| name | shadow-stage |
| description | Generate coherent Shadow Stage editorial illustration sets with a reusable conceptual visual system. Use when illustrating articles, blogs, newsletters, essays, or social posts that need handcrafted multi-layer black-paper shadow theatre in which fragmented silhouettes align into one bridge or passage through a controlled cobalt backlight. |
Shadow Stage
Create a coherent set of article illustrations with the Shadow Stage visual system. Build a handcrafted shadow theatre from cut silhouettes, visible depth layers, and one controlled cobalt light path. Fragmented actors or structures align into a bridge or passage, making hidden coordination legible without cinematic spectacle.
Read references/style-guide.md before planning or generating. Use the images in assets/examples/ only for low-frequency visual calibration; never copy their composition, people, objects, or wording.
Workflow
- Read the full article or supplied passage.
- Identify the core argument, contrasts, turning points, system relationships, and conclusion.
- Select 1-9 cognitive anchors. Do not illustrate paragraphs at even intervals.
- Write a shot plan before generating. Give each image one core idea, one structure, and a different primary composition.
- Compile every shot with the visual DNA and negative constraints from the style guide.
- Use the host agent's available image-generation tool. Generate one standalone 16:9 image per request.
- Inspect every output against the QA checklist. Regenerate or make one targeted edit when a failure signal appears.
- Deliver ordered files and preserve original generated files.
Shot plan
For every proposed image, specify:
- Placement after the relevant passage
- Theme and core idea
- Purpose in the article
- Structure type
- Composition and reading direction
- Suggested elements
- Essential short labels, or none
Prioritize the core argument, contrasts, turning points, system relationships, cause and effect, and a memorable conclusion. Avoid decorative filler, repeated claims, and paragraphs already concrete without a visual.
Generation rules
- Output one standalone 16:9 horizontal editorial image.
- Keep one core idea per image.
- Make the article-specific relationship visible without relying on a headline.
- Change both the main metaphor object and spatial arrangement between consecutive images.
- Preserve identity through material, palette, hierarchy, and composition grammar rather than repeating a scene.
- Use real supplied labels only. Never invent statistics, quotations, dates, brand marks, or interface copy.
- Respect every
must, never, and negative constraint in the style guide.
QA and iteration
Reject an output when it is generic, off-style, repetitive, text-heavy, anatomically broken, semantically wrong, or dependent on decoration instead of the article idea.
When revising:
- Generic: replace the stock scene with one article-specific physical relationship.
- Complex: remove secondary elements and preserve one focal idea.
- Repetitive: change both the object family and composition pattern.
- Off-style: return to the exact visual DNA in the style guide.
- Text-heavy: remove the headline and keep only essential supplied labels.
Delivery
Name files in article order using {order}-{topic-slug}.png. Report where each image belongs in the article and preserve the original generated outputs.
