# Phase 21D.1 - Automatic Starter Illustration Generation

## Summary

Phase 21D.1 changes the Illustration Library starter workflow from a two-step planning and queuing process to one admin-confirmed action: `Generate Starter Library`.

The action creates any missing starter specifications, queues eligible planned or failed starter items, skips successful or already-running items, and lets the existing background worker generate images after the browser closes.

## One-Click Workflow

Admin route:

`/admin/story-intelligence/illustration-library`

The primary action is `Generate Starter Library`. It confirms the number of character, location and asset images that will be queued.

Eligible starter items are:

- Missing starter specifications
- Existing `Planned` starter items
- Existing `Failed` starter items

Skipped starter items are:

- `Queued`
- `Generating`
- `Generated`
- `Approved`

This prevents accidental duplicate submissions and avoids regenerating successful artwork unnecessarily.

## Prototype Activation

The development Story Intelligence prototype resolves starter illustrations in this order:

1. Approved starter illustration
2. Generated starter illustration
3. Existing SVG fallback

This is limited to the development prototype route and does not weaken future production approval workflows.

## Configuration Diagnostics

The OpenAI image provider now reports specific missing settings without exposing secrets:

- OpenAI API key
- image-generation model

The local development service has `OpenAI__ApiKey` configured through `/etc/plotdirector/plotdirector.env`, but no image-generation model setting is currently present.

## Tests

The test harness now covers starter generation planning, duplicate protection for successful starter items, failed-item retry eligibility and provider missing-configuration diagnostics.
