Limits and troubleshooting
Limits
Section titled “Limits”Documents you upload
- Plain text and Markdown only. No PDF, no Word. Export or paste the text.
- Up to about sixty thousand characters, which is far longer than any brief anyone has yet handed us. If you are over it, you are probably uploading a script rather than a brief.
- The file is read in your browser. Nothing is sent until you press parse.
- One parse run per brief at a time. Start another while one is going and you will be told the first is still running.
Intent field lengths
A few hundred characters each, six hundred for notes. Over the limit is refused rather than silently trimmed, so nothing disappears without you seeing it. Almost every case of hitting the notes limit is content that belongs in Cast or Locations. See The blocks.
Pictures for the Brief Agent
Up to five per message, in the usual image formats. Each is resized in your browser to 1568 pixels on its long edge and re-encoded before it is sent, so the size of the file on disk does not matter: a 20 MB photo goes out as a few hundred kilobytes and reads exactly the same, because that is the size the model looks at anyway. A picture the agent cites in a draft (as a character’s or prop’s view or sheet, or a location’s plate) is stored under the brief when you apply that draft and becomes that entry’s reference; one it does not cite is looked at and discarded. Look references are separate: they are uploaded on the Look block itself, up to four, and a proposal is asked for from there (see Reference images).
How often you can ask
Each AI feature has its own rate limit, counted per person: a few dozen requests a minute, a few hundred an hour and two hundred a day. It is set well above what real use looks like; it exists to stop something looping, not to pace you. A document upload counts as one request, not five, and a Brief Agent conversation counts one per turn.
If you do hit it, you are told how long to wait. Nothing is lost.
What re-uploading replaces
Section titled “What re-uploading replaces”Uploading a second document into the same brief replaces each block’s draft with the new one. It does not add a second draft, and it does not stack.
It does not touch confirmed blocks. If you had confirmed Cast and then upload a new document, your confirmed Cast stays live and a new Cast draft appears alongside it, which is the “confirmed, draft pending” state from Drafts and confirming. Nothing you had settled moves under you.
The same goes for the Brief Agent: applying a draft replaces that block’s pending draft, never a confirmed block.
Troubleshooting
Section titled “Troubleshooting”A field came back empty
Section titled “A field came back empty”The source did not state it, and nothing invented one.
This is working correctly, and it is worth understanding rather than working around. A placeholder (“not specified”, “unknown”) becomes real content the moment a prompt reads it, so an unstated field is left out entirely instead. An empty accent field means “no accent was established”, which is a true and useful statement. An accent field reading “not specified” would be a lie your prompts repeat forty times.
If you know the answer, type it. If you do not, leave it empty.
One block failed and the others landed
Section titled “One block failed and the others landed”Expected behavior. The five blocks are read separately so that one bad result does not cost you the other four. The failed row says so; the other four are sitting in their blocks waiting for review.
Re-run the upload, or ask the agent for that one block. Until a draft lands there is nothing to type into; once it has, fix it by hand in the draft.
The parse read something into the wrong block
Section titled “The parse read something into the wrong block”The commonest version: production notes ending up in Intent when they belong to a specific location or character.
Fix it in review. The draft is editable, so cut the text from one block and paste it into the other before confirming either. Blocks are read separately and never reconcile themselves, so this is a manual fix and a quick one.
A whole section of the document was ignored
Section titled “A whole section of the document was ignored”Check whether the section is about the Look. The Look is never parsed from prose. It is chosen from a catalog, so pages of grade and palette description are read past on purpose. Pick the Look yourself, or attach a reference picture to the Look block and ask the Brief Agent to propose from it.
Otherwise: the parsers look for named things. A page of atmosphere with no named characters, places or objects has nothing to put in Cast, Locations or Props. That is not a failure so much as the document not containing what the block holds.
The agent asked about something I had already told it
Section titled “The agent asked about something I had already told it”Check whether that block is confirmed or only drafted. The agent reads confirmed blocks and your pending drafts, so both should be visible to it, but if the content is sitting in a form you have not saved, it has not landed anywhere yet and the agent cannot see it.
The agent refused to re-draft a character
Section titled “The agent refused to re-draft a character”If that character is already confirmed, it will decline rather than quietly overwrite settled content. Edit the entry directly in the block, or clear it and ask again.
A Look proposal I turned down cleared nothing. Is that right?
Section titled “A Look proposal I turned down cleared nothing. Is that right?”Yes. Discard on a Look proposal marks it reviewed and writes nothing, so the Look you had chosen stays exactly as it was. Applying a proposal merges it over what is set: it replaces the groups it proposes and leaves the rest (your Format, a grade when only a palette was proposed) alone.
The agent named a lighting or grade that is not in the catalog
Section titled “The agent named a lighting or grade that is not in the catalog”It cannot land. A proposal keeps only catalog choices; anything else is left out and listed under the proposal as “left out”, rather than mapped to the nearest thing. A missing suggestion is safer than a wrong value you had no reason to doubt.
The agent says it cannot confirm anything
Section titled “The agent says it cannot confirm anything”Correct. It cannot. Confirming is yours and there is no way to delegate it. See Drafts and confirming.
A canceled run
Section titled “A canceled run”Canceling mid-parse keeps whatever has already landed and skips the rest. You are not left with a half-written brief you cannot see. You are left with two or three drafts and three empty blocks.
A name was refused for its comma
Section titled “A name was refused for its comma”A character’s, prop’s or location’s name is what a shot’s References bind to, so it may not contain a comma: References are split at commas, and Lorvara refuses such a name rather than bind the wrong entry. Write “The Lookout (lamps out)”, not “The Lookout, lamps out”. A full stop is fine: “Dr. Vance” and “St. Agnes” bind when a shot writes the whole name. The rule is for the names a person writes: a title Lorvara makes for its own reference prompts (the ones that begin “Ref:”) may carry a comma, because References never reads a title.
Rename the entry on its draft, then save or confirm it again. Lorvara does not rename it for you.
A reference picture shows as blank
Section titled “A reference picture shows as blank”The upload did not complete. Delete the slot’s picture and upload it again.
If you gave that picture to the Brief Agent, it will have told you the image was blank rather than describing it. That message is a symptom of this, not a problem with the agent.
Editing a brief changed a project I did not mean to change
Section titled “Editing a brief changed a project I did not mean to change”Working as intended, and the thing most worth re-reading: Reusing a brief. A project uses a brief; it does not hold a copy. An edit reaches every project using the brief, and the brief page’s reach line says how many before you edit. For a change meant for one project only, clone the brief, edit the clone, and attach it there.
Attach was refused: “the brief has to be shared with that team first”
Section titled “Attach was refused: “the brief has to be shared with that team first””The project is on a team and the brief is personal (or shared with a different team). A team project can only use a brief everyone on the team can see. Share the brief with the project’s team from your Briefs page, then attach. See Teams.
I cannot delete a brief
Section titled “I cannot delete a brief”A brief is not deleted while any project uses it. The message names the projects you can detach it from; if some belong to a teammate, they detach it from theirs. Detach, then delete.
A project’s brief changed and I did not change it
Section titled “A project’s brief changed and I did not change it”On a team, the project may be using a brief a teammate owns, and they edited it. That is what a shared brief does. If the project must not move under you, clone the brief and attach your clone. See Teams.
A teammate cannot edit a brief I shared
Section titled “A teammate cannot edit a brief I shared”Check their seat. Everyone on the team with a full seat can edit a team-shared brief’s content; a viewer seat reads, attaches and clones. Renaming, changing the scope and deleting stay yours. See Teams.