EPISODIC Agentic podcast production

Maturity Active development 33 of 120 roadmap tasks complete (1 of 6 phases). Not a released product.

Production path

From a bundle of sources to a delivered episode

Seven stages, each with a declared input, output, and owner. Find the stage that concerns you; its maturity is stated on the stage, not inherited from the pipeline.

The seven stages

The order is the content, so it is an ordered list. No diagram is required to follow it.

  1. Source intake

    Available

    Briefs, transcripts, feeds, press releases, and research notes arrive as uploads or remote URIs and are recorded against an ingestion job.

    In
    Heterogeneous source documents
    Out
    Ingestion job with attached, classified sources
    Owned by
    Integration client
    Source-to-script intake, users' guide

  2. Canonical content

    Available

    Sources are weighted, conflicts resolved by documented rule, and the result normalized into canonical TEI with provenance captured in the header.

    In
    Classified source documents
    Out
    Canonical TEI episode with provenance
    Owned by
    Ingestion service
    Multi-source ingestion service

  3. Draft generation

    In progress

    Structured briefs and guardrails compose the prompt; a LangGraph state graph drives generation with metered, interruptible model calls.

    In
    Structured brief, pinned reference revisions, guardrails
    Out
    Draft TEI script, show notes, chapter markers
    Owned by
    Content generation orchestrator
    Roadmap step 2.4, LangGraph orchestration

  4. Automated evaluation

    In progress

    The in-progress evaluator stack is designed to run five model evaluators and the Chrono local estimator in parallel over the draft, returning typed findings. Malformed structured output and invalid timing stop the run rather than publishing quietly.

    In
    Draft TEI script and cited source packets
    Out
    Typed findings, runtime estimate, usage metrics
    Owned by
    Quality assurance stack
    Quality assurance stack

  5. Editorial checkpoint

    Planned

    Findings are surfaced to an editor, who approves, requests changes, or redirects the graph. The workflow suspends without losing state while that decision is pending.

    In
    Draft with aggregated findings
    Out
    Approval decision and audit record
    Owned by
    Editor
    Roadmap step 4.2, approval workflow endpoints

  6. Speech and mixing

    Planned

    Approved segments render to speech with pinned pronunciation, then mix with beds and transitions and normalize to a broadcast loudness target.

    In
    Approved script segments
    Out
    Mastered episode audio
    Owned by
    Audio pipeline
    Roadmap phase 3, audio synthesis and delivery

  7. Preview and export

    Planned

    Editors preview the rendered episode, embed chapter markers and metadata, and export delivery formats.

    In
    Mastered audio and canonical metadata
    Out
    Published episode package
    Owned by
    Editor and export service
    Roadmap step 3.6, voice preview and export jobs

Reading the maturity labels

Two stages are complete. That does not make the pipeline complete, and the labels are per stage for exactly that reason.

Source intake and canonical content are available: an integration client can push material through them today and get a canonical TEI document with its provenance attached. Draft generation and automated evaluation are partly built. Everything after the editorial checkpoint is designed and not implemented.

A finished early stage is the usual way a pipeline misleads. It is tempting to read "ingestion works" as "the pipeline works", so each stage above carries its own state and its own evidence link, and no summary on this site rounds them up into a single verdict.

What stops a run

Fail-fast is a design commitment. These are the conditions that halt work rather than publishing quietly.

Malformed structured output from a model Available
The run stops. Nothing partially parsed reaches the canonical episode.
Chapter-marker timing that does not match segment transitions Available
Validation rejects the payload. Starts must be ordered, integer-only, and in PT#H#M#S form.
Optimistic-locking conflict on a profile or template Available
The write is refused so a concurrent edit is never silently overwritten.
Repeated request with a matching idempotency key Available
The stored response replays. The same key with a different canonical body returns 409 Conflict.
Per-episode budget exhausted In progress
The reservation is refused before the billable call is made.

Stages in detail

Three pages cover the stages that carry the most weight.