A project → Pipeline.
A production has branches. One assembly, three dubs. Boards for act one while act two is still being
written. A list of buttons cannot express that, which is the whole reason this is a canvas.
### The nodes are stages that already exist
Nothing on the palette is new. "Storyboard", "Render", "Assemble", "Dub" are the same operations the
rest of the Studio runs, arranged rather than reimplemented. That matters for one specific reason:
a graph compiles to a resumable run on the same machinery as everything else, and the longest
jobs in this product are exactly the ones you would want to draw as a graph.
### Connections are checked while you drag
Every node declares what it consumes and what it produces. A port that cannot accept what you are
holding dims as you drag toward it. The alternative — validating at run time — means finding out
four minutes into a render that a video was wired into a script.
### The cost is counted from your project
A "Storyboard" node over 8 shots and over 400 shots are different propositions. Press **Estimate
cost** and every stage reports the units it would actually process, right now. A builder that gave
the same number for both would be actively misleading.
### Running it
Save, then Run. A graph run appears on the Runs tab like any other and resumes from where it
stopped — stages are leased, so advancing it from two browser tabs cannot double-run one.
Stages advance explicitly rather than automatically. A single stage can queue hundreds of
generations, and a run that advanced itself on page load would spend credits because somebody opened
a tab.
### This is not Omni Studio
Omni works on one idea — a still, a moving version of it, narration, a cue. This works on a
whole film. They share nothing but a resemblance.