001trunkhot

Node 001 — Capability Inventory

Tree: Sapling · Parent: none (root) · Trunk: yes · Status: hot This file is a T0 leaf. Text is a real render — the cheapest tier. Format: 9:16 vertical · 60–90s · VO-driven

State change (R1)

Protagonist goes from dead engineer to rooted sapling who knows his exact verbs: he can sense and he can grow — and nothing else. The world state, his self-knowledge, and the audience's contract with the series all change in one episode.

Hook (R5)

The inventory itself. The audience completes it with him: MOVE, FIGHT, FLEE — all undefined. Every story they've ever seen gave the hero at least one exit. This one is rooted. Whatever comes next, he will be there when it arrives — and something is already arriving.

Script

COLD OPEN — 0:00–0:12

BLACK. The sound of one mechanical keyboard, very fast, then stopping.

CLOSE: a monitor in a dark apartment. A terminal. deploy --prod --force. A spinner. 3:07 a.m.

VO (tired, flat): Production went down at 2:41. It's the retry loop. It's always the retry loop.

The spinner resolves: ✓ deploy succeeded. A sharp breath in — the frame tips sideways — the mug hits the floor before he does.

VO: Huh. Green.

Cut to black on the sound of a cooling fan spinning down.

WAKE — 0:12–0:28

Blinding green blur. Focus pulls: we are two centimeters off the ground, looking up through one trembling leaf at a sky that is too blue. Wind. Birdsong compiled by someone who never heard a bird.

VO: Okay. Hospital ceiling. That's fine. Hospitals are green now.

The leaf — his leaf — twitches when he panics. The camera shakes with it.

VO: Scream. — No mouth. Run. — No legs. Flail?? — …I appear to be flailing one (1) leaf.

INCIDENT RESPONSE — 0:28–0:40

The trembling stops. Beat of stillness.

VO: Right. Sev-1. You know the drill. Nobody panics on my incidents, including me. Step one: stop screaming — done, involuntarily. Step two: what do we actually know?

On-screen text, rendered like a terminal, types over the shot:

$ whoami
sapling (ficus. probably.)

THE INVENTORY — 0:40–1:05

Quick rhythmic sequence, one capability per beat, terminal lines stacking up the side of the frame:

He pushes attention downward. The image blooms: an underground root-map, veins of dark water, mineral glitter, and — far off — a rhythmic thump felt as rings of light through soil.

VO: Sense. I can taste the water table. I can feel the ground. Something with feet is walking, about… four hundred meters northeast. Noted.

SENSE   ✓  roots / air / vibration

He pushes outward. Nothing. He pushes harder — timelapse: sun arcs three times — one (1) new leaf unfurls, smug and bright.

VO: Grow. Works. Latency: three days. Throughput: one leaf. I've shipped on worse.

GROW    ✓  slow. directional.

He tries everything else. Each attempt is one hard cut and one line:

MOVE    ✗  undefined
FIGHT   ✗  undefined
FLEE    ✗  undefined
SPEAK   ✗  undefined

VO: …That's the whole API.

REALIZATION / HOOK — 1:05–1:25

Slow push-in on the tiny sapling, alone in an enormous field. The terminal lines fade until only two remain: SENSE ✓ and GROW ✓.

VO: Every problem I ever had — the job, the pager, the retry loop — I solved it the same way, eventually. I walked away.

Beat.

VO: New constraint. Whatever comes over that hill — a storm, an axe, a war, a conversation — I will be here for all of it. I can't leave. I can only make this spot… worth staying in.

Underground: the far-off thump-thump of footsteps, closer now. The rings of light through the soil grow brighter, faster —

VO (quiet): Something's coming.

SMASH TO BLACK.

GROW    ✓

Continuations

Three sibling branches continue this moment — all alive per R6, none rejected: 002a — The Broken Channel · 002b — The First Citizen · 002c — ADMIN(?)

Taste-rule notes

• R1: state changes — he dies; he learns his verbs; the world registers his existence (approaching vibration).
• R2: no antagonist; the pressure is a constraint, not a villain.
• R3: panic resolved by the absurdity of flailing one (1) leaf; the tone contract is set here.
• R5: hook = the inventory + the approaching footsteps; both are real state changes, not teases.

Continues as: 002a — The Broken Channel · 002b — The First Citizen · 002c — ADMIN(?)

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Every render publishes its prompt, model, seed, and cost — this table is the audit trail. Screening: rate any leaf (continuity, character, vibe) — the crowd narrows the shortlist, the taste file decides. Ratings are harvested into this node's sap/screening.yaml. Higher-tier leaves (animatic, video) arrive with a published per-render budget.

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