Scenet MCP server

Scenet

A semantic DSL for comic panels, compiled to SVG.

⚠️ This project is deliberately AI-generated

This project is, by design, almost entirely generated by AI. It exists as a personal training ground for learning to work with AI coding tools. The architecture, code, tests and documentation are overwhelmingly AI-authored, under human direction and review.

Treat it accordingly: an experiment first, a usable tool second.

Playground · Documentation · Tutorial · Changelog

What this is

Music has notation. A score describes the semantics of a piece — pitch, duration, dynamics — without describing the waveform that eventually reaches your ear. Rendering is left to an interpreter, human or machine.

Images have no such thing. SVG describes how to draw, not what is depicted: it is closer to a WAV file than to a score. Scenet is an attempt at the missing layer, narrowed to one tractable domain — the comic panel.

You write what is in the panel:

panel:
  size: [1000, 1000]
camera:
  shot: medium_shot
  angle: eye_level
setting:
  place: street
  weather: rain
cast:
  alice: {reference: alice, pose: pointing,     at: left_third,  facing: right}
  bob:   {reference: bob,   pose: arms_crossed, at: right_third, facing: left}
staging:
  - alice left_of bob
  - alice looking_at bob
script:
  - say: {by: alice, text: "You forgot your umbrella!", prefer: top_left}
  - say: {by: bob,   text: "I know."}

You can also write a sequence, where each panel states only what changed from the one before — borrowed from OpenUSD's sparse override, because consecutive panels in a scene share nearly all their staging:

panels:
  establishing:
    camera: {shot: full_shot}
    cast: {alice: {reference: alice}, bob: {reference: bob}}
  reaction:
    over: establishing        # same cast, same staging
    camera: {shot: close_up}  # move in

Or in comic script, the format writers already use:

PANEL 1
@shot: full_shot
Alice and Bob face each other on a rainy street corner.

ALICE
You forgot your umbrella!

BOB (whisper)
I know.

From any of these, the compiler works out the rest: how large each figure must be for a medium shot, where they stand, which way they face, how big each balloon needs to be for its text, where a balloon can sit without covering a face, and how its tail reaches the speaker's mouth — all while preserving reading order.

No generative image model is involved. This is a deterministic compiler: constraint solving and computational geometry. The same input always produces byte-identical output.

Status

Alpha — panels and sequences compile end to end, from the command line, the browser, or an editor. Framing, actor placement, balloon and caption placement, reading order, tail routing, drawn faces and the marks around them, tonal backdrops and SVG emission all work, from either of two frontends. Not yet built: page composition (tiers, panels of varying size) and the interpretation layer that would give a panel a style. See the phase plan for detail.

uv run scenet build examples/duel.panel.yaml --core --debug
uv run scenet build examples/sequence.scene.yaml --strip
uv run scenet build examples/umbrella.script --strip

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.