A take on disk

A take is two things on disk: the postable master at exactly your --out path, and a working directory beside it holding everything else.

demos/
  myapp.mp4        ← the one you post
  myapp.take/      ← the working dir
    composition.json        the whole cinematic layer, editable
    capture.mp4             the KEPT raw screen capture
    capture.json            the ground-truth event log of the shoot
    review.mp4              badged review copy (render --review)
    draft.mp4               clean fast draft (render --draft)
    ab.mp4                  the last A/B reel
    prev.mp4                the master this one replaced — mechanical revert
    prev.composition.json   the composition that rendered prev.mp4
    frames.png              beat-aware contact sheet (frames)
    dossier.md              the exploration harvest — the app, remembered
    notes.md                director's notes from the editor's Agent panel
    notes.cursor            how far notes has read

Post the mp4; ignore, .gitignore (*.take/) or delete the folder. Deleting it keeps the video and gives up re-rendering — the recording is not regenerable.

Resolution

Wherever a command takes <take>, you can pass the master mp4, the .take/ directory, any file inside it, or a directory holding exactly one take — the rest resolves by convention. Two *.take/ directories in one folder is an error rather than a guess.

Where takes live

The default --out is demos/take.mp4. Keep takes together in one folder and name each after the app or the cut — demos/myapp.mp4, demos/myapp-pricing.mp4 — so their masters sit side by side, which is how you compare and pick one.

make refuses to overwrite a take that was shot from a different app; the honest case (same app, new dev-server port) is --force.

The composition is the source of truth

composition.json holds framing, background look, cursor feel, and every beat with its zoom decision — real coordinates, real timings:

{
  "kind": "press",
  "label": "Deploy",
  "bbox": { "x": 640, "y": 220, "w": 640, "h": 248 },
  "zoom": { "enabled": true, "scale": 1.8, "center": { "x": 960, "y": 344 } }
}

The mp4 is a render of this file over the kept capture. Change a value, render again — the app is never re-driven.