Authoring Workflow
Create or open
Create a blank project when you want a neutral Untitled Story, or open a v1/v2/v3 JSON project. Import passes through the engine parser and normalization path; migration warnings describe repaired input rather than silently inventing a second model. (docs/ARCHITECTURE.md:18-26, engine.js:5-18)
Before New or Open replaces the current work, the shared preflight offers cancel, direct replacement, or a safety download. A failed safety download must not continue silently. (docs/ARCHITECTURE.md:54-61)
Compose
- Add and order scenes.
- Define cast members and instances.
- Choose a shipped or imported background.
- Edit base transforms or keyframes at the selected playhead.
- Add variables, narration, and audio clips as needed.
- Preview the selected scene or full story.
The selected scene, playhead, stage, timeline, and inspector are one coherent authoring state. Scene ordering uses the accessible Move earlier/Move later commands; drag reorder is deliberately not part of the current contract. (SVG-Animator-BIBLE.md:184-201, docs/reviews/backlog.md:79-89)
Save and recover
The studio autosaves the canonical project locally. Undo and redo traverse immutable project snapshots; exceptional malformed autosave or failed-import source remains independently downloadable and clearable. Dismissing recovery UI does not erase evidence. (docs/ARCHITECTURE.md:48-61, project-history.js:61-81)
Export
Export resolves visual assets and emits a deterministic standalone SVG without editor-only markup or runtime network dependencies. Audio is intentionally omitted, so provider state, browser speech, and cache state cannot change visual SVG bytes. (SVG-Animator-BIBLE.md:159-165, docs/ARCHITECTURE.md:73-75)