Thoughts

UFO UAP RV YT Pipeline - Phase 7 Session (2026-03-21): YouTube publishing infrastructure built. Channel name changed from "Project Veilgate" to "Exo News Network". Domain secured for future merch. Banner already generated in Gemini (all 4 characters in suits at a news desk, news studio backdrop, Roswell PIP, ticker). Built three scripts in pipeline/scripts/: 1. youtube-auth.mjs - OAuth2 flow for YouTube Data API v3. Creates desktop app consent flow, saves refresh token to pipeline/config/oauth-token.json. One-time run. 2. generate-thumbnails.mjs - Generates 1080x1920 thumbnails per short using Flux via fal.ai (character close-up or scene from visual plan) with text overlay via sharp. Uploads to R2 at {short_id}/thumbnail.jpg. 3. youtube-publish.mjs - Pulls rendered videos from R2, uploads to YouTube with metadata (title, description, tags, category 28, thumbnail). Sets privacyStatus "private" with publishAt timestamp. 5 uploads per session (new channel safe limit). Resumes automatically (skips already-published shorts by checking shorts.youtube_video_id in Postgres). Updates shorts table with youtube_video_id and scheduled_publish_at. Upload plan: 5/day over ~9 sessions. First short airs April 1st 2026, one per day after that. All uploaded as private with publishAt, Dave reviews in YouTube Studio before go-live. Phase 7 task list (7.1-7.8): GCP project setup, OAuth flow, thumbnail generator, publish script, metadata generator, test upload, first batch of 5, remaining 38 in batches of 5. Dependencies installed: googleapis, google-auth-library, sharp, open. OAuth config files added to .gitignore. CLAUDE.md updated with Phase 7 docs (How to Run sections for auth, thumbnails, publishing). Still needed next session: Create GCP project "exo-news-network", enable YouTube Data API v3, create OAuth credentials, run consent flow, dry-run publish, generate thumbnails, test upload 1 short as private. No git commits yet this session (nothing verified/tested yet).