Images filed into this story, with their Library review decision. Content review, checklists, and publication stay separate decisions made in the Library.

Documentation

A complete guide to generating ideas, building a story, producing images, reviewing, and publishing with Carnival.

Modules

Carnival is the umbrella. Everything lives in a module, and each module owns its screens, its navigation, its wording, and its assistant guidance. Opening a different module changes the navigation bar underneath the header.

1. Story Studio — one story at a time, through the whole workflow:
   1. Projects — every story you are working on.
   2. Idea — the idea and the brief of the current story.
   3. References — the shared reference material every image prompt is built from.
   4. Characters & Locations — the cast, the places, the look, and the character sheets.
   5. Scenes — the scene outline, the action references, and continuity.
   6. Generate — one image prompt per action reference, then the images.
   7. Review — everything still waiting for a human decision.
2. Generate Images — character art with or without a story:
   1. Character Maker — reusable characters saved for every story.
   2. Standalone Images — prompt to image, with no project.
3. Shared services — Ideas, the Library, Settings, and these Docs serve every module from the header at the top. Accounts, provider keys, usage tracking, and settings are shared.

Click 📚 Generate in the header to open Story Studio and Generate Images, with their workflow controls. Shared services hide those controls; Generate returns to your last module screen and selected story.

The Current story selector in the Story Studio bar is one choice that drives every story screen, so the Idea, References, Characters, Scenes, Generate, and Review screens always show the same story. The Library opens filtered to that story; in Generate Images it opens on the unassigned images instead.

Next to the selector, the progress pill summarises the story: how many of the six steps are done, how many are waiting for a decision, and what the next action is. Click it for the full overview — each step lists what is finished, what needs approval, and what to do next, and clicking a step opens it. A step shows an ! only when a person has to decide something, never for work that simply has not been done yet.

Overview

Carnival turns a rough idea into a production-ready, photorealistic story. It uses DeepSeek for text generation, an image model (Seedream 5.0 Pro) for scene images, and your own API keys — which are encrypted at rest on the server and never sent back to the browser.

Inside Story Studio the pipeline reads in this order:

1. Idea Generator (a shared service) — brainstorm concepts from a context.
2. Projects — organize ideas into stories and move them through stages.
3. References — generate detailed reference material, scene outline, and character references.
4. Characters & Locations — build character reference sheets, action references, and location references from the reference material.
5. Generate — write image prompts and generate scene images.
6. Review and the Library — review and publish the images you produced.
7. Settings (a shared service) — manage API keys, models, the Guide chat, and the Reviewer bot.

Getting started

1. Create an account and sign in.
2. Open Settings and save a DeepSeek API key. This unlocks ideas, references, scene prompts, the Guide chat, and the Reviewer bot.
3. To generate images, add a BytePlus key in Settings.
4. Optionally add an Anthropic and/or OpenAI-compatible key to use other models for the Guide chat and Reviewer bot.

Keys are stored encrypted (AES-256-GCM) on the server. The UI only ever shows a masked hint such as sk-…abc123.

The workflow

A project moves through three stages plus review:

• Idea Stage: the project holds the raw concept.
• Reference Stage: generate and save reference material (this also fills the Story Workspace with reviewable drafts).
• Generation Stage: generate prompts and images per scene.
• Done: mark a project complete when it is finished; completed projects stay in the Library.

The left sidebar's AI Requests track lists this account's most recent AI generations and shows when each one completes (green ✓). Open Track for full request details.

Idea Generator

Context

Paste background text, topic, constraints, or notes into the Context box — or drop a .txt file. The context is saved on your device and stays until you clear it with ✕ Clear context.

Generating ideas

1. Pick a model and the number of ideas.
2. Click ✨ Generate ideas.
3. Tick the ideas you want, then either ⬇ Export as .txt or ➜ Send to Project Management.

Sending ideas to Project Management creates one project per selected idea in Idea Stage.

Projects

Projects are grouped by stage. Each project card lets you:

• ✎ Edit — change the title, idea, description, stage, status, priority, or reference material.
• → Generation — move a Reference Stage project forward (requires saved reference material).
• ✓ Complete / ↩ Reopen — mark a project done or bring it back.
• Episodes — group a project's assets into episodes.
• 🗑 Delete — remove the project (assets are archived, not destroyed).

Use the search box and the status filter to find projects, and ⬇ Export to save a text snapshot.

References

1. Choose a Reference Stage project.
2. Add between 1 and 4 characters (name + gender) and an optional setting.
3. Click ✨ Generate reference material.

Use Use guide under the Setting field to ask the Guide for a setting suggestion for the current reference project. The Guide opens automatically with the prompt filled in.

DeepSeek returns human-readable reference material (7 numbered sections), a chronological scene outline, standalone character references, and a structured Story Workspace payload.

You can edit the reference text and click 💾 Save reference, or ↻ Regenerate to try again.

Character Maker

This screen (Generate Images ▸ Character Maker) builds standalone characters: they belong to your account and to no story, so you can design a character once and reuse it anywhere.

1. Click ＋ New character, then name it and describe it. The description drives every image: age, build, height, hair, eyes, skin, wardrobe, and distinguishing details.
2. Choose the image type: Portrait (one head-to-mid-thigh image) or Character sheet (3 views) (the shared front / three-quarter / side layout template).
3. Pick an image size and click ✨ Generate image. The processing widget in the bottom-right corner shows the running generation.

Every generation adds a version. Click Make final on the version you want to keep — only one version per character can be final — and Copy prompt to reuse the exact wording elsewhere.

Deleting a character removes its generated images from disk. Image generation needs a saved BytePlus API key in Settings.

Standalone image generator

Generate images from a prompt without a project. Use it for one-off art, tests, covers, or anything you want to try before it belongs to a project.

1. Write a prompt: subject, setting, lighting, lens, mood, style.
2. Pick an image size and how many images to generate (1–4).
3. Click ✨ Generate. The processing widget in the bottom-right corner shows the progress of each image.

Reference images

Attach up to 10 references so the result follows a particular character, place, or look. Add one from the Library, from a final Character maker image, or upload a file. References are attached to the request as visual guidance; they are never copied or modified.

Prompt presets

Save the current prompt as a named preset, then Insert it into the prompt box later. Presets belong to your account.

Deleting an image here removes it from the Library too — except images you have already reviewed or that belong to a project, which are protected so review work is never lost by accident.

Character images

This screen (Story Studio ▸ Characters & Locations ▸ Character images) builds the cast for one story. Pick the story at the top, then every character you create here is saved with that story.

1. Choose a project. Completed projects are not listed.
2. Click ＋ New character, then name it and describe it.
3. Choose Portrait or Character sheet (3 views), pick an image size, and click ✨ Generate image.

Reuse from Character maker copies the final image of a standalone character into the selected project character. The image is copied, not linked, so later changing or deleting the standalone character never affects the project. The copy becomes the project character's new final version.

Character images are stored with your data and served only to you. They are not added to the Library as assets; copy one there yourself if you want it reviewed, tagged, or published.

Characters, Locations & Scenes

These are three Story Studio steps — Idea, Characters & Locations, and Scenes — that share one screen, so the workflow bar shows only the cards for the step you are on. Choose a story and click Generate worksheet to view its name, idea, characters, setting, Reference Material, and Character References.

Character reference sheets

Generate one selected character sheet or all sheets using only the individual Character Reference and the shared layout template. Preview each version; click Add this sheet when satisfied, or generate again. Add a sheet for every character to complete the reference task.

Action references

Choose a picture count, then generate one action for each picture from Reference Material. Each action ends with a location sentence. Review and save or generate again. Saved actions form the scene outline.

Location references

Once actions are saved, generate location descriptions from their ending location sentences and the saved setting. Review and save or generate again.

Generation

1. Choose a Generation Stage project. The References card shows the character references, the character reference sheets, the action references, and the location references, and names anything missing.
2. Click Build Image Prompts to write one image prompt per action reference with DeepSeek. The character references and character reference sheets are the same for every image, which keeps the characters consistent.
3. Save the prompts or Generate again. Once saved, approve each prompt individually.
4. Click Review the prompts. The reviewer compares every image prompt with the references and flags inconsistencies; each flag must be edited away or dismissed.
5. Choose an image size and click Run image generation process. Every image is rendered one by one with its character reference sheets attached and filed into the project and the Library.

Editing a saved prompt clears its approval and makes its existing image out of date. Approval is always a separate human action.

Review & Library

The Library lists every image the app has produced or you have uploaded, with filtering by project, episode, collection, tag, type, and status.

Reviewing an image

• Record a review decision: REVISE, REJECT, OWNER REVIEW, or APPROVED.
• Complete the checklist (rights, adult-character, consent, explicitness, AI-label, placement, quality).
• Choose a safe cover revision if needed.
• Record a publication decision only when the evidence is complete.

Approval and publication are separate, explicit human actions. A new revision invalidates prior review evidence.

CarniChat, Guide & Reviewer

AI Requests track

The sidebar lists the most recent AI generations for your account and marks each one Complete when it finishes. Use the project selector and → Next step to advance a project, and open Track ↗ to inspect prompts, replies, and errors.

CarniChat

CarniChat is the assistant area in the bottom-left corner. It has two modes, and its opening line follows the module you are in — Story Studio asks how to move the current story forward, Generate Images asks about a character or an image.

Guide

Guide is a persistent chat that walks you through the workflow and suggests the next concrete action. It also receives the module you are working in, so its answers stay about that module.

Reviewer

Reviewer is a field-by-field review bot. Choose a project and a section (for example Scene Prompts), then click Review. It checks every field in that section against the project context.

• Purple ring — the field is processing.
• Green check — the field was reviewed without blocking issues.
• Red X — the field failed review or the check could not complete.

Click Details to open a pop-up with each field's summary, findings, suggestions, model, and review time. Review results are an automated check — they are not a human approval or publication decision. Results are cached per field, so unchanged content is not re-reviewed.

Change the provider, model, and extra instructions for the Guide chat and Reviewer bot in Settings → Chat assistants.

Settings

• DeepSeek API — key for ideas, references, scene prompts, and the default chat.
• BytePlus image API — key for Seedream image generation.
• Anthropic API — key for Claude models in the chat.
• OpenAI-compatible API — key and base URL for any OpenAI-compatible provider.
• Default models — the text and image models used across the app.
• Chat assistants — per-assistant provider, model, and pasted context for the Guide chat and Reviewer bot.

AI safety & approval

Carnival keeps a hard boundary between generation and approval:

• AI generates drafts; it never marks anything approved, final, or published.
• Reference, Story Workspace, prompt, and image approvals are always explicit human actions.
• Continuity warnings reflect genuine missing information or pending approvals — not information lost during import.
• Regenerating never silently overwrites your edits or approvals; it asks for confirmation first.

FAQ & troubleshooting

“No API key is saved for your account”

Add the corresponding key in Settings (DeepSeek, Anthropic, or OpenAI-compatible, depending on the assistant/model you are using).

“Your API key was rejected (401)”

The key is invalid or revoked. Update it in Settings.

“Rate limit reached (429)”

Too many requests. Wait a moment and try again.

“Insufficient balance (402)”

The provider account has no remaining balance.

“Generate and save reference material first”

A project must have reference material before it can enter Generation Stage.

“Structured Story Workspace drafts already exist”

Regenerating would replace existing records; confirm the replacement to continue.

“A scene links to a character/location that is not approved”

Approve the referenced character or location in Story Workspace before saving that scene link.