# 2026-08-18 — NOTHING PASSED. Do not treat the .mp4 files here as review-ready.

Two full producer runs, 26 candidate products, 0 passing videos. Nothing was hosted, nothing was
posted. POSTED-LOG.md untouched. No REVIEW-FLAGS.md / review-gate.json written, because no video
reached the review gate. (Video autopost is paused anyway by _AUTOPOST-PAUSE.txt, which was honored.)

## The .mp4 files in this folder are ARTIFACTS, not candidates. Do not post them.
- lifestyle__Daydream-Floral-Ruffled-Lace-up-One-Piec(.mp4/_45.mp4) — best QA 91%, failed on caption
  legibility over a busy floral background; the deciding retry died on a reviewer 503.
- lifestyle__Everyday-Textured-Crossed-Waist-Pants(.mp4/_45.mp4) — QA 91%, failed E_locations
  ("no real environment", "studio backdrop"); its retry died on reviewer 503s.

## Why nothing produced — two separate causes

1. STRUCTURAL (the real blocker). The authentic-photo gate needs 4 distinct, non-studio, same-model
   supplier photos per product. Most of the Trendsi catalogue is shot on a seamless backdrop, so
   those products are ads-only for video. Across 26 candidates the holds were:
     - 6 products: 0/4 photos in a real environment (pure studio sets)
     - 8 products: only 2-3 distinct real photos after near-duplicate dedup
     - 3 products: model swapped mid-set, largest same-person group too small
   Relocation is intentionally retired (VB_RELOCATE defaults to 0), so there is no studio rescue path.
   This is not a bug — it is the authentic-only policy meeting a backdrop-shot catalogue. Roughly
   3 of the last 7 days produced a video; today drew a bad hand and then hit an outage.

2. TRANSIENT. The Gemini vision reviewer returned repeated HTTP 503s and read timeouts through both
   runs, including on the two products that actually built. It is intermittent, not fully down.

## Fix applied today — scripts/vb_video_producer.py (authentic_stills)
A reviewer API error no longer counts as a photo defect. It retries once, then reports the photo as
UNREVIEWED and holds the product as "reviewer API degraded, NOT a product problem". Previously a
Gemini outage was indistinguishable in the log from "this product is ads-only", which is exactly how
today's outage hid itself. The gate was NOT loosened — an unreviewed photo still never enters a video.
Backup: scripts/vb_video_producer.py.bak-20260818

## Decisions for Gregory
- CAPTION LEGIBILITY is the recurring near-miss: both 91% builds failed on caption contrast over busy
  prints. A stronger scrim/legibility lift behind video captions is the highest-value creative fix.
- CATALOGUE COVERAGE: if one video per day is the goal, the durable fix is a vetted pool of products
  that have 4+ real-environment photos (vb_curate_outdoor.py already writes such a pool, and
  VB_POOL_FILE restricts the draw to it). Otherwise the daily draw will keep coming up empty.