{"slug": "i-built-a-plain-text-art-director-so-my-ai-images-stop-changing-when-i-edit-them", "title": "I built a plain-text \"art director\" so my AI images stop changing when I edit them", "summary": "A developer built a plain-text prompt framework called Visual Director that instructs image-generation models like ChatGPT's GPT Image to preserve locked elements of a scene while applying a single requested edit, addressing the common problem of whole-frame re-renders changing unrelated details. The tool, distributed as a paste-in prompt bundle with no code or API, includes a free version on GitHub and a $19 one-time Pro bundle with an edit-state ledger and single-element edit support. The developer notes it is tuned for ChatGPT/GPT Image, with Midjourney, Gemini, Ideogram and FLUX profiles described as unverified starting points.", "body_md": "If you make images with AI, you know the specific pain: the first generation is easy. Editing it is where everything falls apart.\n\nI make YouTube thumbnails and playlist covers. I'd get a result I liked, ask to change one small thing — \"make the jacket blue\" — and get back a completely different picture. New face. New background. New lighting. The one thing I asked for, plus ten I didn't.\n\nAfter the hundredth time, I realized the problem isn't the model — it's the prompt. When you say \"change the jacket,\" the model has no idea what you want to *keep*, so it re-rolls the whole scene. The fix is to spell out, every time, what stays locked and what changes, in language the model actually follows.\n\nThat's tedious by hand, so I turned it into a plain-text bundle you paste into ChatGPT or Claude. You describe what you want; it writes the *direction* — one ready-to-paste prompt that says exactly what to preserve and what to change. No code, no API, nothing to install.\n\nClearest example — same street photo, one instruction (\"add falling snow\"):\n\nThe snow appears; the houses, the road, the parked vans stay exactly as they were. Most tools hand you a brand-new street.\n\nIt can also diagnose a render that came out wrong — what's off, why, what to change, and what to keep:\n\n**How it works (no magic):** it's plain-text reasoning, not a model or an integration. It works out how much detail a request needs, separates what's immutable from what you're changing, and phrases the result for the renderer (ChatGPT / GPT Image by default). Because ChatGPT re-renders the whole frame instead of inpainting, the trick is to restate the locked parts explicitly.\n\n**Honest limits:** it's tuned and tested on ChatGPT / GPT Image; the Midjourney, Gemini, Ideogram and FLUX profiles are starting points, not verified. And no prompt makes a whole-frame renderer do true local edits — it's a strong mitigation, not a guarantee.\n\nThe free version is on GitHub and takes about a minute to try. There's a $19 one-time Pro bundle with the full preservation system, the edit-state ledger, precise single-element edits and deep diagnosis — but the free one shows the whole idea.\n\n**Free on GitHub:** [https://github.com/leewilliam200/visual-director-lite](https://github.com/leewilliam200/visual-director-lite)\n\nWould genuinely love feedback — especially where the \"keep everything else the same\" logic breaks for you. What's the one thing you always want an AI editor to preserve that it never does?", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-a-plain-text-art-director-so-my-ai-images-stop-changing-when-i-edit-them", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/leewilliam200/i-built-a-plain-text-art-director-so-my-ai-images-stop-changing-when-i-edit-them-7o8", "published_at": "2026-09-17 09:13:37+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-17 09:23:56.036668+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["generative-ai", "ai-tools", "ai-products"], "entities": ["ChatGPT", "GPT Image", "GitHub", "Midjourney", "Gemini", "Ideogram", "FLUX", "Visual Director"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-a-plain-text-art-director-so-my-ai-images-stop-changing-when-i-edit-them", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-a-plain-text-art-director-so-my-ai-images-stop-changing-when-i-edit-them.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-a-plain-text-art-director-so-my-ai-images-stop-changing-when-i-edit-them.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-built-a-plain-text-art-director-so-my-ai-images-stop-changing-when-i-edit-them.jsonld"}}