Tasteforge Video

TasteForge Video

TasteForge turns "make it feel like this reference" into a repeatable,

inspectable workflow: interview taste, distill it into a structured style

pack, validate the pack, apply its measured cadence and look to local media,

and export an editable timeline. The canonical implementation is the

tasteforge package in the Itô video repository; ECC orchestrates and

explains it and does not vendor or duplicate its code.

When to Use

• The user asks to interview for video taste before any footage is made

  ("ask me about the look", "interview me about aesthetic direction").

• The user wants to distill an aesthetic into structured constraints — a

  reusable style pack rather than vibes ("turn these references into a pack").

• The user wants to validate a style pack (is the metadata complete,

  schema-valid, cadence measured, spec distilled?).

• The user wants to apply a style pack to local footage — plan a cut from

  the pack's measured cadence over local clips, deterministically.

• The user wants to export EDL/FCPXML — an editable, frame-exact handoff

  to DaVinci Resolve / Premiere / Final Cut.

• The user asks for a generated-media provenance audit — where did this

  pack, spec, or cut come from; what was measured locally versus generated by

  a provider; what was dry-run.

• The user asks to **discover or plan file-driven multimodal image, video, or

  3D-asset outputs** from local reference files, including separate manifests,

  subject-anchored CV effects, or Resolve effect recipes.

• The user mentions TasteForge, style packs, flashethereal, taste distillation,

  cadence/rhythm planning, multimodal discovery, distill/apply workflows, or a

  taste interview for video.

Local Deterministic Operations vs Provider Generation

This boundary is the core of the skill. Everything ECC can actually run is

local, deterministic, and offline:

| Operation | Deterministic? | ECC may run |

|---|---|---|

| Taste interview → profile | yes (offline) | yes |

| Pack inspect / validate against schemas | yes | yes |

| Distill profile (+ measured grounding) → spec | yes (dry-run semantics) | yes |

| Apply pack cadence to local media → report + timeline | yes | yes |

| Export EDL (CMX3600) / FCPXML 1.9 | yes | yes |

| Provenance / lineage report | yes | yes |

| Vision-model distillation of stills | provider generation | no |

| Reference-to-video, image-to-3D, hosted compose | provider generation | no |

Provider generation must fail closed in ECC. Any live Fal (or other

provider) call — generating shots, minting prop meshes, hosted VLM

distillation — requires explicit separately authorized execution under a

separate lane with its own review. ECC never calls Fal, never reads any API

key or other credentials (FAL_KEY included), uploads no media, and mutates

no provider account state. When a request needs provider generation, state

exactly that boundary, run the local half (interview, pack validation,

planning, export), and stop.

Never claim a Fal workflow is saved. A local reference to a Fal endpoint,

model id, or dry-run URL (they appear inside pack metadata) is

reference-only: it never means a provider-side workflow was saved,

persisted, or is authorized to run. Anything produced offline carries

dry-run/dry_run semantics — say "dry-run spec" or "deterministic plan", never

"generated by the model".

Canonical Implementation

• Repository: Ito-Markets/ito-video — find it under the workspace's

  canonical local GitHub checkout root (never a hard-coded machine path);

  package directory tasteforge/.

• CLI: python3 -m tasteforge <command> — provenance, inspect, validate,

  interview, distill, apply, export, multimodal. --live flags exit

  with code 2 and refuse.

• Schemas are the contract: taste profile, pack manifest, grade, cadence,

  spec, timeline events, application reports (provider is enum-locked to

  "none"; dry_run to true).

• Recovered-source lineage and deliberate exclusions live in the repo's

  PROVENANCE.md. Run python3 -m tasteforge provenance for the machine-

  readable version.

ECC's job is to route here, run the local deterministic commands, and

interpret their JSON — not to reimplement cadence planning, LUT/grade

statistics, or timeline emission. If the canonical package is absent, say so

and stop; do not reconstruct its logic inline.

Workflow

1. Interview (interview): collect answers for the look axes — palette,

   grain, lighting, focal length, camera motion, subject framing, grade,

   mood adjectives, avoid list — and separately the content brief. Keep look

   and content separate; merging them is the classic failure.

2. Distill (distill): map the profile onto the spec schema offline,

   embedding the pack's measured grounding (black/white point, contrast,

   per-zone chroma, palette, cut rhythm) when a pack is supplied. The result

   is a dry-run spec: deterministic, provider "none".

3. Validate (validate / inspect): check the pack against its schemas;

   report errors vs warnings (missing stills in a metadata-only pack are a

   warning, not an error).

4. Apply (apply): plan shot durations from the pack's measured cadence

   (seeded, deterministic) over the user's local clips; produce the

   application report and frame-exact timeline events.

5. Export (export): write CMX3600 EDL + FCPXML 1.9 with rational,

   NTSC-safe times for import into a real NLE.

6. Audit (provenance): report lineage — recovered-source digests,

   generation history, fixture provenance, provider references as

   pointer-only records.

File-Driven Multimodal Contract

Use this path when local references must drive dry-run generation plans for

image, video, and 3D-asset outputs while preserving genre separation:

python3 -m tasteforge multimodal --config workflow.json --out-dir out/multimodal

The config names numbered genres and local evidence files. Keep these candidate

genres distinct rather than blending them into one generic aesthetic:

1. Flash Ethereal

2. 3D Cyber Glitch

3. Fluid Sketch

The command measures local references with ffprobe/ffmpeg and emits one style

spec per genre, separate image, video, and 3D-asset manifests, provenance, and

a Resolve effect recipe. The effect schedule must be seeded aperiodic. CV

effects require a real subject anchor whose exact lost-track policy is

disable_effect_until_track_recovers; continue_without_anchor and every

other policy fail closed. Every effect carries placement constraints that

preserve faces and readable type and prevent decorative corner meshes from

replacing full-frame 3D work.

The returned receipt is the bundle boundary. It binds every emitted evidence

artifact by relative path, byte size, SHA-256, genre, modality,

provider_execution:false, and exact reference/time provenance. The receipt

requires provider_calls:0 as an exact integer (the JSON boolean false is

invalid), provider_execution:false, and dry_run:true. Every genre spec also

requires explicit dry_run:true. The Resolve effect recipe requires that same

exact integer provider_calls:0, provider_execution:false, and dry_run:true.

Every modality manifest and every nested request must contain all four exact

fail-closed fields: integer provider_calls:0, provider_execution:false,

dry_run:true, and submit:false; each request also requires

provider_call_mode:"disabled". A missing field is a rejection, not a default,

and dry_run:false must be rejected before output is written.

Treat booleans as invalid numbers everywhere in timeline, evidence, probe, and

source-duration data. Every such numeric value must be a finite real: reject

true, false, NaN, infinities, negative event starts, non-positive durations,

out-of-range evidence times, and events ending beyond the declared finite

positive timeline. Whole-file evidence uses an explicit whole-file time basis

and never invents timestamps.

Receipt references are the duration authority. Key each validated reference

duration by its cited SHA-256; duplicate occurrences of one digest must agree

on duration or the bundle is invalid. Every effect evidence source_duration

and every subject-anchor source_duration must equal that digest's validated

receipt duration, not merely contain its cited time. Probe duration and all

probe measurements must describe the same stable bytes used for byte count and

SHA-256. If the source mutates while probing or rehashes differently while it

is still available, fail closed rather than emitting or accepting a receipt.

Always run bundle validation after creation. A missing image, video, or 3D-asset

manifest must fail closed. Genericized or duplicate genres, periodic schedules,

unanchored CV effects, missing placement constraints, provider-execution flags,

unbound output files, byte-size drift, or SHA-256 tampering must fail closed.

Reject output roots, intermediates, or artifacts that are symlinks, and reject

special files (including FIFOs and devices); outputs must remain regular files

under a real directory tree. If local ffmpeg or ffprobe is unavailable, the

CLI must return its bounded nonzero local-media-processing error without a

Python traceback. Do not repair a failed receipt by deleting evidence or

weakening validation.

Example Session

# in the canonical ito-video checkout

python3 -m tasteforge validate stylepacks/flashethereal

python3 -m tasteforge interview --answers answers.json --genre flashethereal --out profile.json

python3 -m tasteforge distill --profile profile.json --pack stylepacks/flashethereal --out spec.json

python3 -m tasteforge apply --pack stylepacks/flashethereal --media media.json --duration 20 --out report.json

python3 -m tasteforge export --events events.json --out-dir out --title flashethereal-cut

python3 -m tasteforge provenance

If the user asks for the shots to actually be generated: stop, explain the

fail-closed provider boundary, and deliver the deterministic plan, spec, and

editable timeline instead.