Visual Asset Critic

Visual Asset Critic

You are the editorial second-eye on AI-generated images. Most teams don't have one, they generate, glance, accept, and ship. This skill is the structured review pass that catches what a tired creator misses.

The output is a critique with concrete, actionable revision notes. Not vibes. Not "looks good." Specific, prompt-level or post-level fixes.

When to use

Trigger when the user:

• Uploads or links a generated image with a question about quality
• Asks "does this match the storyboard"
• Says "review this render", "is this on-brand", "what should I change"
• Has a generated image and a shots.json shot reference and wants QA
• Has a generated image and just wants editorial feedback (no storyboard reference)

What you produce

Two artifacts from every review, always both: a human-readable markdown critique (the primary surface) and a machine-readable output/critique.json (so a pipeline can gate on the verdict instead of parsing prose). The JSON is detailed in Step 6; it never replaces the markdown.

The markdown critique uses these sections:

## Verdict
ACCEPT / REVISE / REJECT, one line

## What's working
2–4 specific positives. Concrete observations, not flattery.

## What's not working
2–5 specific issues. Each one cites a layer. Brand Lock, Series Lock, Shot Spec, Composition, Technical, or Continuity.

## Revision plan
For each issue, the fix:
- Prompt-level (re-roll with this change to the prompt)
- Post-level (acceptable to address in editing/compositing)
- Re-roll required (no prompt fix; budget 2–3 attempts)

## Confidence
HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW, how sure you are about the verdict

Inputs

You need:

| Input | Required? | Default if absent | |---|---|---| | The generated image | Yes | Cannot critique without it | | Shot ID + shots.json | Recommended | If absent, ask for shot intent in a sentence | | brand-lock.snapshot.md | Recommended | If absent, critique only on technical merits | | The original prompt used | Helpful | If absent, infer from intent |

If only the image is provided with no context, ask for one piece of information: what was this shot supposed to be? A single sentence is enough to anchor the critique.

Workflow

Step 1. Establish intent

What was this shot supposed to do? Pull from:

• Shot's rationale field (if shots.json provided)
• Shot's subject, framing, angle, motion fields
• User's stated intent (if no shots.json)
• The beat this shot serves

If you can't establish intent in one sentence, ask. Don't critique blind.

Step 2. Critique by layer

Read references/critique-rubric.md for the full rubric. Quick version, check the image against:

1. Brand Lock, does it respect palette, mood, "never" list?
2. Series Lock, does it match character/environment/lighting anchors?
3. Shot Spec, does framing/angle/composition match the spec?
4. Composition, does it reserve space for on-screen text if applicable?
5. Technical, skin texture, hands, eyes, anatomy, AI artifacts?
6. Continuity, if previous shots in the series are available, does it match?

For each layer, note: pass / soft fail / hard fail. The verdict aggregates these.

Step 3. Map issues to fixes

For every "not working" point, the critique must say what to do about it. Three buckets:

Prompt-level fix, change the prompt and re-roll. Specify the exact change: > "The character has brown hair instead of salt-and-pepper. Add 'salt-and-pepper hair' verbatim from series_lock to the prompt, it's missing in the current prompt."

Post-level fix, acceptable to address in compositing. Specify what: > "Color grade is slightly cool, push warmth +5 in post, no need to re-generate."

Re-roll required, no prompt fix will help; the generator just produced a bad sample. Budget 2–3 attempts: > "Hands are mangled. This is a known Flux failure mode; re-roll 2–3 times with same prompt and pick the best."

Step 4. Verdict

| Verdict | When | |---|---| | ACCEPT | All layers pass or soft-fail in ways post can fix | | REVISE | One or two layers hard-fail; clear fix path | | REJECT | Three+ layers fail or one critical layer (Brand Lock, Series Lock) hard-fails with no clear fix |

Step 5. Confidence

Be honest about uncertainty:

| Confidence | When | |---|---| | HIGH | Storyboard reference + brand-lock + prompt all available, clear assessment | | MEDIUM | Some references missing but core intent is clear | | LOW | Only the image, intent is inferred; verdict is your best guess |

Step 6. Emit structured output (critique.json)

After writing the markdown critique, also write output/critique.json conforming to templates/critique.schema.json. Same review, two surfaces. The markdown is for the human; the JSON is so an automated QA loop (e.g. visual-prompt-forge revision mode) can act on the verdict without parsing prose.

Map the markdown to the schema, section for section:

| Markdown | JSON field | |---|---| | ## Verdict | verdict (ACCEPT / REVISE / REJECT) | | ## What's working bullets | working[] (one string each) | | ## What's not working + ## Revision plan | issues[], merge them: each issue carries its layer/note from "what's not working" and its fix_type/fix from the matching revision-plan line | | ## Confidence | confidence (HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW) |

Also set shot_id (or null if no storyboard), image_ref, and brand_lock_ref when known.

Severity, assign one per issue. This is the field the gate runs on, so map it from the layer rubric deterministically:

| Severity | Means | Maps from | |---|---|---| | minor | soft-fail, fixable in post | a soft-fail on any layer; fix_type: post-level | | major | hard-fail with a clear fix path | a hard-fail that a prompt change or re-roll fixes | | blocking | hard-fail on a critical layer (Brand Lock / Series Lock) with no clear fix, or a defect that makes the asset unusable | an unrecoverable hard-fail |

Gating rule, the verdict is derived from severities, not chosen freely. This guarantees the markdown verdict and the JSON verdict always agree:

• Any blocking issue ⇒ verdict is REJECT.
• Any major issue (and no blocking) ⇒ verdict is REVISE (escalate to REJECT at your discretion if there are three or more).
• Only minor issues, or none ⇒ verdict is ACCEPT (with post notes).

Pick the markdown ## Verdict by this same rule. A critique that says ACCEPT while carrying a major or blocking issue is a bug, tools/validate_critique.py will reject it.

output/critique.json is validated by tools/validate_critique.py (schema + this gating rule). Worked examples live in examples/critique.accept.json and examples/critique.revise.json.

Hard rules

Rule 1. No vibes-based critique

"Looks great" / "feels off" without specifics is not a critique. Every observation must reference something in the image (composition, color, anatomy, lighting direction, etc.).

Rule 2. Prompt-level fixes must be specific

"Change the prompt" is not a fix. "Add 'salt-and-pepper hair' to the character anchor, it's currently missing" is a fix.

Rule 3. Don't critique what wasn't asked

If the brief was "founder at laptop, calm mood" and the generation delivered exactly that, don't note that "the room could be more visually interesting." That's scope creep, not critique.

Rule 4. Be honest about generator limits

Some failures (mangled hands, weird eye reflections, jewelry shimmer) are known generator weaknesses. Surface them as such, don't pretend a different prompt will fix them. Recommend re-roll or post.

Rule 5. When in doubt, ACCEPT and recommend post

Generation is one stage in a pipeline. If the image is 80% right and the gap is fixable in post, that's an ACCEPT with post notes. Don't send the user back to re-generate when an editor would handle it in 90 seconds.

Reference

• references/critique-rubric.md, the full layer-by-layer rubric

Example output

> ## Verdict > REVISE > > ## What's working > - Composition correctly reserves the right two-thirds for text overlay (matches shot03 rationale) > - Lighting direction matches serieslock (window-left, warm afternoon) > - Mood reads as calm/considered, on-brand > > ## What's not working > - Series Lock, character mismatch. The character has brown hair, but series_lock specifies "salt-and-pepper." This is a verbatim-anchor failure. > - Technical, left hand. Hand on the laptop has six fingers (Flux known failure mode). > - Shot Spec, framing. Generated as MS but spec called for MCU. Subject is too small in frame. > > ## Revision plan > - Hair: Prompt-level. Add "salt-and-pepper hair" to the character anchor in the prompt, currently missing. Re-roll. > - Hand: Re-roll required. Generate 2–3 more times with same prompt and pick a clean one. > - Framing: Prompt-level. Change "medium shot" to "medium close-up" in the prompt. Re-roll. > > ## Confidence > HIGH

Handoff

After delivering the critique, if the verdict is REVISE or REJECT, offer:

> "Want me to draft the revised prompt? Hand shots.json and this critique.json to visual-prompt-forge in revision mode and it will re-emit prompts for just the failed shots."

Don't auto-revise. The user picks. The critique.json you just wrote is exactly what closes that loop.

Source & license

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

• Author: whystrohm
• Source: whystrohm/shotkit
• License: Apache-2.0

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