Episodes

Episodes represent complete video productions that move through an 8-stage pipeline orchestrated by AI agents with automated quality gates. Reach Episodes from the top-chrome stage rail — Episodes is the rightmost stage.

Episode detail layout

Click any episode card to open the detail view. It has three stacked sections:

• Header — episode title, slug, target duration, action buttons (Delete · Composition · Run Pipeline).
• Preview — collapsed by default. The header row shows a live status chip (video ready / composition ready / not available). Expand it only when you want to watch — that keeps the pipeline in view while you work.
• Pipeline Stages — one row per stage with status dot, name, status chip, and contextual actions.

Pipeline stages

Stage	Agent	Reviewer	Max iterations	Description
Research	Researcher	Producer	2	Gather facts, sources, competitive analysis, define unique angle
Script	Writer	Producer	3	Write screenplay in channel character voice
Storyboard	Storyboarder	Producer	2	Plan visual sequences and scene layouts
Assets	Asset Finder	—	1	Find and download media resources
Compositing	Compositor	Producer	3	Assemble Remotion video from 65+ components
Export	Render Worker	—	1	Render final MP4 via Chromium (dispatched to worker-render)
Review	Producer	—	1	Holistic quality gate across all artifacts — always requires human approval
Publish	—	—	1	Guard on review approval, mark episode complete

Storyboard stage — Open editor

The storyboard stage row has a special Open editor button. It jumps to the Storyboard editor for this episode — a dedicated UI for planning per-scene visuals, shot types, and attached image/clip resources. That's normally where you'd land rather than running the AI storyboarder directly. If the episode has a linked script, the editor auto-populates; otherwise there's a script dropdown to pick one.

Execution modes

• Full Pipeline — click Run Pipeline in the header to execute from the next pending stage through to completion (or until a stage requires human intervention).
• Single Stage — click Run on any individual stage row to execute just that stage.

Quality gates

The producer agent scores each stage output 1–10. Stages scoring 7+ pass automatically. Failed stages trigger a feedback loop:

1. Producer writes structured revision notes.
2. Notes are saved as stage feedback.
3. The responsible agent re-runs with the feedback context.
4. Repeat up to the stage's max iterations.

If iterations exhaust without passing, the stage is marked needs_human and the pipeline pauses for manual intervention.

Upstream issues

If the producer identifies a problem originating from an earlier stage (e.g., a weak script caused by thin research), both the current stage and the upstream stage are marked changes_requested. The pipeline halts so a human can decide whether to re-run the upstream stage.

Soft recovery

If an agent hits its turn limit but still produced the expected artifact (e.g., research.md exists), the orchestrator proceeds to review rather than hard-failing — the artifact may be good enough to pass.

Stage statuses

Status	Meaning	Colour
not_started	Stage hasn't been run	Gray
in_progress	Agent or render currently executing	Blue (pulsing)
review	Producer is evaluating the output	Yellow
complete	Stage passed quality gate	Green
approved	Human explicitly approved (review stage)	Green
changes_requested	Feedback provided, needs re-run	Gray
needs_human	Max iterations exhausted or human gate	Pink
error	Agent or render failed	Red

Artifact viewers

Research, script, and storyboard rows have a chevron for viewing the produced artifact inline. The artifact is a text blob fetched from /channels/:channelId/episodes/:episodeId/artifacts/:stage. For storyboard, the artifact is a summary — the full interactive editor is behind Open editor.

Composition

The header's Composition button opens the timeline editor for direct composition editing (Remotion composition format). Useful for fine-tuning once the AI has produced a first pass.

Episode files

Each episode lives in channels/{channel}/episodes/{slug}/ with:

manifest.yml          # Pipeline state (stage statuses + scriptId + audioProjectId)
research.md           # Research output
script.md             # Written screenplay
storyboard.md         # Visual plan (or JSON if generated)
Episode.tsx           # Remotion composition
feedback/             # Producer review notes per stage
  research.md
  script.md
  ...
output/               # Rendered video
  {slug}.mp4

TIP

Episodes require NATS workers. Workers are deployed as Kubernetes Deployments in Helm (see the workers values section). For local dev: docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml up -d.