Tempotage

Never publish or post anything without the user's explicit go.

Keep wake context thin: cite dial numbers instead of re-deriving locked decisions in chat.

Upscale only the locked final, with an AI model such as Real-ESRGAN animevideov3. Never use plain bicubic or lanczos as the upscaler.

Get approval of the plan and spend bound before paid generation waves, and stay inside the wallet or budget the user named.

Keep gen banks and masters in durable cloud storage, not as the only copy on scratch disk.

Deliver review files as a cloud link only after checking that the uploaded size matches the local file and is at least 1 MB. No chat video attachments for full cuts.

Never ask the user to verify pixels for you, and never make them write the watch notes.

Never comment on a specific timecode until you have actually looked at that moment.

Look before link: watch and listen to the exact file you will share, the same way the user will, before you call it ready. Reports and manifests are leads, not proof.

Captions use only what is actually sung on the locked take, force-aligned to the vocal stem and spot-checked. Never use even splits or paste-sheet times.

Lock the character form and style. Reject photoreal leaks into anime, laterality flips, limb melt, and off-model cast.

Mouths closed by default: no lip-sync theater. Mood-match the lyric energy with action, body, and environment.

Use unused takes before new generations, and show a pick table before any restitch.

Chip-away only: fix the broken moments and leave keepers alone. Never regenerate the whole timeline for a local flaw.

Bank unique real-motion headroom before assembly: G_plan = ceil(1.5 x G_old), where G_old = N - 1 pockets.

Each distinctive motion clip plays once unless the user explicitly allows a reuse.

No stills, no Ken Burns, no freeze pads, no tpad clones, and no reverse or ping-pong as timeline filler. One violation rejects the cut. The only default exception is an end or title card.

The song clock owns the cut. Picture follows the music; never speed-change singing to fit a clip.

Lock one song master before picture work. After lock, remix drafts are archive only.

Paper before pixels: write thesis, character bible, lyrics, and shot map before spending any generation credits.

Start every session with the playbook-index skill; read the project's craft pack before any generation call.

Use at the start of any music-video or video-editing task, or whenever you are unsure which chapter applies; this is the master table of contents of the Tempotage playbook.

Use in the first conversation with a new owner, or when someone asks how to start: ask five short setup questions, point to the playbook index, then walk the ten-step first music video.

Use when starting, resuming, or restarting a music-video project, or before any paid generation wave: Paper Day, story spine, one-screen craft pack, song-first timeline, plan approval, staged waves, and budget.

Use when locking a music video's settings (dials), doing the planning math (half-split, pocket length, G_plan headroom), reverse-engineering a reference video into dials, or building a house formula from favorite videos.

Use when building, rearranging, or fixing a music video's picture timeline against the song: the Post-it desk, lyric anchors, sudoku placement, gap fill, and the rule against discussing any timecode before you have looked at it.

Use when writing still or image-to-video prompts, locking a character's identity and style, choosing which generation tool handles which shot, or deciding how many variants to make.

Use when assembling, polishing, or reviewing any multi-clip music-video cut: the motion law (no stills, Ken Burns, freeze pads, or reverse), the builder hard-guard, the per-clip QA checklist, chip-away surgery with a pick table, and copy-paste ffmpeg assembly and QA commands.

Use when making, fixing, or shipping SRT/VTT captions or any lyric timing for a music video: review what is actually sung on the locked take, separate the vocal stem, force-align in section windows, run snippet QC, and only then deliver.

Use when finishing a locked music-video cut: master and review encodes, AI upscale to 4K with Real-ESRGAN, cutting 9:16 and landscape Shorts, thumbnails, and the upload metadata pack.

Use before any "ready", "done", "up", or review link for a music-video cut, and when delivering files or co-watching with the user: the LOOK gate, timeline-pinned LOOK notes, verified cloud delivery, the ship bar, and intentional co-watch play.

Use when starting a new music video and wanting the hard-won lessons from five shipped projects, or when tempted to cut a corner (pad, regen everything, skip LOOK, remix forever); condensed war stories, failure modes, and anti-patterns.

Use when you or the user meet a playbook term you're unsure of (LOOK, chip-away, dial, wave, pocket, sticky, G_plan, Δ, specimen, molecule, WONTFIX, and more) and want its exact meaning and where it lives.