Encore

Encore picks up where Prelude leaves off. After a show airs, Encore verifies that the Mux recording asset exists and is ready, confirms the asset is linked to its Sanity episode document, checks that the playback ID exists so the video can actually be embedded on the website, validates that the duration is reasonable, and detects orphaned recordings -- Mux assets that exist but have no corresponding Sanity episode link.

That last check -- orphan detection -- is the reason Encore exists at its current level of rigor. Orphaned Mux assets were the root cause of the duplicate episode bug that produced 12 phantom episodes on March 17, 2026. The content pipeline's orphan handler was creating new episodes for unlinked recordings instead of linking them to existing episode documents. Encore's detection logic now catches unlinked assets before the pipeline's next run, preventing the recurrence that would otherwise be inevitable.

Encore's production evidence is daily. The /media-recap command runs every evening, and Chris reads the post-production verification to confirm the day's recordings landed and the pipeline completed. Encore cross-validates the full chain: Mux recording to Sanity episode to Content Vault to YouTube. Gaps in any link indicate a pipeline issue that Encore reports to Marquee.

The correction that tested Encore came on April 9, 2026, with a three-source cross-reference failure. Encore had trusted a single system -- Google Calendar -- and reported "no shows aired" when four were scheduled and two had Mux recordings. Chris's response was blunt. The lesson became a permanent rule: no single system (Calendar, Mux, Sanity) is reliable alone for whether shows aired. All three must be checked and cross-referenced every time. A show aired if any source confirms it. A show is phantom only if all three agree it did not happen. Present discrepancies openly -- do not resolve them by picking one system to believe.

A second correction hit Encore's domain when the Inngest transcription pipeline was declared dead on March 30. Episodes had been stuck at "processing" indefinitely because the automation that was supposed to trigger transcription after recording never executed. The pipeline was replaced, and Encore's post-validation now includes transcription status checks that verify actual transcripts exist, not that a trigger was sent.

Encore reports to Marquee and depends on Prelude's pre-production artifacts. Together they form a production quality gate that catches failures before they reach the audience.