📄 every-stage-its-own-folder.md12/05/2026
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Every stage gets its own folder

Five-stage video pipeline with a QC gate between every stage.
The whole pipeline at a glance. Every transition is a checkpoint, not a leap of faith.

Ask AI for the final output and it almost works. Then you need a change, and you rerun the entire thing.

I break every workflow into stages where each stage's output becomes the next stage's input. Video looks like this:

A single stage: input arrow, stage box, output arrow, QC checkmark beneath.
The atomic unit. One stage, one input, one output, one QC gate. Everything bigger is just this, repeated.
  1. Write the prompts → QC the prompts
  2. Generate images from the prompts → QC the images
  3. Generate clips from the images → QC the clips
  4. Write the script over the clips → QC the script
  5. Collate into the final cut
Stage N's output folder wired into stage N+1's input folder, repeated across the pipeline.
The contract between stages. What leaves one stage's output folder is exactly what enters the next stage's input folder. Nothing else crosses the boundary.

Every gate is a folder. Every folder is recoverable. If the script's wrong, I don't regenerate clips. If a clip's wrong, I don't rewrite the prompt.

Folder tree showing each stage as its own directory with input, output, qc subfolders.
The structure on disk. Each stage owns a folder. Each folder owns input, output, and qc. The structure is the system.

The system around the AI is the intelligence. The folder structure is the system. The cost of going back becomes the cost of one stage, not the cost of one workflow.

my-video/

📂 input/

Brief, references, mood board (manual drop-in)

📂 output/

Prompt set, one .txt per shot, named to match the shotlist

📂 qc/

  • Each prompt reads as a directed shot, not a vibe
  • Naming aligns with the shotlist
  • No banned terms or brand drift

📄 STAGE.md — rerun

$ regenerate prompts from brief.md
Click a stage to see its input, its output, and the QC list that lives beside it. Same shape every time.
↓ICM stage skeleton (zip) ↓STAGE.md template

📌 Files attached

icm-stage-skeleton.zip
ICM stage skeleton — drop-in folder template, 01_prompts to 05_final
STAGE.md
STAGE.md — per-stage README template with rerun command

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