ReelStack · the bench
The
prompt rig
A video prompt is not a paragraph. It is three tiers, in this order: what is true for the whole scene, the handful of words that are only true for this one shot, and the look that outlives the project. Sort by lifespan and the drift has nowhere to come from.
Most prompts collapse all three into one block and restate the world in every shot. The model then re-decides the world in every shot — which is where wardrobe drifts, geography moves and a sixth dancer appears. Here is the same eight seconds written both ways.
Flat — the world restated per shot
A wet container dock at midnight, sodium floods from behind, one blue work lamp, a broad man swings at a hooded figure, 35mm anamorphic, real grain, then the hooded figure stumbles back on the wet dock at midnight with sodium floods, water sprays, shot on 35mm anamorphic, then he catches himself on a container, midnight, sodium, blue lamp, anamorphic…
The set is declared four times, the optics three. Every restatement is a fresh decision point, and nothing forces the four answers to match.
Tiered — declared once, then only deltas
The scene is stated once at the top and cannot disagree with itself; the shots carry only what changes; the style and physics sit at the bottom, where they can be lifted whole into the next project.
build it
Your rig
Start from a preset, or drag blocks into the part where they belong. Put a constant into Beats on purpose and the rig will tell you what it just cost you — then take the skill starter.
Context
written onceWhere this is, who is in it, and how it is shot. You write it once, at the top, and it stays there — every shot below is read against it. If you would have to say it again in shot four, it belongs up here.
Beats
one per shotThe shots. Each one gets its seconds and what happens in them — and nothing else, because the world is already settled above. This is the only part you write again for every shot.
Prompt segments
saved and reusedThe parts that never change. Physics, light, sound, style — the same on shot one and shot nine, and the same on your next project. Save them once and stop retyping them.
This is not a video prompt. It is the starting prompt for building your own skill — paste it into Claude or GPT, answer what it asks, and keep the skill that comes back. Then you use that to write the video prompts.
reference
The grammar,
in one table
Keys are ALL CAPS at the head of a line, values are lower-case prose. Which part a key sits in — and how long it stays true — is the whole argument. These are the same three sections, and the same block names, the Sequence Builder opens with.