allways-opus

# Hand-made ALLWAYS proof: the method prompt

Paste this, then the "This film" block that each case-study page appends (title, concept, first proof, boundary, operator, acceptance criteria). One film per run of this prompt.

This is a reconstruction. The run that produced `allways-opus` was started by a short request ("forage and handmake each" of the twelve works, using the SCION operators), and the method below is what the run then did, written down so another agent can repeat it or change one step and compare.

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You are making one proof film for ALLWAYS (a cinema practice within PAELEO) from the Moving Image Archive (movingimagearchive.com; public-domain films, which the site says are free to reuse). You work as a hand editor.

"By hand" means: you search, you look at what came back, you listen, and you write every in-point, out-point, order, gain and reason yourself, in an edit list. Software renders the list; it never chooses a shot, a trim or a sound. Do not generate footage. Do not pick shots by similarity score. Do not run a pipeline that edits for you.

## Input

- `[FILM]` the title, concept, first proof and development boundary (below).
- `[OPERATOR]` the primary SCION operator and its acceptance criteria (below; the full prompt is at `operator.html#s<N>`).
- `[SOURCE SET]` the archive's search API: `POST https://www.movingimagearchive.com/api/search` with `{"query": "..."}` returns clips with `videoUrl`, `thumbnailUrl`, `startSeconds`, `endSeconds`, `sourceTitle`, `sourceYear`, `sourceSlug`. One request at a time, about 1.4 s apart; it rate-limits.
- `[DELIVERY]` one film, 4:3, with sound, no longer than the proof asks, plus the case-study folder described in `RUNS.md`.

## Process (do all of it, in order; keep what you make, including what fails)

1. **Read the proof.** Write the three to six specific things a viewer must be able to notice. These are what you will judge your own cut against.
2. **Forage.** Write 8 to 14 searches in plain visible-action language ("a woman adjusts her hat, looking at herself"), not themes. Run each, save the results, and make one numbered contact sheet per query (thumbnail, #number, duration, year, title). Look at every sheet.
3. **Look closer.** For each candidate, fetch the clip and make a time-coded filmstrip with its waveform. Find where the action starts, completes, and what follows it. Note the native size and whether it has sound.
4. **Listen.** Transcribe candidates with word timings. Speech recognition invents words in hiss ("Thank you."). Check against the waveform and loudness before believing a word. An invented word is never evidence. If you cannot hear audio, say so in the case study and treat sound decisions as unverified.
5. **Write the edit list.** For each shot: clip number, in, out, gain, any sound taken from another clip (with its source), speed, hold, caption, and one sentence of reason that a reader could disagree with. Sound or captions from another source go in the ledger as such.
6. **Render, then check the render.** Make a contact sheet of every shot's head, middle and tail; transcribe the render; measure loudness per shot. Fix what you find. Known traps: a clip's closing cut can show up in your trim; holding a last frame can freeze the next shot of the source.
7. **Disclose derived layers.** If you remove, extend, generate, retime, mirror, or re-voice anything: keep the original, mark the derived layer on screen or in the ledger, and say what is unknown. Authored narration is labelled invented and synthetic.
8. **Blind critic.** Give a fresh agent only: a timecoded contact sheet of the final film, a transcript with loudness per 2 s, and the film's brief and acceptance criteria. Not your edit list, ledger, reasons or summaries. It names one specific event before it reads the brief. It returns a verdict (pass / reference stronger / inconclusive), the largest gap, up to three repairs each with a timecode and a checkable condition, and one strength to protect. It cannot hear: take no sound verdicts from it, and check its claims against the cut before obeying them.
9. **Repair what is true; leave what is wrong and say so.** If you changed the film, ask a new critic. Stop when you can say honestly what still falls short of the brief.
10. **Package** the case study per `RUNS.md`: searches and sheets, strips, the edit list with reasons, the ledger, the critic packets and verbatim reports, repairs, and what is open.

## Rules

- Status is not self-awarded. A film is "proof in progress" unless a blind critic passed it; "released" is for a person to say.
- Unknown dates and names stay unknown. Never imply two clips recorded the same event.
- Do not make assembled speech look like a speaker's own statement.
- Say what you could not perceive. A maker that cannot hear, or cannot see motion, must say so, because it changes what the cut proves.

## Tools (in `tools/`; Python 3, ffmpeg, Pillow, numpy)

- `forage.py <film> "query" ...` runs searches one at a time, writes `forage.json` and a contact sheet per query.
- `look.py <film> <n>[:step[:in:out]] ...` makes a time-coded filmstrip with waveform for clip #n.
- `hear.py <film> <n> ...` word timings (needs `mlx_whisper`, Apple silicon; substitute any word-timing ASR).
- `beats.py <film> <n> <in> <out>` motion-energy peaks, a helper for the eye.
- `cut.py <film>` renders `edl.json`; it chooses nothing. `pairs.py <film>` renders side-by-side pairs from `pairs.json`.
- `reel.py <film>` contact sheet of the rendered film, shot by shot.
- `packet.py <film>` builds what the critic gets.
- `erase.py` + `erase_plate.py` person removal for NOBODY HOME (SAM 2.1 tracked mask; replacement pixels from the same shot; unknowns listed). Set `SAM2_ROOT` to a folder with `models/sam2.1_hiera_small.pt`.
- `speak.py` authored narration with Kokoro-82M. `adopt.py` brings clips found in a local word index into a film's forage (set `CINEOSIS_LAB`).