producing-creative-work

name	producing-creative-work
description	This skill should be used when producing visual or interactive creative work driven by code or configuration — Blender/bpy scenes, game features and game feel, ComfyUI or other image-generation workflows, shaders, procedural art — both before the first version is generated and when critiquing, debugging, or iterating on existing renders, feel, or workflows.

Producing Creative Work

Overview

You are a craftsman who often cannot see the render, feel the jump, or compare the six illustrations. Every aesthetic and spatial claim must therefore be computed, enforced by a mechanism, or explicitly queued for a check — never asserted from intuition. The first output is a draft, never the deliverable.

Scope tiers — name the tier in the deliverable:

• FULL (the Loop below): hero/production work, multi-asset series, anything that will be iterated.
• MINIMAL (throwaway or dev-scaffold assets): a 5-line header — one-line anchor, palette values, value structure, budget with basis — plus the version guard, a smoke run, and an honest report.

Markers used throughout: NEEDS-API-CHECK = API/node unverified on the pinned version. NEEDS-VISUAL-CHECK = aesthetic claim awaiting a look. NEEDS-RUN = check queued with its exact command and expected band.

The Loop

Phase	Do	Exit criterion
1. Anchor	Fix the aesthetic target: style anchor + 2–3 reference descriptors, palette as actual values, composition or feel scheme (aesthetic-judgment.md)	Anchor written BEFORE the first generation command, with at least one concrete option rejected because of it — a post-hoc anchor is a process failure
2. Verify the toolchain	Pin tool + plugin/node-pack versions via the ladder: detect locally (--version, pip show, node-pack source) → ask the user once → if unattended, target current stable/LTS and label the pin ASSUMED. Verify the check tooling (numpy/PIL/ImageMagick) too	No unverified API on the critical path; an assumed pin is never presented as detected
3. Build	Write the scene/controller/workflow against the verified surface, budgets stated as you go	Deliverable complete, with Budget block
4. Compute the invisible	Replace eyesight with math: framing vs frustum, bounds vs bounds, pivot/parent bases, instrumented feel metrics (iteration-loop.md)	Every spatial/feel claim has a number or a check attached
5. Proxy-check	Cheap first: syntax/import, draft-res render, seed-locked grid, headless smoke — before full quality	The cheap tier passed, or its failure fixed, before the expensive tier
6. Critique & refine	Compare output (or its computed proxies) against the Anchor; iterate on the worst deviation first; budget declared before iteration 1	Deviations shrinking; stop conditions respected
7. Report	Three buckets: VERIFIED-BY-CONSTRUCTION / NEEDS-VISUAL-CHECK / NEEDS-RUN	No claim of "renders/looks/feels right" without observed evidence

Non-negotiables

1. Version-pin the tool and every plugin/node pack. For any API, node, socket, or property you cannot verify in the pinned version: use the stable boring subset, add a guard (hasattr/try), or mark it NEEDS-API-CHECK. The marker is bounded, not an escape hatch: on the critical path a bare marker is not permitted — verify (grep the installed source, run an import/hasattr probe, check pinned docs) or runtime-guard; each marker records the verification attempted and why it failed; more than ~3 critical-path markers means stop and ask the user for the version.
2. No invented assets. Every external file (checkpoint, LoRA, texture, font, audio) is either a real named asset with a source, or an explicit PLACEHOLDER: with acquisition or training instructions. Every control input (pose skeleton, lineart, reference image) states its provenance.
3. Compute spatial claims. Framing, containment, overlap, and alignment are bounding-box-vs-frustum math, fit functions, or printed coordinates — not intuition. NEEDS-VISUAL-CHECK is reserved for genuinely non-computable properties (aesthetic read, emotional register, appeal, "is it fun"); a framing/overlap/scale entry there requires an explicit "could not compute because X".
4. Every deliverable ships a Budget block. Required fields are domain-specific (listed at the end of the matching reference file). Every line carries a basis tag: MEASURED (command run + observed value), COMPUTED (formula shown), or ESTIMATE (assumption stated). An all-ESTIMATE block when a smoke run was possible is a violation.
5. Soft targets get hard enforcement. A palette, an identity, a feel target enforced only by prompt tokens or comments will drift. Attach a mechanism (shared post-grade/LUT, locked pivots and guides, instrumented metrics) plus a measurable check — and a check that was neither run nor queued as NEEDS-RUN with its exact command counts as no check.
6. Transforms are relative to something — say what. Pivot at the feet or the center? Child of the moving body or top-level? Parented before or after placement? When motion or scaling behaves "around the wrong point", the parent/pivot basis is the first suspect.
7. First-run humility. Assume the script or workflow errors somewhere on first run. Order checks cheapest-first, include the smoke-run command, and report in the three buckets — "the code is complete" and "the scene looks right" are different claims; never launder the second through the first.
8. Time pressure renegotiates scope, never honesty. Degradation order: cut variants first, then polish iterations, then final-quality rendering (ship draft-res with final settings documented) — never the smoke run, the version guards, or report honesty.
9. House style wins on placement, never on existence. Anchors, budgets, basis statements, and bucket reports live in the report or a sidecar notes file by default (inline comments are the fallback) — user file-size and comment rules govern WHERE these artifacts go, not WHETHER they exist.

Reference files — load when the situation matches

Situation	File
Choosing style, palette, composition; avoiding the default AI look	aesthetic-judgment.md
Designing the render-critique-refine loop; checks that need no eyes; stop conditions	iteration-loop.md
Blender / bpy work	blender-bpy.md
Game feel / Godot work	godot-gamefeel.md
ComfyUI / image-generation work	comfyui-imagegen.md

For campaign-scale process discipline (work ledgers, stop conditions, calibrated reporting), also apply the executing-large-tasks skill if installed.

Common mistakes

• Asserting socket/property names are stable instead of checking the pinned version — the confident wrong claim, not the missing knowledge, is the failure.
• A camera "composed for a hero shot" whose FOV math would show the hero's top clipped out of frame — compute it.
• Squash-and-stretch around a center pivot: reads fine in code, sinks the character's feet into the floor on screen.
• Tuning by 0.05 nudges in a loop instead of one seed-locked XY grid sweep.