Brief

Before a generator opens, the director must be able to say what the image is for and what would make it fit. The brief freezes that starting point, so an appealing candidate cannot quietly redefine the commission.

Admit the commission

State purpose, audience, target profile, budget, requested visual roles, and acceptance criteria. Give each image, model, texture, animation, or sequence concrete spatial, temporal, and format constraints. Missing decisions remain questions rather than provider defaults.

Admit a bounded reference set by snapshot and digest, retaining classification, permitted purpose, retention, and known provenance. A URL may locate a source but cannot freeze it; possession cannot grant its use. Recognizable people, protected marks, confidential material, and disputed origin require explicit likeness, consent, disclosure, and use boundaries before dependent production.

Influence remains visible after generation. Prompts, control images, masks, adapters, fine-tunes, and selected examples stay attached to each candidate. “AI-generated” describes a production method; it cannot erase that lineage or certify a use.

Freeze the starting line

The admitted revision pins commission and target profile, exact snapshots and open questions, roles and output limits, review criteria, cost/provider/Portal/retention ceilings, and effects needing separate approval.

A changed purpose, additional reference, new likeness use, or materially different target creates a successor brief. If essential source authority or consent is missing, the return is a question, reduced safe scope, or refusal before dependent work begins. Direction and Assets receive the accepted revision and digest, without a provider session, Sigil, secret, or downstream permission.