PlotDirector/docs/phases/Phase-21D1-Automatic-Starter-Illustration-Generation.md

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.