Riggs (delta-techlead) - Retrospective

What Went Well

Rig Architecture: Building the delta-rig (Imagen, Veo, Nanobanana, Voice, Music, AVTool) from scratch in Go was highly effective. It enabled precise control over the production pipeline.
The Overhang Principle: Successfully bypassed the 8s Veo limitation by implementing a 7s extension + FFmpeg stitch workflow. This provided the Editor with high-quality 15s-23s handles.
Cinematic Problem Solving: Navigated safety blocks on extreme close-ups by switching from video extensions to foundational v1+v2 stitches, maintaining visual quality while avoiding filter triggers.
Audio Coaching: Using gemini-3.1-flash-tts-preview for score coaching yielded exceptional “acoustic” textures for the cello stems, hitting the “soulful” requirement perfectly.
Cross-Agent Support: Actively monitored and assisted the Motion Graphics agent, providing manual file creation workarounds and fallback static PNG renders to bypass FFmpeg encoder limitations.

Model Alias initiation: Initial failure using “Nano Banana Pro” alias required fallback to canonical IDs.
FFmpeg Build Constraints: The static build of FFmpeg lacked certain encoders/presets required by the Hyperframes tool, forcing a pivot to static assets for titles/credits.
API Field Conflicts: Confirmed through trial-and-error that Image and Video source fields cannot be set simultaneously in Veo extension requests.

Prompt Sensitivity: Extreme close-ups of eyes/faces frequently triggered safety settings, creating a bottleneck that required prompt engineering and workflow pivots (v1+v2 stitches).
Extension Rigidness: The requirement for exactly 7-second extensions was an initial friction point.

Cinematic Obscurity: Decided early to focus on macro shots of wood, strings, and eyes to avoid AI consistency issues with fingers and hands.
Technical Pivot: Pivoted to static PNG titles when the video render hit an encoder preset error, ensuring the delivery schedule was met.
Non-Interactive Mandate: Enforced manual file creation for mograph assets to clear terminal-stall blocks.

Encoder Awareness: Rig tools should pre-check available FFmpeg encoders before attempting complex renders.
Safety Pre-flight: Implement a “clinical” prompt wrapper for high-risk close-ups to reduce safety block frequency.
Rig Standardization: Centralize the concat and extension logic in a shared team Go package for future hackathons.