How to write a request the model gets right

Oct 5, 2026

Twelve habits that make a request land on the first try: one animation at a time, parts by name, motion in plain words, and what must stay still.

What to ask for

One animation per message, by name. “Make an idle called idle” is checked in one look; five animations in one message are five things to check and one thing to undo.
Call a part what the tree calls it. Selecting a bone puts its name above the input, and it travels with the message — no need to type it.
Describe the motion, not the file format: what moves, how far, how fast.
Say whether it loops. A loop ends where it began. A one-shot — a landing, a hit, a win burst — plays once and ends in the rest pose, so the game can return to the idle without a jump; a death is the exception and ends in its last pose.
A tempo is taken literally: give the BPM and you get one accent per beat and a loop that is a whole number of beats long.

Make an idle loop called idle: the whole figure sways gently, two seconds, seamless

one animation, a name, what moves, how long, and that it loops

The cart shudders on the rails, the wheels do not spin, the gold bounces a beat behind

what moves, what stays still, and what follows with a delay

In idle, the head nods on every beat at 90 BPM. The body stays still

an existing animation by name, a tempo, and a part that must not move

What you say about a part holds for the whole project: “the bottom stays still”, “the eyes are glued to the body” apply to every animation built later, until you lift it.
“Change X” changes X and nothing else. Extra liveliness is offered in one sentence, not added; a new animation or a copy is made only when you ask for one.
“Suggest”, “what could we do”, “ideas for a win” — the model answers with two to four options in words and changes nothing until you pick.
“It still moves” — name the part. A part is moved by its own bone, by every bone above it and by its own shape; the model looks all of that up before fixing it.

A part that turns about itself — a mouth, an eye, a wheel, a spiral, a ring — say so, and its bone goes to the middle of what is drawn instead of the joint.
Something long or soft — a tail, a rope, hair, a soft body — ask for it to “bend” or “wobble”, otherwise it rotates as a stiff plate.
A flat picture can turn as if it had depth, up to 45 degrees. Ask for a “turn” or a “nod”.

An exact specification is taken as it is: times, values and transitions copied from Spine or from your own spec (Bézier curves in Spine terms) go in unchanged.
To take the last change back, press Ctrl / ⌘ + Z or send “undo” as the whole message. Both roll back the whole change at once — do not ask the model to remove things piece by piece.
Write in your own language; the model answers in it. Names of bones, parts and animations stay in Latin letters, because game code calls them.
Small corrections — a little to the left, a little smaller — are faster with the mouse than with a sentence.