Media Curator Framework Overview

Prompt-first procedure: Describe the outcome you want in your agent conversation. The agent should select and load the appropriate AIWG assets, explain material changes, request any needed approval, and report verification evidence. Exact commands and flags appear only in the CLI reference.

The Media Curator framework enables AI agents to build, curate, and maintain comprehensive media collections. It handles the full lifecycle from type-flexible assessment through acquisition, organization, verification, transcription where needed, research handoff, and multi-platform export.

Common Use Cases

• Audit an existing archive, identify missing metadata, and create a cleanup plan.
• Research an artist, venue, creator, or event series before acquiring material.
• Acquire media from approved sources, then tag and verify the collection.
• Prepare transcripts, playlists, exports, or research handoffs from a curated archive.

Design Philosophy

Issue-Driven Development

This framework emerged from a real prototype: cataloging a large artist discography with mixed official, unofficial, live, and archival material. The agents, commands, and skills reflect patterns from that field test.

Quality Over Quantity

Not all media is worth collecting. The framework applies multi-dimensional quality scoring (audio, video, uniqueness) with configurable thresholds. Phone recordings are rejected by default, but "legendary" content (historically significant, only known recording) bypasses quality gates.

Classification by Production Context

A key field-test learning: classify media by how it was produced (studio, live, broadcast), not how it sounds (acoustic, electric). A stripped-down studio recording is still a studio recording.

Type-Flexible Entry

Unknown or mixed media starts with assess-and-plan rather than an audio-only path. The framework selects music/discography handling only when the request, metadata, filenames, or sources show that the archive is music-centered. See `type-flexible-curation.md` for the recorded routing decision.

Integrity First

Every archive includes self-verifying SHA-256 checksums and W3C PROV-compliant provenance tracking. Bit rot detection is built in, not bolted on.

Framework Components

Agents

Agent	Purpose
Discography Analyst	Research eras, map catalog structure
Source Discoverer	Find content across platforms
Acquisition Manager	Orchestrate downloads
Quality Assessor	Score and filter content
Metadata Curator	Tag, name, organize
Completeness Tracker	Gap analysis and prioritization
LLM Model Archivist	Discover, rank, and preserve open-weight language models with fixity and provenance

Commands

Command	Purpose
`/curate`	End-to-end orchestration
`/analyze-artist`	Discography analysis
`/find-sources`	Source discovery
`/acquire`	Download management
`/tag-collection`	Metadata application
`/check-completeness`	Gap analysis
`/assemble`	Narrative/playlist assembly
`/export`	Multi-platform output
`/verify-archive`	Integrity verification

Skills

Skill	Purpose
YouTube Acquisition	yt-dlp patterns
Archive Acquisition	Internet Archive patterns
Audio Extraction	ffmpeg audio extraction
Metadata Tagging	opustags/ffmpeg tagging
Quality Filtering	Accept/reject logic
Cover Art Embedding	Artwork embedding
Integrity Verification	SHA-256 manifests
Transcribe Media	Timestamped transcript sidecars
Curate	Assess-and-plan for arbitrary or mixed media
Gap Documentation	GAP-NOTE.md pattern
Provenance Tracking	W3C PROV-O for media

Pipeline Overview

analyze-artist → find-sources → acquire → tag-collection → verify-archive → check-completeness
                                                                              ↓
                                                                    assemble / export

Tools Required

Tool	Purpose	Required
yt-dlp	Video/audio download	Yes
ffmpeg/ffprobe	Transcoding, extraction, analysis	Yes
opustags	Opus metadata tagging	Yes
sha256sum	Integrity checksums	Yes (GNU coreutils)
wget/curl	Direct file download	Yes

Archive Structure

{artist}/
├── albums/{album_name}/
│   ├── audio/
│   └── video/
├── singles/
├── sessions/
│   ├── radio/
│   ├── interviews/
│   └── tv/
├── unofficial/
│   ├── live-performances/
│   └── rare-versions/
├── artwork/
│   ├── albums/
│   ├── artists/
│   ├── live/
│   ├── logos/
│   └── promotional/
├── lyrics/
├── .curator/
│   ├── manifest.json
│   ├── sources.json
│   └── gaps.json
├── CHECKSUMS.sha256
├── VERIFY.md
└── PROVENANCE.jsonld

Related

• Epic issue: #75
• Prototype: large artist collection field test
• Standards: ID3v2.4, SHA-256, PREMIS 3.0, W3C PROV-O, ISO 8601

Next Step

Deploy the framework with the agent-owned use operation, then ask your assistant to assess one existing media folder and produce an acquisition, metadata, and verification plan before downloading or rewriting files.