Developer builds AI history video pipeline, learns hard lesson about idempotent resume logic

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A solo developer built an automated pipeline to generate history-explainer videos using local AI tools, including a FLUX image model that creates one 1024x576 image per script sentence. When resuming a partially completed 17-image batch, the process appeared to stall because a blunt --force flag caused the tool to silently regenerate already-completed images under new filenames instead of skipping them. The developer caught the issue after questioning Claude Code three times about whether the job was actually progressing. The fix was a simple shell check that skips image generation if the output file already exists, reducing a redundant 15-minute run to just 4 minutes. The episode highlighted a broader principle: long-running jobs should resume by building only what is missing, rather than restarting from scratch.

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