create-creator-takes-h3

A generated creator who says an exact script, with one consistent face, room and voice across several takes.

character-prompt.json is the realism prompt for the character still. Do not fill it by hand. make_character.py fills every slot and calls create-image-fal, because a hand-filled prompt left slots blank and produced the composite face the formula warns about, and different runs filled it differently.

Run

# the user's person, one command, one still. --dry-run prints the prompt and spends nothing.
python make_character.py --age 34 --gender woman --ethnicity "South Asian"     --hair "shoulder-length black hair, slightly frizzy at the crown, one side tucked back"     --wardrobe "plain charcoal crew-neck t-shirt, slightly creased"     --scene "a lived-in home office, a bookshelf softly out of focus behind her"     --out work/character        # writes character.png AND character.json
python plan_takes.py --beats cutlist.json --character character.json --out work/takes
python run_takes.py --spec work/takes/takes.json                  # dry run: plan + estimate
python run_takes.py --spec work/takes/takes.json --only t1 --go   # after the user approves
python run_takes.py --spec work/takes/takes.json --go             # the rest, voice chained
python join_takes.py --spec work/takes/takes.json --end <reel length> --out work/creator.mp4
# caption-burn: transcribe.py --media work/creator.mp4 --out work/creator.words.json
python align_beats.py --beats cutlist.json --words work/creator.words.json \
    --out cutlist.aligned.json --max-end <creator.mp4 length>

character.json, which make_character.py writes for you:

{"image": "character.png",
 "identity": "<age + gender + look from the user's brief>, <hair>, <wardrobe>",
 "environment": "<the real room in the approved still>, window daylight",
 "delivery": "<the tone the user chose>. Whatever the tone, keep the face relaxed: an over-energetic read can give a constant grin and busy hands that read as AI."}

The user chooses who the creator is. Ask for age, gender and ethnicity, plus hair, wardrobe and room, then pass them to make_character.py. Those six are required arguments, so there is nothing to forget and nothing to invent. There is no default person: never copy a look from an example, a reference build or a demo reel.

This is now enforced, not advisory. plan_takes.py rejects an identity that is still a placeholder, or that states no age, or that states no gender. It was advisory once and the docstring carried "a man in his late 20s ..." as an example: that got copied verbatim, the old non-empty check passed it, and every build produced the same unrequested man. An unspecified person is exactly the ambiguous composite face the realism formula warns about, and it is what a reviewer sees as "obviously AI".

delivery now defaults to calm and conversational. The default used to be energetic, which this file already warned "can give a constant grin and busy hands that read as AI", so avoiding a known failure depended on remembering to opt out. Pass delivery to override.

identity and environment go into every take word for word. Write them once from the approved still, then never retype them: a person described two ways drifts between takes.

Choices

These are the user's calls (the recipe's choices), never defaults of this atom:

• Creator (identity) — age, gender, look. Asked of the user; no default person.
• Setting (environment) — the room behind them, written from the approved still. Asked of the user.
• Tone (delivery) — how they speak. Asked of the user; if missing, plan_takes.py falls back to a neutral conversational read and prints a note.
• Voice — follows the creator (age, gender, accent) and is locked from t1.

Rules

1. Lock order: script, then character still, then takes. Show the still before any take. A take costs dollars; a still costs cents.
2. First take alone, then listen. Every later take copies t1's voice (its audio is passed as reference_audio_urls). A robotic or mismatched voice in t1 is in every take. If the user rejects it, --reseed t1 and generate t1 again.
3. Voice matches the person. Age, gender and accent follow the character. The prompt's delivery line sets the tone; change it through delivery, not by editing the prompt file.
4. No square brackets in lines. H3 speaks them aloud; plan_takes.py refuses them.
5. Dialogue stays verbatim. Takes are sent with prompt_expansion_mode: disabled.
6. Takes split between lines, never inside one, and run 0.6s past the last word. --split-at 6.3,14.5 joins the takes exactly at those line boundaries: the screen-insert format joins where an insert ENDS, so the cut is hidden under the screen. The voice runs under inserts too, so every line (creator or product beat) is in a take.
7. Join with a 0.10s dissolve, never 0.20s. At 0.20s both poses show through the blend ("two pairs of hands"). Measured: 11.04 peak change at 0.10s vs 13.30 for a hard cut.
8. One filter graph. Joining files with the concat demuxer puts black frames at every boundary; xfade with a late offset silently concatenates instead of overlapping.
9. Watch every take end to end before joining: eyes on the lens to the last word, hands, identity, voice. A wrong still ("anchor") makes every take wrong the same way; if all takes fail alike, fix the still, not the seed.
10. Mannerism clips are optional and need rights. --mannerism passes a muted motion-reference clip. Its gaze transfers, so check the eyeline on every frame. Never use another brand's creator footage.
11. Seeds are pinned. Re-running an unchanged take repays for the same clip. Existing take files are skipped.

Failure modes

1. A hand-filled realism prompt. character-prompt.json sat in this directory read by no script, with the instruction "fill its slots, generate 2-4 options, let the user pick one". Slots got left blank, every run filled them differently, and the documented workflow was iterative by design. Use make_character.py; it refuses a blank slot and an out-of-range age.
2. A guard that rejects everything. The age and gender guards in plan_takes.py shipped with a literal backspace byte where \b was meant, so every identity failed and the skill could not run at all. A guard is not tested by reading it: run it against one input it must ACCEPT and one it must REJECT. grep -c $'\x08' <file> catches this class.
3. Iterating the avatar. This is a template a customer runs, so the still has to land on the first generation. When it does not, fix the inputs (--hair, --wardrobe, --scene, or a different --seed, which reshuffles which three skin imperfections are asked for) rather than re-rolling the same brief; an unchanged payload with a pinned seed reproduces the same image and wastes the spend.