comic-asset-ref-generator

comic-asset-ref-generator — the Reference Producer (Phase 1 · S4)

The missing Layer-2 of comic-author: take the storyboard's consolidated ASSET_REQUESTS and produce, for every declared asset, the one canonical artifact that every downstream panel bake will condition on — so the film never grows two visual dialects and every panel of the same character/prop/motif reads as the same thing. This is precisely the producer of comic.json's identity_refs (e.g. duo_canonical_ref_v001.png + per-character locks like executor.hoodie #1D4684 / reviewer.beard true) that the proven comic created by hand. It is the upstream sibling of comic-blueprint-author (which authors per-panel content-SVGs) and feeds comic-asset-review-loop and the comic-director spiral.

Two asset classes, two production routes — this is the load-bearing fork:

storyboard.consolidated_asset_requests
   ├── identity / scene / prop  ──▶  RASTER ref:  agent mcp__codex__codex sidecar bake, CONDITIONED on a labeled white-bg
   │      (a face, a hoodie,           condition + real identity refs → 1:1 (or 16:9 scene) PNG
   │       an empty room)              → output_ref{file_path,data_url,sha256,width,height,mime}  (ALL 6)
   │
   └── deterministic motif      ──▶  SVG SOURCE:  ONE parametric builder in asset_lib.py
          (clock / chart / stamp        (ddl_chip / stamp / mug / curve_panel / tokyo_chip / starmap …)
           / mug / star-map)            the "ref" IS the single-source SVG — NOT an image bake
                                        → records generator_script, owner_script, file_sha256

   both routes → review_status:"pending"  (NEVER "locked" here)  → collision gate → asset-review-loop

The battle lesson, landed as the fork above: a clock, a chart, a verdict stamp, a star-map is deterministic content — you do NOT bake it as a fuzzy image and hope the digits land; you build it once from a python generator (asset_lib.py) so all 18 instances of the DDL timeline, all 7 verdict stamps, both the labeled and the wordless star-map render from the same coordinates and never diverge. An identity (a face, a costume) is not deterministic — that you bake once via the sidecar bake (Codex's native image tool), conditioned on a labeled white-bg reference and the real identity refs, never a free prompt, never a hand-paste.