Epic-Codirector Co-Director
v6 · agentic architecture · draft
Technical Explainer · Living Document

An agentic film crew,
wired as a graph.

Epic-Codirector Co-Director composes a feature-style production pipeline out of specialised agents — director, casting, sound, art, cinematographer — and binds them together with a monitoring layer, a shared vector memory, and a chain of human-in-the-loop checkpoints. This document walks through the structure phase by phase.

5phases
Intake → Editing
6HITL
Decision gates
6agents
Monitoring layer
9+roles
Specialised directors
01 / Overview

Five phases, one spine.

A user brief enters at the left; a finished cut leaves at the right. Between those two ends, five subgraphs run in sequence — each gated by a human review — with a monitoring layer above and a shared data layer below.

MONITORING LAYER Step Agent · Model Chooser · Scorer · Prev-step Review · Backpropagator · Guardrail __start__ Intake P1 · brief → manifest Story P2 · → final script Pre-production P3 · shot planning Production P4 · video gen Editing P5 · cut + grade __end__ HITL HITL 2× HITL HITL HITL VECTOR MEMORY (PG VECTOR) creator_profile · style_refs · char_bible · world_facts · 7-layer intent TOOLS file_uploader · script_formatter · script_save · browse · video_save A linear spine, but every node is a subgraph in its own right.
Simplified view. The full diagram is below — and lives on the Epic-Codirector Architecture Miro board.
02 / Full Diagram

The whole topology, in one view.

The complete Epic-Codirector Co-Director architecture — every subgraph, every monitoring agent, every tool wired together. Scroll horizontally to pan across all five phases, or click anywhere on the diagram to open it full-screen for detailed inspection.

v6 · Full Architecture · 3186 × 1255
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Epic-Codirector Co-Director full architecture diagram
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Annotations Key Numbered callouts above correspond to these concepts.
1
Monitoring layer
Six observer agents (Step, Model Chooser, Scorer, Prev-step Review, Backpropagator, Guardrail) watch every active node and can route around failures.
2
Vector memory
PG Vector with five collections — creator_profile, style_refs, char_bible, world_facts, 7-layer intent. Written at intake; read across all downstream phases.
3
Script branch
The script_text? router takes one of two paths: user-provided script → format & lock; nothing → run Story Writer + 3-pass review.
4
3-pass review loop
Arc · scenes · coherence reviewed and then summarised. Failure routes back to the writer for revision before the next attempt.
5
Director fan-out
director_main delegates to specialised heads in parallel — Assistant Director, Casting, Sound, Legal/Compliance, plus the Art Department subgraph.
6
Per-shot loop
Production generates one shot at a time. Each shot passes through HITL approval before the planner advances to the next.
03 / Legend

Reading the notation.

Six visual primitives carry the diagram's semantics. Shape encodes role; colour encodes domain.

Agent / Process Node
A LangGraph node. Either an LLM call or deterministic code that mutates pipeline state.
HITL Decision Gate
Human-in-the-loop checkpoint. Auto-approves in AUTO mode; pauses for review otherwise.
Tool
Side-effectful capability invoked from inside a node — uploaders, savers, formatters, browsers.
Data Store
PG Vector + RDB. Five collections backing retrieval across the pipeline.
Subgraph
A phase rolled up as a single node in the parent graph; expands to its own internal flow.
Terminators
Graph entry (__start__) and exit (__end__). The pipeline may exit early on mode.
04 / Phases

The pipeline, unrolled.

Each phase is a self-contained subgraph. Pipeline state flows through them in order, with optional early exits controlled by state.mode.

Intake phase

P1 · intake_phase subgraph

Turns a raw user brief — text, references, optionally an uploaded screenplay — into a structured intake manifest that downstream phases can plan against.

Nodes

  • intake_orchestratorParses brief, populates creator profile, kicks off research.
  • HITL · concept_cardFirst human review — creator confirms the captured concept.
  • intake_finalFinalises the intake manifest and writes to memory.

Tools & Data

  • tool: File UploaderAccepts user references, scripts, mood boards.
  • tool: internet_browsingResearch the brief for context, references, prior art.
  • vector_db ← writePersists creator_profile + style_refs + 7-layer intent.
→
To be filled in Field-level shape of the intake manifest; the four sub-calls inside intake_orchestrator; the 7-layer intent schema; what AUTO mode does at the concept_card gate.
→
To be filled in The rejection edge wiring from review back to writer · how summarize_review consolidates the three review axes · whether the review passes run in parallel or sequence · script_save semantics (S3 vs Vector DB vs RDB).

Pre-production phase

P3 · Preproduction_phase SubGraph · Shot Planning

The most populous phase. A director-level fan-out delegates parallel work to specialised heads — sound, casting, art, legal — and converges on a Final Master Script Breakdown plus storyboard visuals.

Director Roles

  • director_mainOrchestrates the fan-out across specialised heads.
  • Director's AssistantCoordination and continuity glue.
  • Assistant DirectorShot breakdown and treatment notes.
  • Casting DirectorVoice profiles, identity, costume guidance.
  • Sound DirectorDialogue · SFX · music direction.
  • Legal & Compliance / CopyrightPre-production clearance gate.

Art Department (nested subgraph)

  • Art DirectorTop of the art-dept fan-out.
  • Set Design
  • Costume
  • Hair & Makeup

Outputs & Gates

  • HITL × 2One gate after fan-out, one before exit.
  • Final Master Script Breakdown + Storyboard visual
→
To be filled in The exact fan-out / fan-in topology between director_main and the specialised heads · whether the two HITLs gate different artefacts · how Legal & Compliance can reject and where rejection routes to · what triggers the storyboard visualisation pass.

Production phase

P4 · production_phase

Converts the locked breakdown into rendered video. A production-side director coordinates shot planning, cinematography decisions, prompt writing, and the actual video model API calls.

Nodes

  • production Director SubGraphManages the per-shot loop.
  • Shot plannerCURRENT and NEXT shot framing.
  • CinematographerCamera and look decisions.
  • prompt writerComposes the video-model prompt.
  • Video GeneratorVideo model API call + saving.
  • HITLPer-shot human approval before moving on.

Cinematographer's specs

Camera Config
shot_size (WS, OTS) · lens · shot_angle (LA, high angle) · camera pan
Look & Feel
color palette · lighting · mood (e.g. melancholic)
  • tool: Video SaverPersists shot videos.
→
To be filled in The per-shot loop semantics (does HITL loop back to shot_planner or to production_director?) · how the Video Generator handles rate limits and retries · whether CURRENT/NEXT framing implies look-ahead generation · which video model(s) are bound and where provider routing happens.

Editing phase

P5 · Editing Director SubGraph

Assembles approved shots into a finished cut. Colour grading and a final human review precede graph exit.

Nodes

  • editing_board / color_gradingTimeline assembly + grade.
  • ud4_final_reviewLast human gate before __end__.

Outputs

  • __end__Pipeline terminates; final film is returned.
→
To be filled in What sits inside editing_board as concrete operations · how colour grading interacts with Look & Feel decisions from P4 · whether ud4 rejection loops anywhere or just halts.
05 / Cross-cutting

The layers above and below.

Three concerns thread through every phase: a monitoring layer that observes, a vector memory that remembers, and a tool layer that does side-effectful work.

Monitoring Layer

Six agents · across all phases

A surveillance and self-correction band that observes every active node and can intervene when scoring drops or guardrails fire.

  • Step Agentoverall monitor
  • Model Chooserper-step
  • Scorer Agentper-active-agent
  • Prev-step Reviewretrospective
  • Backpropagatorerror flow
  • Guardrail Agentper-block

Vector Memory

PG Vector · 5 collections

Shared retrieval-augmented context. Intake writes; subsequent phases read against the user's accumulated profile and prior projects.

  • creator_profileidentity
  • style_refsaesthetic
  • char_biblecharacters
  • world_factssetting
  • 7-layer intentgoal model

Tools

Side-effectful capabilities

Invoked from inside nodes — uploads, formatting, persistence, web access, video saves. Multiple invocation sites for several of these.

  • File Uploaderintake
  • script_formatterstory
  • script_saveS3 + Vector
  • script_saveRDB + Vector
  • internet_browsing×2 sites
  • Video Saverproduction
→
To be filled in Concrete monitoring behaviours — what does Scorer Agent score against? Where does Backpropagator route errors? · The exact write boundaries for each Vector DB collection · Whether script_save's two flavours (S3 vs RDB) reflect intermediate vs final state, or different downstream consumers.
06 / HITL

Where the humans step in.

Six gates across the pipeline. In AUTO mode they pass through silently; in manual / review mode they pause the graph and wait for a creator decision.

HITL 01

concept_card

In intake. Confirms the captured concept before any generation begins.

HITL 02

full_script

In story. Locks the screenplay before pre-production.

HITL 03

preprod entry

In pre-production. Gates director fan-out — likely the treatment / breakdown approval.

HITL 04

master breakdown

In pre-production. Sign-off on the Final Master Script Breakdown + storyboard before production starts.

HITL 05

per-shot

In production. Approves each generated shot before the next one runs.

HITL 06

final_review

In editing. Final cut approval before graph exit.

07 / Dataflow

State as it travels.

How the pipeline state grows and gets shaped as it passes through each phase.

⌛
Section pending This section will document the shape of PipelineState at each phase boundary — which fields are written, which are required as inputs, and where the reducers append vs replace. To be authored in a follow-up.

The full diagram lives on Miro.

This document is a structured walkthrough — the live source of truth is the Epic-Codirector Architecture board, where the topology is editable and the latest revisions land first.

Open Epic-Codirector Architecture board
Authored as a scaffold · v6 architecture · awaiting stage + dataflow detail