problem is the exception — something that would break, is unsafe, or rests on a false premise is explained in full (_image/REPORT.md)