The pipeline steps¶

One reference page per IRIS step: what it does, what it needs before it can run, what it produces, and what to do when it goes wrong.

New to IRIS? Read How IRIS works first — it explains what a step is and why one might sit there doing nothing. This page assumes it.

A journey uses a subset of these steps, in this order. Nothing here is compulsory except the first: a journey that stops after generating a transcript and a summary is a perfectly good journey.

The steps, in order¶

1. Capture — get the material¶

Step	What it does	Notes
Recording Downloader	Fetches the meeting recording and stores it	Always first. Everything else builds on it.
Transcript Importer	Imports the meeting provider's transcript	Pick one transcription source
Google Transcribe	Transcribes the audio instead, with speaker separation	Pick one transcription source
Video Editor	Trims the recording into a clean cut and records the time-shift	Optional. Runs on its own branch.

2. Create — write and render¶

Step	What it does	Notes
Content Generator	Writes title, subtitle, description, LinkedIn copy and quotes from the transcript	Needs a transcript with resolved speakers. See Writing prompts.
Cover Image Generator	Renders thumbnail, LinkedIn header and quote cards	Optional

3. Host — put the video somewhere reviewable¶

Three separate steps so metadata or a thumbnail can be re-pushed without re-uploading the video. All three share one page: YouTube publishing.

Step	What it does	Notes
YouTube Video Upload	Uploads the recording as unlisted	The expensive one. Prefers the cleaned cut if the video editor ran.
YouTube Metadata Sync	Pushes the current title and description	Cheap, re-runnable
YouTube Thumbnail Sync	Pushes the generated thumbnail	Cheap, re-runnable

One-time channel setup: YouTube setup.

Step	What it does	Notes
Publish Notifier	Sends each participant the unlisted video, their review/opt-out link, and the publish-by date	Blocks if anyone can't be reached
Publish Waiter	Holds the pipeline until everyone confirms or the date passes; an opt-out stops it	Described on the Publish Notifier page — the step that starts its clock
Approval Waiter	Older consent gate: waits for explicit per-person approval	Legacy — use Publish Notifier + Publish Waiter instead

A journey that isn't gating publication on consent can omit all three — but then nothing asks the participants anything, which is rarely what you want.

5. Publish — make it public¶

Step	What it does	Notes
YouTube Visibility Promote	Flips the video from unlisted to public	Only after the consent gate clears
LinkedIn Page Publisher	Publishes the post as an organisation Page	Optional; either, both, or neither
LinkedIn Member Publisher	Publishes the post as one configured person	Optional; at most one per journey
LinkedIn Link Resolver	Finds each LinkedIn post's public link, the one that opens for people who are not signed in	Required by any journey that publishes to LinkedIn

6. Follow through — archive, distribute, announce¶

Step	What it does	Notes
Cloud Storage Migrator	Moves the recording to cloud object storage and frees the local disk	Optional; any time after the upload
Podcast Publisher	Masters the audio and publishes it as an episode in our own RSS feed	Optional
Publish Live Notifier	Tells participants it's live, with the public links	Optional
Telegram Distributor	Creates the note that gets delivered to Telegram	Optional

How the steps connect¶

Each step declares what it reads and what it produces, so the order above isn't arbitrary — it's what those declarations imply.

Recording Downloader
├─ transcript / publishing branch
│    Transcript Importer  (or  Google Transcribe)
│      → Content Generator
│          → Cover Image Generator
│          → YouTube Video Upload  (→ Metadata Sync, Thumbnail Sync)
│              → Cloud Storage Migrator → Podcast Publisher
│              → Publish Notifier → Publish Waiter
│                  → YouTube Visibility Promote
│                  → LinkedIn Page / Member Publisher
│                      → Publish Live Notifier → Telegram Distributor
└─ video branch
     Video Editor   (a cleaned cut the uploader prefers over the raw recording)

Nothing enforces this order at run time. The dependencies tell you how to arrange a journey's steps; they don't stop you arranging them wrongly. A step placed before the step that feeds it doesn't error — it waits, indefinitely, which looks like nothing happening. If a journey stalls with no error, mis-ordering is worth checking early.

Three rules the diagram doesn't make obvious:

The two transcription steps are alternatives, never both. Each one replaces the whole transcript when it runs, so a journey with both would have whichever ran last silently discard the other's work. Pick the provider import when the provider's transcript is good; pick Google Transcribe when the recording is good but the provider's transcript isn't.
Publish Notifier needs Publish Waiter in the same journey. The notifier announces a publish-by date; the waiter is what actually honours it. Announcing a date nothing enforces is worse than not announcing one, so the journey editor treats a notifier without a waiter as a misconfiguration.
The Video Editor is a branch, not a link in the chain. It sits after the downloader and before the upload; the uploader prefers its cleaned cut when there is one.

The canonical starting point is the IRIS Standard Journey template — clone it rather than wiring a journey up from scratch.

How to read a step page¶

Every page follows the same shape:

At a glance — what it needs, what it produces, when it waits, what it costs to re-run.
What it does — in plain terms.
How it behaves — the details worth knowing: what makes it wait, what makes it fail, what happens on a re-run.
Settings — what's configurable on the step, where that exists.
Troubleshooting — symptom, cause, fix, for the things that actually go wrong with this step.
Technical reference — slugs and stored field paths, for anyone configuring or integrating.

General troubleshooting that applies to every step — reading the rail, what reset clears, what it can't undo — lives in Troubleshooting.