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Visual Studio

Visual Studio helps authors think, plan, and create manuscript-supporting visuals. It is for diagrams, infographics, maps, timelines, concept maps, figures, visual explainers, cover art, interior illustrations, chapter art, and other assets that make a book clearer or more publishable.

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Purpose

Visual Studio should help answer:
  • Would this idea be clearer as a diagram?
  • What visual would help the reader understand this section?
  • Does this infographic match the argument?
  • Does this map, timeline, or concept diagram fit the project facts?
  • What cover direction fits this book and its market?
  • What interior illustration or chapter-opening image would support this section?
  • What prompt and source context produced this asset?

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Supported Visual Work

Initial visual categories:
  • diagrams
  • infographics
  • concept maps
  • timelines
  • process flows
  • comparison charts
  • manuscript-supporting illustrations
  • cover art concepts
  • interior illustrations
  • chapter-opening images
  • children’s book illustrations
  • book-planning visuals
  • nonfiction explainers
  • fiction maps or worldbuilding diagrams

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Cover And Interior Art

Scritorio should support cover art as a first-class visual workflow, especially for self-publishing authors. The author should be able to:
  • brainstorm cover directions
  • compare visual concepts against genre, audience, tone, and market expectations
  • generate or import cover concept art
  • track prompts, references, variants, and author decisions
  • separate draft concept art from final production assets
  • connect cover concepts to publishing metadata such as title, subtitle, series, book number, trim size, and author name
Interior art should also be supported. This includes chapter-opening images, spot illustrations, maps, diagrams, nonfiction figures, and scene or concept illustrations.

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Children’s Books And Illustrated Books

Scritorio should eventually support illustrated book workflows, including children’s books. These workflows should help authors:
  • plan page-by-page or spread-by-spread visual beats
  • maintain character and style consistency across illustrations
  • align images with text, reading level, and page turns
  • track which illustrations are draft concepts, approved assets, or final production files
  • generate prompts for individual spreads while preserving author control
  • review whether images support the story, teaching goal, tone, and intended reader
Children’s book support should not assume AI-generated final art is always appropriate. The product should also support imported human-created art and hybrid workflows.

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Author Control

Visual generation must be explicit. Scritorio should never send manuscript text, source notes, research, or worldbuilding to an image provider without a user action and context preview. The author should be able to:
  • choose the source text or notes
  • review the generated prompt
  • remove sensitive context
  • select an image provider and model profile
  • save or discard outputs
  • revise prompts and regenerate
  • link assets to manuscript sections
  • link assets to covers, chapters, pages, spreads, or publishing profiles

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Local Asset Storage

Generated or imported visual assets should be stored locally. Each asset should have a Markdown sidecar that records:
  • title
  • purpose
  • linked manuscript section
  • asset role, such as cover, chapter opener, spread, figure, map, or concept art
  • source context used
  • prompt
  • provider profile
  • generated file references
  • revision history
  • author notes
  • production status, such as concept, candidate, approved, final, or rejected

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Provider Abstraction

Scritorio should use an image-generation provider abstraction. OpenAI image generation is the first likely provider because the current OpenAI API supports prompt-based image creation through the image generation endpoint. The product spec should not permanently hardcode a specific model name. Model names, capabilities, output formats, and pricing will change over time, so Scritorio should treat them as provider configuration.

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Visual Review

Visual Studio should also support critique:
  • does the visual match the text?
  • does it misrepresent a claim, timeline, location, or process?
  • is it too decorative for the reader’s need?
  • does it require a caption or source note?
  • is it suitable for draft planning only, or potentially publishable later?
  • does cover art fit the book’s audience, genre, tone, series position, and self-publishing metadata?
  • do interior illustrations remain consistent across characters, style, and page sequence?
Early versions should focus on visual planning and local asset management, not final print production.