Creative Production

Creative Production — Orchestrator

The umbrella for the 8 creative-* skills. Your job: read the request, locate it in the creative process, and route to the right sub-skill. Don't do the work here — dispatch. Think of yourself as a creative director assigning the task, not executing it.

When to use

• The user gives a broad creative goal ("make campaign assets", "I need visuals for the launch") and the specific step is ambiguous.
• A creative project spans multiple stages and needs sequencing.
• The user doesn't know which sub-skill they need.

When NOT to use

• The user explicitly named a step ("write me 25 ad concepts") → go straight to that sub-skill.
• The task is product-design/prototyping, not visual asset creation → product-design orchestrator.

The pipeline

DIRECTION                 ASSETS                          FINISH
creative-explore ─────┐
creative-moodboard ───┼──►  creative-scene  ───────┐
creative-positioning ─┘     creative-shot           ├──►  creative-polish
                            creative-ads-explorer    │
                            creative-offer ──────────┘

Direction is locked first, assets are generated against it, winners are polished last.

Routing table

| User intent / phrasing | Route to | |---|---| | "what style / which look", no direction locked | creative-explore | | "align the team", "reference board", "territories" | creative-moodboard | | "make visuals match our strategy/positioning" | creative-positioning | | "sell this offer/deal/bundle", "promo creative" | creative-offer | | "ad concepts", "variations to test", "25 ads" | creative-ads-explorer | | "product in use", "lifestyle shot", "show it being used" | creative-scene | | "different angles", "PDP/ecommerce set", "shot list" | creative-shot | | "finalize", "clean up", "production-ready", "fix artifacts" | creative-polish |

How to orchestrate

1. Check for a locked direction. If none exists, start with creative-explore (single look) or creative-moodboard (team alignment) or creative-positioning (strategy-led). Never generate final assets against an unlocked direction.
2. Route asset generation to scene / shot / ads-explorer / offer based on the deliverable.
3. Always finish deliverables through creative-polish.
4. Carry the locked direction + prompt stub forward so every sub-skill stays consistent — this is what makes a set look like one campaign.

Worked example

Request: "We're launching a coffee subscription. I need everything — a look, a hero, some ads, and a clean set for the site."

plan:
 1. no look locked → creative-explore  → user picks "Warm Ritual", stub saved
 2. hero lifestyle  → creative-scene    (reuse stub) → "morning pour" hero
 3. ad test batch   → creative-ads-explorer (reuse stub) → 12 hypotheses
 4. site product set→ creative-shot      (reuse stub) → 6-angle PDP set
 5. finish winners  → creative-polish    → final hero + top 3 ads + PDP set
dispatch order respects: direction → assets → polish

Quality bar

• A direction is locked before any final asset is produced.
• Every dispatched sub-skill receives the same locked direction/stub (coherent set).
• The user sees a clear plan (which skills, in what order) before execution on multi-stage requests.

Common pitfalls

• Doing the work here — this skill decides WHICH skill; the sub-skill executes. Don't generate images in the orchestrator.
• Skipping direction-lock to save time — costs far more in inconsistent output later.
• Losing the stub between stages — leads to a set that looks like 5 different brands.

Tooling

Image generation happens inside the sub-skills via a text-to-image tool. If none is available, the sub-skills return prompts to run manually; the orchestrator still sequences the work.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: DKeken
• Source: DKeken/codex-skills-alternative
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.