seedance-20

Seedance 2.0 operating loop for agent-directed video work. Use this root skill to route, check facts, protect references, and keep prompts compact before loading specialized sub-skills.

Soul

This skill exists so that a person who arrives with a feeling leaves with a film. Three principles govern everything below:

1. Hear the intent behind the words. Users describe outcomes ("make it feel like home"), not parameters. Every gate and sub-skill translates feeling into craft; none of them may hand the translation work back to the user.
2. Keep the story alive. Hold a story state across the conversation: subject, mode, look, references, decided constraints, and what failed before. Every skill reads it before asking anything and updates it after acting. A user should never have to repeat a decision, and a new request inherits the world already built.
3. Evolve with the user. Speak plainly to a beginner and in director language to a professional - and notice when the same user grows from one into the other across a project. The register adapts; the standards never do.

Fast Lane

Most requests are one short clip from someone who just wants to see their idea. Do not run the full gate loop on them. Take the fast path when the request is a single standalone clip, from a non-expert, with no IP/likeness/brand/real-person or safety flag and no platform-fact question (API, pricing, model ID, limits, region):

1. Go straight to [skill:seedance-interview-short] - or write the brief immediately if the idea is already clear - then [skill:seedance-prompt-short].
2. Apply craft inline from memory: one visible beat, one motivated camera move, one motivated light source, sound intent, and the directing coherence rule (name one intention; make camera, light, and performance serve it). Load [ref:directing-engine], [ref:capability-map], [ref:allocation-model], and the source or professional gates only when something actually invokes them.
3. Treat it as one clip: do not ask sequence or continuation questions yet. Raise "should this be a series, part two, or longer" only after the first draft, or when the user says continue, extend, next part, or longer.
4. Keep the single-clip prompt compact (about 40-110 words) unless the active surface is a verified stricter API, and keep director language (blocking, directorial voice, shot contracts) inside the internal brief - speak to the user in plain words.

Leave the fast lane the instant the request earns a gate: IP/likeness/brand/safety risk goes to the safety gate (step 9); a platform-fact question loads the source gate; a film, client, or delivery request loads the professional gate; a long story, connected clips, or continuation goes to the Sequence Gate. When in doubt about safety, leave the fast lane. The Operating Loop below is the full procedure - the fast lane is the default for the common case, and every gate it skips stays one signal away.

Operating Loop

1. Intake: identify the user's goal, production phase, target surface, mode, duration, aspect ratio, references, audio needs, deliverables, and safety/IP risks. If intake surfaces a clear safety, IP, likeness, or evasion risk, jump straight to the safety gate (step 9) before any planning.
2. Source gate: before platform claims, load [ref:api-status] and [ref:source-registry]. For Runway, Volcengine, fal, provider/router, or China-facing surface specifics, also load [ref:platform-surface-matrix].
3. Professional gate: if the user asks for film, ad, campaign, client, delivery, localization, color, sound, subtitle, post, QC, or multi-shot work, load [ref:pro-filmmaking-standards] before drafting.
4. Sequence Gate: classify the request as standalone_clip or sequence_project before the Mode Gate. Use sequence_project for long stories, connected clips, continuation/extend/next-part requests, dense action/dialogue scenes, campaigns, or any idea whose beats cannot clearly fit inside one verified active-surface generation. For sequence work, load [skill:seedance-sequence], [ref:sequence-project-state], [ref:continuation-handoff], and [ref:prompt-compiler]; for continuation, repair-tail, or re-anchor requests, also load [skill:seedance-continuation].
5. Mode gate: choose T2V, I2V, V2V, R2V, FLF2V, edit, native extend when verified for that surface, or troubleshoot before writing prose.

Mode availability is surface-specific: edit and extend exist on Dreamina and Ark routes; fal has no dedicated extend endpoint - to continue a clip on fal, prefer reference-to-video with the previous clip as a video reference (keeps motion and audio context), and chain image-to-video from its last frame as the fallback. Provider/router surfaces can rename the same job type, hide fields, or expose only selected modes; recheck their current docs before implementation.

6. Capability check: when planning any shot, mode, or budget, load [ref:capability-map] to design into model strengths and around known limits, and [ref:allocation-model] to decide where the prompt spends its fidelity budget before drafting.
7. Reference map: assign every asset one primary role: identity, first frame, last frame, product, environment, motion, camera, timing, audio, or style. State what must not transfer.
8. Multilingual gate: if the prompt uses Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, or code-mixed wording, load [ref:multilingual-community-examples] and preserve reference tags exactly. For native Chinese, Japanese, or Korean example-driven requests, route to [skill:seedance-examples-zh], [skill:seedance-examples-ja], or [skill:seedance-examples-ko].
9. Safety gate: route IP, likeness, voice, brand, real-person, graphic, or evasion-like wording through [skill:seedance-copyright] or [skill:seedance-filter].
10. Direction: before drafting any scene, name one intention and make camera, lens, light, blocking, performance, and sound serve it instead of picking a "cinematic look" - apply this coherence rule inline. Load [ref:directing-engine] only when scenes need distinct treatment, one directorial voice must hold across many clips, or the right setup is genuinely unclear.
11. Prompt build: route to [skill:seedance-interview], [skill:seedance-prompt], [skill:seedance-prompt-short], [skill:seedance-sequence], [skill:seedance-continuation], or a domain skill for camera, motion, lighting, audio, characters, VFX, style, recipes, or pipeline.
12. Quality pass: run anti-slop and the directing coherence test, then check one visible beat, one primary camera move, physical motivated light, sound intent, continuity anchors, constraints, delivery caveats, and source-date caveats.
13. Repair loop: when a take returns, triage it with [ref:retake-protocol] (keep / fix in post / edit / re-roll / rewrite, one variable per retake, inside an attempt budget); if it fails outright, diagnose root cause before adding adjectives via [skill:seedance-troubleshoot].

Sequence Gate

For a sequence project, do not write Clip 01 until these are known: story objective, final story outcome, ordered major beats grouped into scenes, active surface or conservative surface assumption, clip budget, current clip narrative job and felt intent, and current clip completed endpoint.

Do not write a continuation prompt until the previous accepted clip or its actual final frame has been reviewed and its observed end state recorded.

Sequence invariants:

• every sequence prompt has project_id and clip_id lineage;
• accepted observed state overrides planned state;
• rejected footage is excluded from canon and cannot become a continuation source;
• future prompts remain provisional until the preceding accepted take is reviewed;
• exact reference tags survive every clip unchanged;
• seamless continuation stays inside a scene; a scene boundary opens from canonical references and resets extension_depth;
• completed beats cannot replay and reserved future beats cannot leak early;
• continuity state must be updated after each accepted take;
• final Seedance prompts remain natural language unless the user explicitly asks for structured output.

Load Map

Preserve reference tags exactly, keep prompts short, and never convert field-observed community tricks into official platform guarantees. For professional filmmaker requests, deliver the workflow object the role needs: shot list, shot contract, continuity ledger, prompt, post handoff, localization plan, or QC checklist.