Chapter 12 — Workflow Optimization¶

You've done every task in the pipeline by now. This chapter is about doing them efficiently — burning less budget, hitting fewer rate limits, juggling more workflows in parallel without dropping any, and choosing what's worth iterating on vs. accepting.

What you'll learn¶

Automating generation with the Generation Runner agent — the headless executor that does what manual runs do, but all in one command
Cost awareness — per-image and per-clip generation costs, where budget goes, how to spot when you're being wasteful
The mode=images validation pass — cheap way to check prompts before burning Veo budget
B-roll density's impact on cost — and when High density isn't worth it
Pipeline limits — concurrency caps (3 default, 5 max), rate limits, R2 storage / bandwidth, PatchWork file size limits
Working with multiple workflows in parallel — juggling brands × workflows × variants without losing state
The master tracker as your north star for "what's where" across many workflows
Speed levers — concurrency tuning, reference image reuse, when to skip aggressive regen attempts
Quality levers — when to invest in higher iteration counts, per-scene targeting, choosing what to accept

Before this chapter¶

You should have done every task in chapters 2-11 at least once. Optimization makes sense after you've felt the friction of doing things the slow / expensive way.

Sections¶

Automating with the Generation Runner — the headless executor that replaces manual workflow runs
Cost awareness — where budget goes, strategies for cheaper passes
Pipeline limits — concurrency, Veo clip length, file size, rate limits
Working with multiple workflows in parallel — juggling brands × workflows × variants
Speed levers — concurrency tuning, reference reuse, targeted reruns
Quality levers — when to invest in polish, when to accept good-enough

When you're ready¶

→ Next: Chapter 13 — Troubleshooting. The final chapter — what to do when something breaks. Reference material, not necessarily linear reading.