production-design git:20260913.e464edeA

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---
name: production-design
description: Design reusable character casting, faction costume hierarchy, sets and visual motifs from story intent. Use for visual suitability and screen authority before asset resolution; does not produce media or select providers.
---

# Production Design & Casting

Decide what the world and characters should look like, using dramatic role, age,
experience, class, story phase and audience readability. Asset resolution owns
finding, creating or reusing the identity references that realize that design.
Identity continuity alone never proves casting suitability. Attractive means
appropriate and watchable, not cosmetic perfection: do not equate protagonists
with idol styling, antagonists with ugliness or heroes with exaggerated muscles.

Read the [design and handoff contract](references/design.md) when authoring a
revision. Consume approved story, existing visual identity, actual media review
and user feedback. When historical accuracy matters, inherit HistoricalCanonPolicy
and resolve consequential gaps with historical-research; mark design choices and
optional hypotheses separately from documented appearance. Do not convert sparse
evidence into a claimed exact portrait or introduce consequential plot facts.

Use only these four internal modes, selecting the ones the request needs:

- **Character / Casting Design:** CharacterVisualSpec and VisualAuthority; identify
  silhouette, body/face suitability, posture, economical movement, costume and
  spatial priority. A core first appearance needs readable action/attitude and a
  FirstAppearanceContract. Captions label identity; they cannot supply authority.
- **Costume / Faction Design:** FactionVisualSystem combines shared visual grammar
  with rank/role differences in construction, materials, wear and silhouette.
  Repeated identical costumes with different faces require revision. Distinguish
  factions through supported differences, not invented uniform regulations.
- **Location / Set Design:** LocationDesignSpec specifies usable space, paths,
  anchors, material and story state plus foreground/midground/background. It
  complements the VisualBible's look; an atmosphere adjective is not a set.
- **Prop / Visual Motif Design:** VisualMotifSpec names a recurrent object or
  material, its changing narrative meaning and the limit against decoration.

Keep transient damage, dirt, wetness, fatigue and held objects in Scene/Shot
CharacterState. Stable design must not absorb one shot's condition. Specify only
fields that distinguish this role; supporting characters need no exhaustive face
inventory. Stable traits need not be photogenic; authority can be quiet or hidden
when a declared story purpose warrants concealment.

Review actual evidence with PASS/PARTIAL/FAIL and reasons: identity, main-character
first-glance importance, silhouette/body/face, posture, costume/blocking/camera
and surrounding reaction privilege, faction hierarchy/contrast, place specificity,
prop function, storytelling, modern styling, fantasy contamination and evidence
fidelity. Keep unobserved image quality UNKNOWN. No beauty or hero numeric scores.
Scene chooses how a person enters; this skill designs visual importance; shot-design
chooses the concrete view. Do not author camera execution or provider prompts here.

For stable, reusable designs only, search existing Asset semantic keys before
creating a text-only OTHER Creative Asset. Use existing create/get/search and
`creative_assets.remember`; no dummy Media, new table or reference image is needed.
Preserve candidate status and prior revisions. A new casting proposal cannot
replace current Character referenceMediaIds or become approved without the user's
casting decision. Keep shot-specific proposals as working artifacts.

Handoff a fingerprinted design and its historical policy to asset-resolution,
shot-design or cinematic-direction; they may apply state and coverage but may not
rewrite stable traits. This skill neither selects models, generates media, writes
provider parameters, revises screenplay peaks nor performs an edit. Complete with
reviewed design, explicit unknowns, selected persistence scope and a downstream
handoff; image validation remains a separately authorized production task.

For missing supplied context, use `work.get_work`, `script.get_script`,
`episode.get_episode`, `scene.get_scene` or `shot.get_shot` by known identity;
use `context.build_context` only for unresolved context. Discover stable designs
with `asset.list_assets` / `asset.search_assets` and inspect `asset.get_asset`
and `media.get_media`. Verify consequential evidence with `research.search_sources`
and `research.verify_claim`. After a complete reusable candidate exists,
`asset.create_asset` is the first write; `asset.save_asset` is only for an explicit
revision of an existing design, never a routine second write after creation.