Surgical Edits¶

The lightest-weight change of all. You're fixing one specific thing in one workflow — a single scene's prompt, a typo, a per-account dialogue swap — without making a whole new variant.

When you'd do this¶

Situation	Lvl 1 / Lvl 2 variant?	Surgical edit?
Rewrite 20%+ of the dialogue	Lvl 1	—
Update wardrobe across all scenes	Lvl 2	—
Fix one specific scene's image prompt	—	Yes
Correct a typo in one dialogue line	—	Yes
Swap a single per-account customization	—	Yes
Update the avatar reference URL after re-uploading	—	Yes

Rule of thumb: if the change is a single targeted fix, it's surgical. If it's a coherent change applied across the workflow, it's a variant.

What you do¶

You: in XYZG3-V1, Scene 03's image prompt has the avatar in a blue
     shirt but the rest of the workflow has them in white. Fix just
     Scene 03 to match.

Claude:
  Surgical edit on Scene 03 image prompt:

  Before: "white linen shirt" → "blue cotton t-shirt"
  After:  "white linen shirt" → "white linen shirt" (matches rest)

  Editing the Scene 03 image scene spec in tab Account A only.
  Bumping V0-N counter — V1 → V1-1? Or do you want to keep V1?

Surgical edits still bump the version if the workflow is at V0-N (testing) — every meaningful change archives the previous version. If the workflow is at V1+ (approved), a surgical edit can stay in place if you choose, or you can bump.

When a surgical edit needs a version bump¶

Always bump if:

The edit changes anything the Generation Runner will read on its next pass (prompts, references, schema)
The edit might affect multiple downstream nodes (e.g., a reference image swap touches every scene using that ref)
You want an audit trail of what changed when

You can skip the bump if:

You're correcting a metadata-only field (description in the version registry, comment in a JSON file)
The change has zero generation impact
You're recovering a temporarily-broken state to its prior known-good state

When in doubt, bump. The cost is one file in backups/ — well worth the audit trail.

How surgical edits differ from a Lvl ½ variant¶

The biggest practical difference: surgical edits don't go through the Script Writer or other prompt-writing agents. The Manager edits the file directly — usually by reading the existing prompt, applying your targeted change, and writing it back.

Variant (Lvl 1 / Lvl 2)	Surgical edit
Goes through the Script Writer / Image Prompter	Manager edits the file directly
Produces a new workflow file (decimal bump in `approved/`)	Edits the existing workflow (V0-N bump or stay-in-place)
Coherent change pattern	Targeted, single-point fix
Auto-approved (Lvl ½ only)	Auto-applied — your call whether to bump version

Per-account dialogue tweaks¶

Common case: a Lvl 1 variant rewrites canonical dialogue across all tabs, but one tab needs a small per-account persona swap. That's a surgical edit on top of the variant.

You: the Lvl 1 variant landed on XYZS1-V1-1 but Account B's row 3
     should say "for one of my patients" instead of "for my mom"
     (that's Account B's persona).

Claude: [edits row 3 of Account B's dialogue dynamic node, saves]

The fan-out script's transforms can do this automatically as a post-variant pass. For one-off cases, manual is fine.

Example session — fixing a broken reference¶

You: I just re-uploaded Account D's avatar reference sheet to R2 with
     a corrected face crop. The new R2 URL is https://pub-xyz.r2.dev/
     accountD-v2.png. Update XYZG3-V1 to use the new URL.

Claude:
  Updating the Avatar Media node in Account D's tab of XYZG3-V1.

  Before: imageData = "https://pub-xyz.r2.dev/accountD-v1.png"
  After:  imageData = "https://pub-xyz.r2.dev/accountD-v2.png"

  Bumping V1 → V1-1 (workflow is in approved/, so the bump pattern
  matches Lvl 1/2). Old file moved to backups/.

  Avatar ref URL also recorded in reference/avatar-sheets/r2-urls.md
  for future workflows.

  Ready to regenerate Account D's scenes with the new reference.

What NOT to do surgically¶

Avoid using surgical edits for changes that should be a variant:

A new wardrobe direction across all scenes → that's a Lvl 2 variant
A rewrite of multiple dialogue lines → that's a Lvl 1 variant
An environment change → that's a Lvl 3 variant (testing phase)

Surgical edits are for targeted, isolated fixes. If you find yourself making "one surgical edit" across 8 scenes, stop — it's a variant, not a surgical edit.

When you're ready¶

→ Next: Translating a Workflow — taking an English workflow and producing the Spanish version, or vice versa. Script Writer Mode 2.