editorial-infographic

Editorial Infographic — Multi-Agent Panel Pipeline

A 1-pager that earns its space. Not a slide deck flattened to a poster, not a carousel collapsed to a wall of text. Source-grounded, panel-reviewed, brand-consistent.

This skill is PROSE-shaped: instructions are progressively disclosed, work is decomposed into right-sized phases, primitives compose, three hard rules bound the failure modes, and specificity increases as you move from this file into references/ and the agent personas.

When to use this

• You have already-authored long-form content (book chapter, paper, methodology) you want to compress into one shareable image.
• The audience is practitioners or leaders who already read a lot of BS on this topic — generic frameworks won't land. Specificity will.
• The goal is thought leadership + conversion (drive readers back to the source). Not pure aesthetics; not pure data viz.

If the source is short, a tweet/text post is better. If the source needs swiping, use social-media-carousel. If the goal is pure visual art, use canvas-design.

Agent panel roster

The skill orchestrates four specialized agents. Persona detail lives in the linked .agent.md files — read them before invoking. This skill orchestrates only.

Routing topology

                    ┌──────────────────────┐
                    │  source extracts +   │
                    │  brief + audience    │
                    └──────────┬───────────┘
                               │
              ┌────────────────┼────────────────┐
              ▼                ▼                ▼
       ┌─────────────┐  ┌─────────────┐  ┌─────────────┐
       │  ARCHITECT  │  │ ILLUSTRATOR │  │   SKEPTIC   │
       │  structure  │  │   visual    │  │  fidelity   │
       └──────┬──────┘  └──────┬──────┘  └──────┬──────┘
              │ proposals      │ spec           │ flags
              └────────────────┼────────────────┘
                               ▼
                    ┌──────────────────────┐
                    │       EDITOR         │
                    │  synthesize · resolve │
                    │  conflicts · arbitrate│
                    └──────────┬───────────┘
                               ▼
                    ┌──────────────────────┐
                    │  ASCII MOCKUP →      │
                    │  HUMAN APPROVAL GATE │
                    └──────────┬───────────┘
                               ▼
                          render → review

• Specialists raise findings independently — no implicit consensus.
• Editor arbitrates. When the Skeptic vetoes on source fidelity, the Skeptic wins. When the Architect and Illustrator disagree on section count vs visual rhythm, the Editor decides and documents why.
• The human is the gate between mockup and render. The Editor cannot bypass it.

The Three Hard Rules

These are non-negotiable. They exist because every previous failure mode of this format violated one of them.

Rule 1 — Verbatim from source

Every claim, definition, criterion, and section name must be traceable to a line in the source document. The Skeptic enforces this line-by-line. Invented vocabulary is the most common cause of this format failing — practitioners detect it instantly.

Rule 2 — Panel before render

You MUST run the panel pipeline and produce an ASCII mockup for human approval before writing render code. The Editor holds this gate.

Why: Pixels are expensive to iterate. Layout decisions made in ASCII cost minutes; the same decisions made in PIL cost hours.

Rule 3 — Brand chrome bookends only

Dark (INK) backgrounds appear in exactly two places: the masthead band and the CTA footer band. Body sections are always cream-on-INK-text. The Illustrator enforces this. No "look at me" dark slabs in the body.

The Pipeline (5 phases)

The Editor orchestrates these. Each phase has a fresh, focused scope.

For phase-by-phase invocation prompts and conflict-resolution rules, see references/PIPELINE.md.

Composing with other skills

• After shipping the image, draft the LinkedIn post body separately. The image's role is the payoff; the post's role is the hook.
• For a swipeable variant, slice the same content into a PDF carousel via social-media-carousel. Same content, different layout — never share both.
• For a printed handout, export the same PNG at 300dpi and add to a PDF cover sheet.

Outputs

• A single PNG at the source's native long-portrait ratio (typically ~2400 × 5500 px after SCALE=2 supersampling).
• Save to ~/Desktop/<source-slug>-<topic-slug>.png.
• Optionally: a copy at <source-repo>/assets/<chapter>-<topic>.png for use as a chapter image: social card (see Distribution after ship).

File map

• references/PIPELINE.md — phase recipes, invocation prompts, conflict-resolution rules
• references/BRAND_SYSTEM.md — colors, fonts, chrome recipe, SCALE pattern (Illustrator's operating manual)
• references/LAYOUT_PATTERNS.md — six tested patterns (A–F) and when to use which
• references/REVIEW_CHECKLIST.md — Phase 5 ship gate + Tier 1/2/3 distribution playbook
• assets/starter_template.py — the renderer with helpers, brand tokens, masthead + 4-section + CTA footer skeleton
• assets/ascii_mockup_template.md — Phase 3 fill-in-the-blanks scaffold

Agent personas live one level up:

• ../../agents/infographic-architect.agent.md
• ../../agents/infographic-illustrator.agent.md
• ../../agents/infographic-skeptic.agent.md
• ../../agents/infographic-editor.agent.md