assets/art_bibles/README.md
Created with docs/art_boards/ as the concept-art program's first commit
(docs/proposals/CONCEPT_ART_PROGRAM.md §2.5 step 2).
An art bible is what a board's PICK becomes. It is the only artifact the asset factory reads, which is
what keeps the boards from becoming a second source of truth
(docs/proposals/REALM_DESIGN_PROGRAM.md §3.6).
A bible flips from proposal-tier to RATIFIED at the moment the pick is written into it, with the pick
line QUOTED VERBATIM so the ruling is never paraphrased. Per the standing lesson that a subagent
writing a user ruling into canon reads as fabricated authority, **the ratification write is a
DIRECTOR-level apply, never a subagent one** (§3.5, RATIFY).
So a bible in this directory is in one of exactly two states, and its header says which:
AWAITING PICK — the subject's fields exist (eleven for a place, twelve for a being), and each onenames the board and panel that will set it.
Nothing is ratified. This is what a subagent may create.
RATIFIED — carries the verbatim pick line, its picked_at and picked_by, and the board id itcame from. Only the director writes this.
Every bible for a PLACE subject carries all eleven, in this order (§3.6):
1. PALETTE — named colours with values AND the rule for where each is allowed to appear. A palette
without placement rules produces regions that use their palettes the same way.
2. LIGHT DOCTRINE — source, direction, colour temperature, and the impossible-light clause stated as
an altered law rather than as an effect.
3. MATERIAL VOCABULARY — mapped where possible to real material behaviour, so the physics critic has
something to check.
4. SILHOUETTE AND ARCHITECTURAL GRAMMAR — the field that most determines whether a place reads as
itself from a hundred metres away.
5. SCALE RULE — tied to the Zone Catalog's meters_per_vertex rung so the art call and the geometry
budget agree.
6. THE VRIL-PHYSICS SIGNATURE — the altered law with its visible read and its mechanical read. This
is the field that hands to T0_Environment_Grammar_Registry; a field that cannot become an EG_ row
is a field describing scenery.
7. MOTION GRAMMAR — where "this place obeys different rules" is felt rather than seen.
8. THE FORBIDDEN LIST — the de-slop clause, written as specific prohibitions rather than as a quality
aspiration.
9. CITATION APPENDIX — with rights values per source.
10. THE INTENSITY SLOT — where this place sits on the climb and what the two adjacent places do, so
the ladder is ruled as the rooms are ruled.
11. DOWNSTREAM CONSUMERS — named so nothing orphans: T0_Environment_Grammar_Registry, the Zone
Catalog's three output columns (care_tier, asset_routing, environment_grammar_refs), the
region page's architecture and UE-build sections, mesh_tags.style at generation time, and the
image-critic expectation manifest so that when the place is built the critics judge frames
against the RATIFIED BIBLE rather than a reviewer's memory.
A PLACE subject takes the eleven fields above; a BEING subject — creature, familiar, boss, folklore
being, named NPC, antagonist operative — takes these twelve instead. Both sets live under the SAME
two-state law and the SAME director-only ratification write: a subagent may create either template's
file in AWAITING PICK and may never flip it. The being set is ruled in
docs/pipeline_review/art_pipeline_reviews_2026-08-03/build_sufficiency_review.json, lane
character-creature, required_additions[21], and the plate roles and authoring rules its fields bind
to are required_additions 0-9 (0-6 are the roles, 7-9 the rules).
1. SILHOUETTE LAW — the turnaround set at one declared neutral pose, the design lock everything
downstream compares against.
2. PROPORTION CANON — the proportion call, opening with height_m written on the registry row BEFORE
the scale_figure plate is rendered.
3. SURFACE AND MATERIAL VOCABULARY — hide, feather, scale, fabric, skin at macro, mapped to real
material behaviour and handed to the manual PBR lane.
4. PALETTE — named colours with values AND the rule for where each is allowed to appear.
5. COSTUME CONSTRUCTION — the outfit as garment pieces, fastenings and wear points, because a
MetaHuman is sculpted against reference rather than prompted.
6. EXPRESSION RANGE — neutral, the signature affect, and the four states the dialogue and persona
system drives; a faceless subject declares its affect channel instead.
7. MOTION GRAMMAR — weight, gait and the idle tell, answerable to the subject's own body plan.
8. TELEGRAPH GRAMMAR — the windup per phase, rendered also as pure black-on-white so the shape
channel is an artifact rather than an aspiration.
9. VARIANT AXES — each declared axis and what it changes, so the plate budget is a query.
10. THE FORBIDDEN LIST — the de-slop clause plus the being care route and the construct bound, in
specific prohibitions rather than a quality aspiration.
11. CITATION APPENDIX — with rights values per source, and the depiction question kept separate from
the image-level one.
12. DOWNSTREAM CONSUMERS — named so nothing orphans: mesh_tags and its five landed sub-fields,
mesh_pipeline_type and its landed three-value enum, the UniRig and MetaHuman route, the
animation lane's retarget profile, and the image-critic expectation manifest.
docs/art_bibles/
README.md this file
_TEMPLATE.md the eleven PLACE fields, empty, with each field's source named
_TEMPLATE_BEING.md the twelve BEING fields, empty, same two states and the same
director-only ratification write
<subject>.md one per boarded subject
<subject>.coverage.json the gate `canon_derivation` machine sidecar (consumer:
harness/check_canon_derivation.py via docs/canon_derivation.json)
Every bible is ENROLLED in gate canon_derivation the commit it is created: the sidecar carries
canon_scope (the spine nodes) + canon_coverage (every id those nodes name, covered or pending
with a routed destination), and the bible .md is the FACE that discloses the pending set. The
sidecar is generated from the subject board's own coverage rows, never hand-typed. The bible .md
is deliberately NOT a body file — that is what lets the face disclose pending ids without them
reading as body occurrences (the BRD_0001 content.json/board.md split, applied here).
| bible | subject | state | board |
|---|---|---|---|
flores_island.md | Flores Island, Ch 2-3 | RATIFIED | BRD_0001 |