Glossary

The vocabulary Ordinary Animator uses, alphabetically. Where our word differs from the industry's, the entry names both -- so you can connect what you read here to terms you have seen elsewhere.

Agent -- a configurable specialist that powers the Assistant, with its own instructions, context, and tools. Manage agents in the project's Agents view. Most of the time you just talk to the Assistant; agents are the advanced layer behind it.

AI Assistant -- the AI helper you talk to by voice or text to ask questions, navigate, and get things done. You have one Assistant. Behind it sit one or more configurable agents ("agent" is the industry term); the Assistant draws on them for you. See The AI Assistant.

AI Models -- the project view holding the short-list of models you have chosen for this project (previously labelled "My Models"). Choosing models per project keeps your look consistent and matches your hardware; the workflows and recipes offered elsewhere are filtered to this list. See Models, Workflows & Recipes.

Built-in operation -- a small, single-purpose step the platform runs itself (text-to-speech, assemble, trim, voice changer, ...), as opposed to a ComfyUI workflow. (Not "virtual workflow".)

ComfyUI -- the AI generation backend. It runs either locally (your machine, via the Chrome extension) or on Comfy Cloud (managed GPUs). See ComfyUI Integration.

Cookbook -- your project's own collection of recipes, kept alongside the built-in ones the platform ships. (Not "strategy library".)

Draft voice -- the voice a character is set to use by default, marked with a star, that one-press dialogue generation uses for every line.

Entity -- anything Ordinary Animator tracks with a type, an ID, and properties: a project, episode, scene, shot, character, location, prop, and so on. See Entities.

Fountain -- the plain-text screenplay format the Script is written in. See fountain.io.

Look -- an alternate version of a character, location, or prop that inherits its Story properties but can override its Appearance.

Media gallery -- the shared pin-board of images, clips, and audio for an entity. Starring marks an item as approved; archiving sets it aside. See The Media Gallery.

Model -- a single AI model that generates media (a checkpoint or a LoRA), each with its own look and hardware cost. A workflow uses one or more models; you choose a project's models on the AI Models view. See Models, Workflows & Recipes.

Operation -- one unit of work performed by a recipe step. An operation is either a ComfyUI workflow or a built-in operation. See Recipes & the Cookbook.

Phase -- one of the nine stages of the production pipeline: The Foundation, The Cast, The Story, The Script, The Visuals, The Sound, The Boards, The Shoot, The Final Cut. Each is our plain handle for a real studio stage. See The Production Pipeline.

Prompt guidance -- per-model notes on how a given model likes its prompts: some want a short list of keywords, others a long, detailed description. Ordinary Animator applies a model's prompt guidance for you when it turns your captured properties into a prompt, so the wording suits whichever model the step will actually run. The notes are researched and shipped per model -- there is nothing to set up. See Models, Workflows & Recipes.

Property -- a named field on an entity. Core properties are its primary fields (name, description, ...); metadata properties are the extra fields organised by production phase (logline, backstory, appearance, ...). Some are read-only (computed for you) or human-only (never sent to the AI). Ordinary Animator says "property" everywhere -- never "attribute". See Entities.

Recipe -- a saved sequence of steps that produces media (an image, a clip, a voice track). Recipes chain built-in operations and ComfyUI workflows. (Not "strategy".) See Recipes.

Recipe, built-in -- a recipe that ships with the platform, ready to run. You do not edit it in place: run it, adjust what you want in the gallery, and your version is kept alongside it. See Recipes.

Screenplay -- the technically precise name for the Script: the specific kind of script used for film and animation (scene headings, action lines, dialogue), as distinct from a stage play or other script forms. Ordinary Animator's scripts are screenplays, written in Fountain.

Script -- the text the human writes, and the source the whole production is driven from: scene breakdown, shots, dialogue, and audio all flow from it. It is not just a view -- it is the authored content. You write it in Fountain format (in any editor, e.g. Google Docs) and bring it in. The technically precise term for it is screenplay. See the Script reference.

Shot -- the most granular unit of production: one image or video clip. (The old term "panel" is gone -- it is always a Shot.)

Storyboard -- a quick preview image for a shot; the place to get blocking (staging) right cheaply before generating a finished clip.

Swimlane / Arc -- the Story Arcs view plots arcs (story threads) across episodes, grouped into swimlanes (rows).

Take -- one version of a generated or recorded result (a line of dialogue, a clip). You star the take you want to keep; others are archived.

View -- one of the pages of a single entity (Media, Properties, Timeline, ...), switched from the page header. (Formerly "modes".) See Navigation.

Voice changer -- turns a recorded performance into a character's voice, keeping the original timing. An alternative to text-to-speech when you want a real performance.

Workflow -- a ComfyUI node graph that generates media. Every workflow is ready to run as it stands. Its App Inputs are the parameters Ordinary Animator fills in; a recipe step maps its Step Inputs to them. Workflows are deliberately small and single-purpose, so you can see each intermediate result and re-run just the stage you want.

Workflow library -- a collection of workflows you can copy into a project: the platform catalog, your own project library, your local ComfyUI, or Comfy Cloud. Copying one in is what makes it available to your recipes. A workflow may be tuned for where it runs -- a version for Comfy Cloud and a version for your own machine, the latter perhaps using a quantized model so it fits a smaller GPU -- and Ordinary Animator picks the right one for you. See ComfyUI Integration.