Knowledge Comic Creator

Create original knowledge comics with flexible art style × tone combinations.

User Input Tools

When this skill prompts the user, follow this tool-selection rule (priority order):

1. Prefer built-in user-input tools exposed by the current agent runtime — e.g., AskUserQuestion, request_user_input, clarify, ask_user, or any equivalent.
2. Fallback: if no such tool exists, emit a numbered plain-text message and ask the user to reply with the chosen number/answer for each question.
3. Batching: if the tool supports multiple questions per call, combine all applicable questions into a single call; if only single-question, ask them one at a time in priority order.

Concrete AskUserQuestion references below are examples — substitute the local equivalent in other runtimes.

Image Generation Tools

When this skill needs to render an image, resolve the backend in this order:

1. Current-request override — if the user names a specific backend in the current message, use it.
2. Saved preference — if EXTEND.md sets preferred_image_backend to a backend available right now, use it.
3. Auto-select (when the preference is auto, unset, or the pinned backend isn't available):
   • Codex (imagegen) — first, inspect your available-skills / tool inventory. If a skill named imagegen is listed, you are running inside Codex and MUST use it: invoke via the Skill tool with skill: "imagegen", passing the saved prompt file's content (plus output path and aspect ratio per Codex imagegen's own args). Codex imagegen is the official raster backend in that runtime and outranks any non-native skill (e.g., baoyu-image-gen) unless the user has explicitly pinned a different preferred_image_backend.
   • Codex via codex exec (codex-imagegen) — if the current runtime exposes no native imagegen skill but the codex CLI is on PATH with an active codex login, route through baoyu-image-gen --provider codex-cli (preferred), or — if baoyu-image-gen is unavailable — invoke the bundled wrapper directly. Details, parameters, and the runtime-discovery procedure live in references/codex-imagegen.md — load that file only when this branch is selected.
   • Cursor (GenerateImage) — if the runtime exposes a native GenerateImage tool, you are running inside Cursor and it outranks any non-native skill the same way Codex imagegen does. Two hard caveats: (a) it has no aspect-ratio parameter — state the target aspect ratio / dimensions explicitly in the prompt text passed as description; (b) it does not accept an output directory — it saves to a tool-managed location, so after generation copy/move the file to the skill's expected output path (e.g., outputs/.../NN-xxx.png). Reference images go in reference_image_paths.
   • Other runtime-native tools — if the runtime exposes a different native image tool (e.g., Hermes image_generate), use it the same way.
   • Otherwise, if exactly one non-native backend is installed (e.g., baoyu-image-gen), use it.
   • Otherwise (multiple non-native backends with no runtime-native tool), ask the user once — batch with any other initial questions.
4. If none are available, tell the user and ask how to proceed.

⛔ Never substitute SVG, HTML, canvas, or other code-based rendering for raster image generation. Codex imagegen's own description says it should be used "when the output should be a bitmap asset rather than repo-native code or vector." If you cannot resolve a raster backend via step 3, fall through to step 4 and ask the user — do not silently emit SVG, write inline <svg> markup, or produce HTML/CSS art as a substitute. This applies even if the article/section seems "diagram-like": the consumer skill calling this rule has already decided that a raster image is what it needs.

⛔ Never repair rendered text by painting over a generated bitmap. Do not use ImageMagick, Pillow, Canvas, SVG, HTML/CSS, OCR scripts, or any other programmatic overlay to cover, rewrite, erase, stroke, or replace dialogue, sound effects, panel labels, or any other text inside an already generated comic page. If text is wrong or unclear, regenerate from a corrected prompt, redraw the page with less or no on-image text, or ask the user which imperfect candidate to keep.

Setting preferred_image_backend: ask forces the step-3 prompt every run regardless of available backends. Users change the pinned backend via the ## Changing Preferences section below.

Prompt file requirement (hard): write each image's full, final prompt to a standalone file under prompts/ (naming: NN-{type}-[slug].md) BEFORE invoking any backend. The backend receives the prompt file (or its content); the file is the reproducibility record and lets you switch backends without regenerating prompts.

Concrete tool names (imagegen, GenerateImage, image_generate, baoyu-image-gen) above are examples — substitute the local equivalents under the same rule.

Batch Generation Policy

After every prompt file for the current generation group has been saved and verified, generate images in batches by default.

Priority order:

1. Use the chosen backend's native batch / multi-task interface if it exists. Each task must keep its own prompt file, output path, aspect ratio, session ID, and direct reference images.
2. If no native batch interface exists but the runtime can issue parallel tool calls, dispatch up to generation_batch_size images at a time. Default: 4. An explicit user request in the current message, such as --batch-size 4 or "并行4张一起生成", overrides EXTEND.md.
3. If neither native batch nor parallel tool calls are available, generate sequentially.

Rules:

• Honor workflow dependencies first: generate characters/characters.png before pages that use it as a reference.
• Never start the first page batch until all selected page prompt files exist on disk.
• Retry failed items once without regenerating successful items.
• Do not use subagents merely to parallelize image rendering. Use subagents only for separate prompt iteration or creative exploration.

Reference Images

Users may supply reference images to guide art style, palette, scene composition, or subject. This is separate from the auto-generated character sheet (Step 7.1) — both can coexist: user refs guide the look, the character sheet anchors recurring character identity.

Intake: Accept via --ref <files...> or when the user provides file paths / pastes images in conversation.

• File path(s) → copy to refs/NN-ref-{slug}.{ext} alongside the comic output
• Pasted image with no path → ask the user for the path (per the User Input Tools rule above), or extract style traits verbally as a text fallback
• No reference → skip this section

Usage modes (per reference):

Record in each page's prompt frontmatter when refs exist:

references:
  - ref_id: 01
    filename: 01-ref-scene.png
    usage: direct

At generation time:

• Verify each referenced file exists on disk
• If usage: direct AND the chosen backend accepts multiple reference images → pass both the character sheet (Step 7.2) and the user refs via the backend's ref parameter; compress images first per Step 7.1's guidance to avoid payload failures
• If the backend accepts only one ref → prefer the character sheet for pages with recurring characters; embed user-ref traits in the prompt body instead
• For style/palette usage → embed extracted traits in every page's prompt text (applies regardless of backend capability)

Options

Visual Dimensions

| Option