Knowledge Comic Creator

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

Usage

/baoyu-comic posts/turing-story/source.md
/baoyu-comic article.md --art manga --tone warm
/baoyu-comic  # then paste content

Options

Visual Dimensions

Partial Workflow Options

Details: references/partial-workflows.md

Art Styles (画风)

Tones (基调)

Preset Shortcuts

Presets with special rules beyond art+tone:

Compatibility Matrix

Details: references/auto-selection.md

Auto Selection

Content signals determine default art + tone + layout (or preset):

When preset is recommended: Load references/presets/{preset}.md and apply all special rules.

Details: references/auto-selection.md

Script Directory

Important: All scripts are located in the scripts/ subdirectory of this skill.

Agent Execution Instructions:

1. Determine this SKILL.md file's directory path as {baseDir}
2. Script path = {baseDir}/scripts/<script-name>.ts
3. Replace all {baseDir} in this document with the actual path
4. Resolve ${BUN_X} runtime: if bun installed → bun; if npx available → npx -y bun; else suggest installing bun

Script Reference:

File Structure

Output directory: comic/{topic-slug}/

• Slug: 2-4 words kebab-case from topic (e.g., alan-turing-bio)
• Conflict: append timestamp (e.g., turing-story-20260118-143052)

Contents:

Language Handling

Detection Priority:

1. --lang flag (explicit)
2. EXTEND.md language setting
3. User's conversation language
4. Source content language

Rule: Use user's input language or saved language preference for ALL interactions:

• Storyboard outlines and scene descriptions
• Image generation prompts
• User selection options and confirmations
• Progress updates, questions, errors, summaries

Technical terms remain in English.

Workflow

Progress Checklist

Comic Progress:
- [ ] Step 1: Setup & Analyze
  - [ ] 1.1 Preferences (EXTEND.md) ⛔ BLOCKING
    - [ ] Found → load preferences → continue
    - [ ] Not found → run first-time setup → MUST complete before other steps
  - [ ] 1.2 Analyze, 1.3 Check existing
- [ ] Step 2: Confirmation - Style & options ⚠️ REQUIRED
- [ ] Step 3: Generate storyboard + characters
- [ ] Step 4: Review outline (conditional)
- [ ] Step 5: Generate prompts
- [ ] Step 6: Review prompts (conditional)
- [ ] Step 7: Generate images
  - [ ] 7.1 Generate character sheet (if needed) → characters/characters.png
  - [ ] 7.2 Generate pages (with --ref if character sheet exists)
- [ ] Step 8: Merge to PDF
- [ ] Step 9: Completion report

Flow

Input → [Preferences] ─┬─ Found → Continue
                       │
                       └─ Not found → First-Time Setup ⛔ BLOCKING
                                      │
                                      └─ Complete setup → Save EXTEND.md → Continue
                                                                              │
        ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
        ↓
Analyze → [Check Existing?] → [Confirm: Style + Reviews] → Storyboard → [Review?] → Prompts → [Review?] → Images → PDF → Complete

Step Summary

Step 7: Image Generation

7.1 Generate character sheet (conditional):

Character sheet is recommended for multi-page comics with recurring characters, but NOT required for all presets:

When generating character sheet:

• Backup rule: If characters/characters.png exists, rename to characters/characters-backup-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.png
• Invoke an installed image generation skill such as baoyu-imagine
• Read that skill's SKILL.md and follow its documented interface rather than calling its scripts directly
• Use characters/characters.md as the prompt-file input
• Save output to characters/characters.png
• Use aspect ratio 4:3

Compress character sheet (recommended when using as --ref):

• Use available image compression skill (if any)
• Or system tools: sips -s format jpeg -s formatOptions 80 input.png --out output.jpg (macOS)
• Or: pngquant --quality=65-80 input.png -o output.png
• Compression reduces API payload size and avoids --ref failures

7.2 Generate each page:

--ref failure recovery: If generation fails with --ref:

1. Compress: Convert reference image to JPEG with reduced quality: sips -s format jpeg -s formatOptions 70 characters.png --out characters-compressed.jpg
2. Retry with compressed image as --ref
3. If still fails: Fall back to generating WITHOUT --ref (prompt-only, character descriptions embedded in prompt text)

Backup rules for page generation:

• If prompt file exists: rename to prompts/NN-{cover|page}-[slug]-backup-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.md
• If image file exists: rename to NN-{cover|page}-[slug]-backup-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.png
• Invoke the installed image generation skill for each page
• Use prompts/01-page-xxx.md as the prompt-file input
• Save output to 01-page-xxx.png
• Use aspect ratio from storyboard (default 3:4, preset may override)
• If character sheet exists and skill supports reference images, pass as --ref

Full workflow details: references/workflow.md

EXTEND.md Paths ⛔ BLOCKING

CRITICAL: If EXTEND.md not found, MUST complete first-time setup before ANY other questions or steps. Do NOT proceed to content analysis, do NOT ask about art style, do NOT ask about tone — ONLY complete the preferences setup first.

EXTEND.md Supports: Watermark | Preferred art/tone/layout | Custom style definitions | Character presets | Language preference

Schema: references/config/preferences-schema.md

References

Core Templates:

• analysis-framework.md - Deep content analysis
• character-template.md - Character definition format
• storyboard-template.md - Storyboard structure
• ohmsha-guide.md - Ohmsha manga specifics

Style Definitions:

• references/art-styles/ - Art styles (ligne-claire, manga, realistic, ink-brush, chalk, minimalist)
• references/tones/ - Tones (neutral, warm, dramatic, romantic, energetic, vintage, action)
• references/presets/ - Presets with special rules (ohmsha, wuxia, shoujo, concept-story, four-panel)
• references/layouts/ - Layouts (standard, cinematic, dense, splash, mixed, webtoon, four-panel)

Workflow:

• workflow.md - Full workflow details
• auto-selection.md - Content signal analysis
• partial-workflows.md - Partial workflow options

Config:

• config/preferences-schema.md - EXTEND.md schema
• config/first-time-setup.md - First-time setup
• config/watermark-guide.md - Watermark configuration

Page Modification

IMPORTANT: When updating pages, ALWAYS update the prompt file (prompts/NN-{cover|page}-[slug].md) FIRST before regenerating. This ensures changes are documented and reproducible.

Notes

• Image generation: 10-30 seconds per page
• Auto-retry once on generation failure
• Use stylized alternatives for sensitive public figures
• Maintain style consistency via session ID
• Step 2 confirmation required - do not skip
• Steps 4/6 conditional - only if user requested in Step 2
• Step 7.1 character sheet - recommended for multi-page comics, optional for simple presets
• Step 7.2 character reference - use --ref if sheet exists; compress/convert on failure; fall back to prompt-only
• Watermark/language configured once in EXTEND.md