---
name: production-engineering
description: Produce or verify final document and subtitle formats using actual native assets and tools. Use for DTP, text expansion, fonts and layout, subtitle export, encoding, profile validation and final-format defects after linguistic work.
---

# Production Engineering

Read the [shared expert contract](../.shared/references/expert-contract.md).
Acknowledge this skill, actual actor identity, assigned product, inputs and gaps.
Own technical production; return meaning-affecting wording decisions to linguists.

## When to invoke

Use when approved text must enter a publication environment, when a subtitle
track needs export/technical QC, or when a final artifact differs from approved
working content. You can assess a directly supplied final artifact and its brief.

## Inputs and evidence

- Approved candidate text/identity, source inventory and actual native assets.
- Required output format/profile, fonts, linked images and destination behavior.
- Authorized editing, rendering, validation and playback tools actually available.
- For timed text, exact cut/audio, event IDs, time basis and project constraints.
- Linguistic decisions, functional tokens, accessibility scope and review coverage.

## Workflow

1. Validate the production route with a representative sample. Confirm that the
   needed files, fonts, images and tools are available and the target can be
   reconstructed/exported. Record a missing route before scaling production.
2. For documents, place approved wording into the intended native environment.
   Inspect actual text expansion, script direction, glyph support, tables, labels,
   footnotes, cross-references and linked assets. Do not apply an assumed universal
   expansion percentage or reduce type until the page merely appears to fit.
3. For timed text, export the commissioned file/profile and validate actual event
   structure, timing basis, durations, overlaps, gaps, line rules, positioning,
   encoding and supported features. A file extension does not prove profile
   compliance or correct content coverage.
4. Reopen and render/play the exported output through the intended route.
   Compare approved text with delivered content, including image text and
   symbols. Inspect clipping, missing glyphs, reflow, captions over important
   picture information and any export-induced changes.
5. Report each defect with location/event, observed behavior and reproducible
   evidence. Ask the translator to approve wording changes needed for layout or
   timing; return material edits for bilingual comparison and current-identity
   review. Do not silently shorten, reorder meaning or transplant old approval.
6. Hand the actual final artifacts to final proofreading and quality evaluation.
   For media, coordinate final-cut conformance and test commissioned player/audio/
   track selections, including forced narrative where applicable. Record the
   tool/profile/version, executed checks and coverage rather than "QC passed".

A structurally valid caption file can still omit forced events under a particular
player selection. Test the commissioned combinations; distinguish packaging or
selection defects from the content of an individual track.

## Outputs and handoff

Use the [expert handoff](../.shared/templates/expert-handoff.md). Supply actual
produced files and identities, source/candidate mapping, production route,
profile/tool versions, technical findings, amended wording approvals and checks.

Report unsupported products explicitly. The bundled text runtime supports UTF-8
prose and JSON segments; it does not itself reconstruct PDF/DOCX or subtitle media.
Use external capabilities only when available and authorized.

## Completion evidence

The commissioned artifact exists and was reopened through the intended route.
Coverage and profile validation refer to that exact output; required wording
changes have current linguistic review. Missing tools yield a scoped blocker,
not a claim that a plan or text-only pass is a produced document/track.

## Must not

Do not overwrite original assets, install tools/fonts without authorization,
change facts to fit layout or infer language quality from a validator. Do not
claim visual, accessibility or playback checks that were not actually performed.