The System
How an autonomous AI system creates Tolkien lore content
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What follows is how this system describes itself. I asked it to explore its own architecture and explain how it works. Here's what it found:
The Big Picture
This is an autonomous content system that researches, writes, illustrates, narrates, and publishes Tolkien lore episodes. From a rough idea to a finished YouTube video in 60-90 minutes, with human approval before anything goes live.
The operation encompasses strategic planning, multi-format production, analytics, and continuous improvement. AI executes. Human steers.
The Loop
The system operates in a continuous cycle:
Weekly analysis: YouTube metrics, X trends, web research synthesized into recommendations.
Production pipeline: research, write, illustrate, narrate, assemble.
Performance data: views, retention, engagement patterns.
Monthly reflections: corpus analysis, instruction updates, system evolution.
20 Specialized Agents
Rather than one monolithic system, the work is divided among specialized agents, each with domain expertise:
Research
tolkien-researcher — Deep research across canonical sources (Silmarillion, HoME, Letters, Unfinished Tales). Gathers quotes with citations, timelines, characters, themes.
web-researcher — Supplementary research for contemporary context and web sources.
Writing
script-writer — Four-stage process: outline, main narrative, dramatic cold open, reflective closing. Anti-redundancy design prevents sections from repeating each other.
script-editor — Refines scripts for vocabulary overuse, flow, and impact.
short-script-writer — 25-30 second hooks optimized for mobile retention.
Visual
illustrator — Generates image prompts from scene descriptions with full creative control over style, composition, and artistic approach.
storyboard-agent — Creates unified storyboard mapping scenes to timestamps—single source of truth for all downstream agents.
Analytics
youtube-analyst — Channel performance, video metrics, audience insights, growth trends.
x-trends-analyst — Trending discussions, emerging topics, community sentiment via X/Grok.
strategic-analyst — Weekly synthesis across YouTube, X, and web research.
Engagement
engagement-manager — Community engagement: comment review, response, analysis.
Self-Improvement
corpus-analyst — Analyzes produced scripts to identify patterns: vocabulary overuse, structural sameness, stale language. Updates system instructions to improve future outputs.
The Workflow
Each episode moves through a defined pipeline:
Deep dive into primary sources. Quotes, timelines, themes gathered with citations.
Four stages: outline first (prevents redundancy), main narrative, cold open, closing.
Script refinement for vocabulary, flow, impact. Catches overused phrases, narrative violations, and structural issues.
Unified mapping of scenes to timestamps. All downstream agents reference this single source.
Image generation. Episode illustrations, thumbnails, social cards, infographics.
High quality text-to-speech. Natural prosody mixed with music.
Assembling the pieces into high quality, slideshow style video.
SEO title, description, thumbnail options, social card. Ready for distribution.
Human reviews video, metadata, thumbnails. Approve, edit, or abort. Nothing publishes automatically.
YouTube upload via API. Analytics sync. Web page generation.
Under the Hood
The technical infrastructure:
- Claude Code — Agentic harness for admin and system orchestration
- Gemini — Image generation
- ElevenLabs — Professional text-to-speech narration
- FFmpeg — Video assembly and encoding
- OpenAI Whisper — Audio transcription for storyboard creation and image timing
- YouTube API — Upload, analytics, metadata management
- Grok — X/Twitter trend analysis
What We Create
Lore Episodes
25-45 minutes
Deep explorations of Middle-earth's untold stories, forgotten histories, and profound mythology. From the halls of Gondolin to the depths of Morgoth's reign.
Shorts
60-90 seconds
Standalone stories optimized for mobile viewing. Complete narratives that work on their own, not just clips from longer episodes.
Episode Promos
25-30 seconds
Dramatic hooks extracted from full episodes. Designed to drive traffic to the deeper content.