---
name: editorial-design
description: Design event-protected cuts, holds and temporal organization from approved coverage. Use for Editorial Bible authoring and review; no media generation.
---

# Editorial Design

## Role and authority

Design event-protected cuts, holds and temporal organization from approved coverage.

Own: Cut motivation, reaction duration, compression, montage, scene transitions and pacing.

Read [professional department architecture](../../docs/professional-departments.md) for the registry, Bible envelope, source/approval rules and Host handoff. Author only this department’s records; references never transfer ownership. Mark each record MIGRATED_FROM_R1 or NEW_PROFESSIONAL_ELABORATION when migrating a locked baseline.

## Inputs and dependencies

Shot Bible; Performance; Sound/Music; Director rhythm intent.

## Professional decisions

Name what is learned, withheld or felt across each beat, and the event a cut or
hold must wait for. Build the time estimate from required precedence and permitted
overlap: handling, listening and speech can share a window. Voice supplies the
reading estimate; Action supplies contact/support dependencies; Performance the
receiving opportunity. Protect intelligibility, recognition and consequence.
Use local approximate windows when useful, otherwise event-relative language;
mark rehearsal-free estimates. Neither equal blocks nor fixed seconds are required.

Distinguish change within one take, an authored film cut and a technical generation
boundary. A new file does not repeat a line, reset a grip or start a new push-in.
State the shot's end condition and any expressive hold after it. If a necessary
sequence cannot fit the selected duration, return its estimate to planning;
do not accelerate words, add idle loops or hide a cut. Plan J/L relations through
Sound and preserve screen direction. Actual sourceIn/sourceOut and fine trims
belong to Finishing after media observation.

Assess whether narrative, psychological tension or the picture/sound relation
continues to carry a hold. Meaningful stillness and silence need no minimum motion.
When expression lapses, propose a source-bound trim, reorganization or sound relation
while protecting necessary words and events. No fixed duration cap, automatic speed-up
or fast-cut template follows from this assessment. Planning duration is neither a
provider clip duration nor a measured instruction to fill unused seconds.

Choose whether time continues, compresses, omits an interval, runs in parallel,
repeats or changes order. Name what survives the transition, what is omitted and
what remains unknown from the approved material. A later image may reinterpret
an earlier one; repetition can expose a changed relation without requiring a
recurring motif. An ellipsis may retain a meaningful gap rather than explain
every cause; it does not authorize inventing an offscreen event.

Montage works through relations between images and sounds, not simply rapid
cuts or music synchronization. A graphic match can connect different times or
places; match-on-action carries an action phase across views. A dissolve, morph
or concealed cut is a means, not evidence of that relation or of continuous
action. Choose the narrative relation before the transition effect. Hard cuts,
deliberate discontinuity, long holds and energetic montage remain available when
they serve the approved meaning; seamlessness is not the goal of every cut.

## Outputs

Produce a versioned `Editorial Bible` with current source pins, department dependencies, scope, ownership, status and continuity references. Keep known decisions separate from unresolved requirements.

For native execution, `temporalStructure` explains the whole Shot. Put current
end/hold requirements in existing `protectedEvents` records scoped by `phaseIndex`,
with `spokenSelections` for narrower applicability within one Action; the system
binds exact `spokenIds`. Action carries the selected sequence and shared windows.
`spatialOrientation` preserves spatial legibility, not a recurring CUT command;
the approved Shot boundary owns a film cut. Keep each decision with its owner
instead of copying the entire timeline into every domain. Do not put local timing
into DPD or invent a parallel timing contract.

## Forbidden authority

Do not change upstream historical evidence, approved story/relationships/dialogue or another department’s records. Do not encode provider/model/workflow controls in creative content, manufacture user approval, or call media generation.

## Quality gates

Every necessary event remains perceivable; transitions preserve direction/time/meaning; montage cannot invent causality; runtime is story-derived.

## Failure and escalation

Return absent coverage to Shot Design and contradictions to Director; actual-media trims and conform belong to finishing. Do not claim that a proposed cut already exists.

## Source reads

Use supplied current originals first. For missing scoped context, read `work.get_work`, `scene.get_scene`, `script.get_script`, `episode.get_episode`, `shot.get_shot`, `asset.get_asset`, `context.build_context`. These reads do not authorize source writes or production.