Help & guides

Seven wizard steps take you from a premise to a committed world pack, then episodes are storyboarded and rendered one by one. Writing is free; art and rendering draw credits, and each spend is shown before you confirm.

A premise of at least 100 characters that names the lead, what they want, what stands in the way and the world's one unusual rule. Plus the in-story year, the genre, the platform and the dialogue language.

Sign up, describe the series, approve the bible and scripts, confirm the art estimate, then render one segment of episode one and watch it before rendering more.

Name the lead, what they want, what stands in the way and the world's unusual rule, in concrete terms. One hundred characters is the minimum, not the target; three or four dense sentences is the sweet spot.

The in-story year drives every costume, set and prop the renderer draws. A wrong or missing year sends the whole series to the wrong century, and episodes already rendered keep their look.

Give feedback for anything about the story, because one line rewrites the whole bible coherently. Edit by hand only for small factual fixes. Every version is kept, and you can view or compare any of them.

Approval starts script writing and the 14-day delivery window. You can still change the bible later; before anything downstream exists, a change sends you back to redo scripts for free, and once scripts are approved or the pack is committed the bible becomes a living reference and nothing is undone.

Yes. Each episode has its own feedback box, its own Regenerate button and a direct editor. Before approval every rewrite is free; regenerating an approved episode costs 5 credits, and once an episode has rendered, script changes mean re-rendering the affected groups.

The dots are importance. Red is a key role that drives the plot and cannot be removed; demote it to support first if you really want it gone. Deleting a character keeps its props as story clues rather than deleting them.

Write the face and the body, not the wardrobe. Hair, build, skin, distinguishing marks and one or two fixed features belong there; clothing comes from the year, the scene and the script and should not be pinned in the appearance note.

On each character card choose an actor and a voice performer from your roster or the shared library; reuse is free. New face means a brand-new face is generated. An actor can hold several looks, and the one matching your series year is used automatically.

Check three things in order: the series year, the appearance note, and the render style on the brief. Fix the cause, then redraw the affected anchors and re-render the groups that show it; finished takes are not touched.

Each row is one kind of image about to be generated, with the count and the credit rate. Character anchors and four-views for the cast of episode one are what you need first; scenes, props and characters who appear later are deferred and can be left unticked because the pipeline fills them in at render time at the same rates.

No. Click retry on the failed row and it re-runs for free; the unit was already paid for. Re-entering the art gate only lists what is still missing, and if a batch cannot be charged in full, everything is rolled back and nothing is billed.

A group is the unit that renders, a segment is the unit that gets stitched, the episode is the unit you publish. Each render of a group produces a take; the cut plays the picked take. Stitching a segment and rebuilding the episode master happen on their own whenever a pick changes.

A re-render adds a new take to the group's pool; the cut keeps playing whichever take is picked. If the scorer did not rank the new take ahead, or the group is on a per-shot remix, the old take stays selected. Open the group's takes and click Pick this on the one you want.

Swap something already in the picture with Regenerate, a local edit at 5 cr per edited second. Re-render one shot when a person or action is missing. Re-render the whole group only when the whole group is wrong. Or describe the problem in Ask agent to fix and let the Line Producer choose.

The script was edited after the storyboard was drafted, so the two no longer agree. Choose Re-draft from the new script and render if the change matters on screen, or Render the old storyboard as-is if it was a text-only fix. Rendering is blocked until you choose.

QC screens every take for hard defects, then reviews each stitched segment and the whole episode. With Auto re-render on QC failure on (the default), one extra take is rendered for a hard defect and billed like any take. Turn it off in Settings and the run pauses on the flagged group for you to decide.

Sign-off is your release decision. It locks the cut to the current storyboard, produces the publish cover, and unlocks packaging and publishing for that episode. You can withdraw it at any time to edit again; nothing is deleted.

The Line Producer is the on-set agent in the console (⌘J). It drives a series from brief to rendered episodes, fixes shots, redoes covers, proposes script rewrites and writes synopses and captions. It will not approve your bible or scripts, will not publish, and never talks about prices.

Name the place the way the page does, SEG 2 · G3, and the shot number if you know it, then say what is wrong in plain words and what it should be instead. From the Review page, pause on the frame and use Ask agent to fix; it fills the location in for you.

After two paid attempts on the same shot without an accepted result it must stop, say what it tried and offer alternatives, so it never burns credits in a loop. Any reply from you unlocks one more attempt. Yes and No answer its last question; Confirm plan approves a plan card.

Mint a personal access token in the console (avatar menu → API tokens), log the CLI in with npx @dawnwood/cli auth login --token …, then register the server in your agent — for Claude Code that is one command, claude mcp add dawnwood -- npx -y @dawnwood/cli mcp. Agent access is included in every plan, and your agent's own reasoning is never metered.

The MCP server exposes the pipeline itself — runs, the bible, episode scripts, the world pack, art and renders, covers, sign-off, the delivery package and your credit balance — as tools that map one-to-one onto what the console does. Approval gates stay yours; the agent hands you a console link at each one. Visual review, fixing shots and publishing remain console work.

Tokens are minted under the avatar menu → API tokens, shown once, valid for 90 days by default (the API accepts 1–365) and revoked from the same list, taking effect within a minute. A token has your account's permissions except managing users, and it can never mint another token. A 401 means the token is malformed, expired or revoked — mint a new one and log in again.

A cover is drafted when the episode starts rendering, re-shot from the finished cut when the master lands, and finalised at sign-off. Its hook line is written from the script in the series language. Redo it from the Episodes panel with regen cover, billed as one art re-roll (5 cr).

Connect channels under your avatar menu → Connected accounts. Publish from Production › Episodes once an episode is signed off and its master is ready, choosing Now, the next daily slot or a time. Failed posts are fixed by publishing the episode again.

On the Review page of an episode that already has a master, the Language versions card offers Add version at 80 cr. You get the episode dubbed in each character's own voice, lip-synced, with subtitles burned in. Sixteen languages are available; a failed version is refunded automatically.

Sign off the episodes, then build a delivery pack from the Episodes panel or the series overview. Each episode gets a master, a clean master without music, subtitle files, the cover and a project file, behind download links that stay valid for about 24 hours.

Writing is free. Credits are spent on images, voices, rendered seconds, covers, language versions and rewrites of approved scripts, always at the rates shown before you confirm. When the balance hits zero, paid generation pauses where it is, nothing is lost, and a top-up lets it continue.

You start with 500 credits for 30 days. Renders cost 5 to 10 credits per second depending on the engine; art, voices and fixes have their own prices shown before you confirm.

Pay by plan or pack through Stripe. Downgrades and cancellations take effect at the end of the period. Unused pack credits can be refunded within 30 days of purchase.

Open Billing. It shows your balance and total spent, a per-series breakdown with one row per episode, and a ledger of every charge, refund and grant with the series and episode attached.

Most messages tell you exactly what to do. "Something failed on my side" from the Line Producer carries a raw error in the brackets, worth pasting to support if a retry does not clear it. A credits shortfall opens Plans & Credits. "Not found" on a series you did not create means it belongs to another account.

Refresh once; every page rebuilds from the server and nothing is lost. The browser's back and forward buttons move between steps and episodes within the console. A render that shows no progress for more than ten minutes is worth a look at the activity log.

The episode page's activity → link opens the render log and your feedback history for that episode. Billing holds every charge with its series and episode. Operations › Channels holds the publishing history. Draft runs are listed in Production as Draft · Step N/7.

Email support@dawnwood.ai from your account email with the series name, the episode number, the segment or group, what you clicked and the exact error text or a screenshot. Never send passwords, tokens or card numbers.