Agency multi-brand pack

Run generations for N retainer clients in one coordinated pass — each client's output strictly namespaced, each job gated by that client's brand rules, every run audit-ready for legal and billing.

N clients × M templates per client → one batch, zero cross-contamination. For agencies running weekly/monthly creative cycles across a client portfolio.

When to Use

• Weekly/monthly retainer refresh across multiple retainer clients
• Portfolio-wide seasonal re-skin (e.g. holiday refresh for all 8 retainer brands in one batch)
• Multi-client pitch week where each pitch needs its own branded mockup set
• Audit-ready production runs where finance/legal need a per-client spend breakdown
• Any agency workflow where "run the same pipeline for every client, with their rules" is the task

Do not use for single-client deep-production work — drop to agency-pitch-mockups or a client-specific workflow. Multi-brand is for portfolio parallelism.

Prerequisites

Ask the user (one message):

1. Client list — slugs of clients in scope (e.g. acme-fintech, zest-retail, nova-travel). Each must have a locked brand-system.json.
2. Template set per client — same across all clients (hero + 3 social + OG) or does each client have a different deliverable?
3. This week's theme / brief — one brief that gets re-expressed per client (e.g. "Q2 product refresh") or fully independent briefs per client?
4. Output destination — Drive folder per client? Dropbox / S3? Internal repo path?
5. Billing scope — tag each job with client:<slug> so per-client spend can be pulled from gen-ai history
6. Concurrency ceiling — default 4, raise to 8 if clients all have premium rate limits

If any client in the list lacks brand-system.json or brand.md, stop and run agency-brand-scoping for that client first — do not batch-generate without locked brand files.

How to Run

1. VERIFY BRANDS  → every client in scope has clients/<slug>/brand.md + brand-system.json
2. SCAFFOLD       → build per-client manifest fragments, merge into one master manifest
3. ESTIMATE       → gen-ai batch run <manifest.json> --dry-run + estimate; break into smaller batches if > $20
4. RUN            → `gen-ai batch run <manifest.json>` with client names in job IDs and a resume-ready output dir
5. VERIFY         → per-client output folders populated; cross-check any NULLs in results.json
6. AUDIT          → export per-client spend + asset list for billing
7. DELIVER        → folder per client, approved files uploaded or linked in the retainer channel

Rules:

• One folder per client. out/<slug>/... — never a shared output folder where filenames can collide.
• One brand context per job, not per batch — each job prompt should include the relevant client brand.md constraints. Batch-level generic prompts are the biggest source of cross-contamination.
• Use stable job IDs. Put client or campaign names in each id so downloaded files and results.json remain easy to group.
• Resume with gen-ai batch resume <output-dir> by default. gen-ai batch resume <output-dir> so mid-run failures don't cost the completed half.

Quick Reference

{
  "batch_kind": "multi-brand-pack",
  "week": "2026-04-22",
  "defaults": { "model": "recraftv4", "aspectRatio": "1:1" },
  "clients": [
    { "slug": "acme-fintech", "templates": ["hero", "social-1", "og"] },
    { "slug": "zest-retail",  "templates": ["hero", "social-1", "og"] }
  ]
}

A scaffolding script expands this into the flat jobs[] manifest the CLI expects. Keep the expanded manifest checked in under out/retainer-<date>/manifest.json for reproducibility.

Quick Reference

Procedure

• One brand file per client, no shared "agency-style" rules. Each client pays for their own brand rigor.
• Namespace every output by slug — out/<slug>/, drive:retainer-<date>/<slug>/, results.json job IDs. Redundant is good.
• Script the manifest. For > 3 clients, a Node/Python scaffold that iterates clients[] × templates[] beats copy-paste errors.
• Estimate before every run. Multi-brand batches cross the $20 threshold easily — pause and confirm.
• Persist results.json to the repo. Audit trail for legal, billing input, and reproducibility.
• Keep a per-client prompt library at clients/<slug>/prompts/ — manifest references these, edits propagate.
• review brand-sensitive output. `` — better a missing asset than a mis-branded one.
• Weekly cadence deserves a cron + Slack webhook on completion; see gen-ai-batch.md §CI recipes.

Pitfalls

• Brand cross-contamination — missing rules on a single job, entire batch suspect. Fix: per-job rules, not batch-level.
• Filename collisions without slug prefixes — client B's hero.webp overwrites client A's.
• Running without gen-ai batch resume <output-dir> on a 100-job batch — one provider hiccup costs the whole run.
• Shared Drive folder — client A sees client B's folder, NDA breach.
• Tagless jobs — can't produce per-client billing; finance asks, you can't answer.
• Flagship models applied everywhere — $40 weekly batch instead of $15. Draft-then-upgrade selectively.

Verification

Run gen-ai whoami to confirm authentication, then re-run the failed command with --debug.

Step 1: Verify brands + build manifest

CLIENTS=("acme-fintech" "zest-retail" "nova-travel")
WEEK=$(date +%Y-%m-%d)

# Sanity check: every client has a brand file
for c in "${CLIENTS[@]}"; do
  test -f "clients/$c/brand.md" || { echo "Missing brand.md for $c"; exit 1; }
done

Step 2: Per-client manifest fragments, merged

cat > /tmp/multi-brand-$WEEK.json <<'EOF'
{
  "defaults": { "model": "recraftv4", "aspectRatio": "1:1" },
  "jobs": [
    { "id": "acme-fintech/hero",    "prompt": "acme-fintech Q2 hero — editorial, restrained", "aspectRatio": "16:9" },
    { "id": "acme-fintech/og",      "prompt": "acme-fintech OG — headline: Q2 launch", "aspectRatio": "1200x630", "model": "ideogram-v3" },
    { "id": "zest-retail/hero",     "prompt": "zest-retail Q2 hero — playful, bold color", "aspectRatio": "16:9" },
    { "id": "nova-travel/hero",     "prompt": "nova-travel Q2 hero — cinematic wide", "aspectRatio": "16:9", "model": "flux-2-pro" }
  ]
}
EOF

gen-ai batch run /tmp/multi-brand-$WEEK.json --dry-run
gen-ai batch run /tmp/multi-brand-$WEEK.json -c 4 -o "out/retainer-$WEEK"

The / in each job id creates the per-client subfolder automatically — outputs land at out/retainer-<date>/<client-slug>/<asset>.webp plus results.json.

Step 3: Per-client audit + delivery

# Per-client completion breakdown from results.json
node -e '
  const r = require("./out/retainer-2026-04-22/results.json");
  const by = {};
  for (const j of r.jobs) {
    const c = j.id.split("/")[0];
    by[c] ||= { completed: 0, failed: 0 };
    by[c][j.status] = (by[c][j.status] || 0) + 1;
  }
  console.table(by);
'

Create an archive sub-folder retainer-$WEEK/<client-slug>/ per client, drop a summary with asset list + estimated spend from gen-ai pricing. Share only the per-client folder link — never the master folder.

Cost & time

Per-client weekly spend should be trackable from results.json — if it isn't, the tagging is broken.

See also

• workflows/agency-brand-scoping/ — required prerequisite per client
• workflows/agency-pitch-mockups/ — per-client pitch variant
• workflows/agency-client-handoff/ — package retainer history at engagement end
• gen-ai-batch.md — concurrency, gen-ai batch resume <output-dir>, audit recipes