Orchestrating Story Pipeline

Workflow

1. Explain the plan simply. Before major product-impacting behavior, briefly explain what the pipeline is about to do and why.
2. Start with intake. On POST /story/start, send the user's first text/voice transcript to the Emotional Cartographer.
3. Gate on confidence. If emotional confidence is too low, allow one clarifying follow-up before story generation.
4. Create the macro plan. Send the emotional map to the Story Architect to produce the story bible with 5 anchor nodes and 4 endings.
5. Enter the scene loop. For each anchor:
   • get choices if this anchor contains a decision point
   • generate scene panels
   • generate visual prompt/motion plan
   • generate voice/music plan
   • pass all of it through the Continuity Editor
6. Validate each handoff. If JSON is malformed or missing fields, reject it immediately and route back to the offending agent with precise feedback.
7. Retry narrowly. Allow up to 2 targeted retries per failing stage. Do not restart the entire pipeline unless the story bible itself is invalid.
8. Degrade gracefully. Preserve the story experience even when media generation is partial.
9. Return a clean response. Always return the next scene package plus updated session state.

Orchestration rules

• Keep the branching model hybrid and reconverging.
• Never let downstream agents invent new anchor nodes.
• Never skip evaluation before handoff.
• Do not add database complexity for MVP.
• Prefer browser-carried session state or lightweight in-memory state for demo simplicity.

Example state payload

{
  "session_id": "sess_123",
  "current_anchor": "A2",
  "current_decision": "D2",
  "hidden_state": {
    "courage": 1,
    "compassion": 2,
    "truth": 0,
    "attachment": 1,
    "self_trust": -1
  },
  "asset_status": {
    "images": "ready",
    "motion": "fallback_static",
    "voice": "ready"
  },
  "retry_counts": {
    "scene_director": 0,
    "visual_motion_director": 1,
    "voice_sound_designer": 0
  },
  "next_step": "render_scene"
}

Success checklist

• Every handoff is typed JSON.
• The story remains inside 5 anchors and 4 decision points.
• Failures route back to one agent, not the full chain.
• Story quality stays higher priority than fancy media.
• Fallbacks keep the demo alive.

Project references

• AGENTS.md — multi-agent roles, typed JSON rule, fallback rules, user-context guidance.
• docs/PRD.md — pipeline order, hidden state variables, 5 anchor nodes, 4 endings.
• docs/roadmap.md — MVP scope; avoid Phase 2 features like accounts, Firestore, or replay systems.