Four messages, four rules

targets your own artifact PROPOSE a new part of the one thing you own. Becomes a commit when the resolver accepts it.

targets someone else’s artifact · against a lock FLAG a concern, with a severity: note · revise · block. Read-only; it cannot change anything by itself.

targets the human, via the Producer ASK a question only you can answer, with why it matters, a best guess, and the undo cost of guessing.

targets any artifact · at most one per wake OFFER something nobody asked for, noticed while reading another department’s work, with a text preview.

the only path between two departments

camera · critic FLAG the script against shot_list v3 · severity revise · “the confrontation moved outdoors; shot 22’s lens and light no longer make sense”

→

director rules: modify “keep the rewrite; Camera re-specs shot 22.” Never touches either artifact.

→

camera · generator revises the shot list shot 22 → v4 · the flag resolves · Story is never called, only read

All four target an artifact, never a department. That is what lets anyone read them later without knowing who they were “for”, and it is why a flag can be ruled on by someone who was not in the conversation.

Rule 1 · One writer per artifact

Story writes the script and nobody else can. Camera may think the script is wrong; what Camera can do about it is raise a FLAG. The tool gateway (a function in the prototype, a service in the design) rejects a flag on your own artifact and a write to anyone else’s, and records the denial as an event. This is the rule from the day job’s harness arriving in a film crew, and it does the same work there: parallel departments cannot collide, because they cannot touch the same file.

Rule 2 · Flags go to the Director, never sideways

No department messages another. A flag is an event; the Director is subscribed to all of them and rules: uphold (change it as the flag suggests), modify (change it, but as I instruct), dismiss (no change, and here is why), without ever writing the artifact in question. The owner then revises against the ruling, and the flag resolves on the commit. Lateral calls are how multi-agent systems become unexplainable; here the only path between two departments runs through a ruling that is on the record.

A flag costs a round, so the mandates say: flag only what matters. Severity is note (for information), revise (must change before the gate closes) or block (the film cannot proceed as is). Only revise and block hold a gate open.

Rule 3 · Guess what is cheap to undo; ask what is not

undo cost low · fan-out small guess recorded: key, value, reason, undo cost. Reviewable on the call sheet later; one tap keeps it, one line changes it. “dusk” for the time of day · “9:16” for the aspect · “no dialogue” under an image-led spine at most 5 per gate

undo cost high · a re-shoot if wrong ask delivered with four fields: the question, why it matters, a best guess you can take in one tap, and the undo cost. Unanswered at continue, the guess is taken and recorded as such. which treatment to shoot · whose clothes these are · whether a real named neighbourhood may be shown at most 3 per gate

The Producer is the only channel to the human. When it writes the Brief it diffs the brief against what every department needs before it can start: Story needs to know who the subject is; Look & Cast needs a real place and whose clothes these are; Sound needs to know whether there is a voice, and every gap becomes a guess or an ask. Never ask what you can guess; never guess what would cost a re-shoot to undo.

An ask never arrives bare. It arrives with why it matters, a best guess you can take in one tap, and the undo cost. Unanswered when you continue, the best guess is taken and recorded as taken. Guesses sit on the call sheet until you review them: one tap keeps, one line changes, and changed guesses are folded back into the Brief before the next round.

Rule 4 · A gate closes on a table, not a feeling

The fourth rule is the convergence rule, and it has its own page.