PRODUCT SLICE 3 · SEPTEMBER 6, 2026

Product Slice 3 — Autonomous Director

This chapter records the first product Director step: starting image plus filmmaker story become structured planned storyboard beats. Plan UI is unchanged from Product Slice 2. Shoot is unchanged from Product Slice 1. Destination imagery and video are not generated in this slice. Camotion Phase 1 remains frozen.

Live development harness, not arbitrary user input.

Product Slice 3 uses the Wardrobe Loop fixture story and server-side Wardrobe A.jpg as its live development harness. The Director architecture accepts story plus MediaInput, but arbitrary user story/image input is not implemented yet. Refreshing Plan restores the fixture storyboard.

Live Director experiment

TWO INDEPENDENT RUNS

On September 6, 2026, two independent live Director calls were made with the same inputs:

Wardrobe Loop filmmaker story + authoritative starting frame A → Director → Gemini 3.1 Pro via Replicate → validated DirectorPlan.

Neither call used a mock or fixture fallback. Starting frame A was not regenerated.

First live plan

CAPTURED A→G

First captured plan, in travel order:

  • A — attic bedroom / approach wardrobe
  • B — push through hanging coats; wardrobe opens into winter landscape
  • C — emerge into snowy forest; path leads toward ice cavern
  • D — traverse ice cavern; stone doorway visible at far end
  • E — pass through doorway; ascend floating staircase toward warm doorway
  • F — enter observatory; original attic visible through giant lens/window
  • G — cross lens/window threshold back into original attic

Second live plan

DIFFERENT GEOGRAPHY

A second independent live run produced different geography:

wardrobe → snowy path → cave mouth → root cave/tunnel → stone bridge → floating door → bedroom

Initial observation, not a validated general conclusion.

Both live samples organized the journey around traversable thresholds and intermediate spatial geography rather than merely producing a sequence of disconnected visual scenes. Examples included hanging coats / wardrobe threshold; a path leading to a cave mouth; a tunnel leading to a doorway; a staircase leading to a doorway; a bridge leading to a floating door; and a destination world becoming visible through a threshold before crossing it.

This is encouraging evidence that the Director prompt is expressing the existing TunnelVision research principle that visual continuity alone is insufficient and that the camera needs a spatially intelligible route.

Director semantic/spatial planning success ≠ validated physical shootability.

Do not claim that these routes are actually shootable yet. The Cinematographer has not inspected generated sets because destination imagery has not been generated. A plausible planned route is not a shootable pair of sets.

This slice does not generate Destinations or video.

Planned beats after A may remain FPO. Shoot Destinations and Journeys stay the Product Slice 1 production fixture. Chat, persistence, and uploads are not implemented.