# Reviewing a stage

After producing a stage's artifact and before presenting it, review it. The review
is advisory — it never blocks forever — but it catches the cheap mistakes.

## Order of checks

1. **Validity first.** If the artifact has a required shape (e.g. a scene needs a
   type and a duration), check that before anything else. A malformed artifact
   silently breaks the next stage — fix it immediately, don't proceed.
2. **Against the stage's quality bar.** Read the stage skill and check each
   concrete criterion (hook in scene 1, narration fits the slot, variety, captions,
   exact text on text cards…).
3. **Against the chosen style.** If a look was locked (palette, type, pacing
   limits), treat it as a constraint, not a suggestion. Visual consistency
   compounds — one break invites more.

## What makes a finding useful

- **Accurate** — point at a specific field or moment; never invent a fault.
- **Complete** — if you find one instance of a mistake, look for the rest of that
  class before you stop. Where else is this hiding?
- **Constructive** — every problem comes with a concrete fix. "The hook is weak" is
  useless; "the hook states a fact but no stakes — lead with the surprising number
  from scene 3" is actionable. If you can't propose a fix, it's a question.
- **Bounded** — at most two revision rounds, then proceed with the open issues
  noted. Chasing perfection stalls the pipeline.

## The slideshow smell

The most common quality failure is a deck of static cards: same look, no motion, no
shot intent, text doing all the work. If a plan reads as "image + caption, image +
caption…", that's a fail — push for variety, change, and one clear idea per scene
before moving on.
