reality-restaged README

The project's README from github.com/traveler0621/reality-restaged. As one markdown file: README.md.

Reality Restaged

Documentary memory. Surreal stage.

A Codex skill for transforming documentary, travel, street, and human-centered photography into restrained surreal cinematic tableaux.

The goal is not to simply apply an AI style to a photograph.

Reality Restaged preserves the people, gestures, cultural details, relationships, and documentary memory of the original photograph — then rebuilds the world around them.

Real people. Real gestures. Real cultural memory. An impossible world.

⸻

What it does

Reality Restaged analyzes a source photograph before transforming it.

It looks for:

It then develops a restrained surreal composition using principles such as:

The philosophy is simple:

Reality first. Surrealism second.

⸻

Visual Direction

Reality Restaged favors:

It avoids:

⸻

How to use

Give Codex a documentary, travel, street, or human-centered photograph and ask it to use the reality-restaged skill.

For example:

Use reality-restaged to reinterpret this travel photograph as a restrained surreal cinematic tableau.

Or simply:

Use reality-restaged on this image.

For concept exploration:

Use reality-restaged and give me three different surreal directions before generating anything.

For an existing composition:

Use reality-restaged. Treat this image as the master composition and only modify the element I specify.

⸻

Installation

Clone this repository into your Codex skills directory:

git clone https://github.com/traveler0621/reality-restaged.git ~/.codex/skills/reality-restaged

Then restart or reopen your Codex environment if necessary.

⸻

Core Principle

The skill follows one central rule:

One impossible thing.

Instead of filling an image with surreal objects, it looks for one strong intervention capable of changing the meaning of the photograph.

That intervention might involve:

Scale. Space. Shadow. Repetition. Gravity. Reflection. Material. Absence.

The result should feel less like an AI illustration and more like:

a real photograph of a world that could never exist.

⸻

Master Lock Mode

When an image has already reached a successful composition, Reality Restaged treats it as a master.

If the instruction is:

Only change the fish tail.

It should only change the fish tail.

If the instruction is:

Keep everything else exactly the same.

Composition, lighting, scale, color, subject placement, and approved visual elements should remain locked.

⸻

About

Reality Restaged began as a personal visual workflow for reinterpreting documentary photographs collected while traveling.

Rather than replacing documentary photography, the skill treats the original photograph as the memory from which a second, impossible reality can be constructed.

Documentary memory. Surreal stage.

Examples

Selected works created with Reality Restaged.

Reality Restaged — Selected Work

Reality Restaged – Selected Work

reality-restaged (traveler0621/reality-restaged)

photography
Searching Database…

292 ·GitHub
Reality-restaged
What is this?Reality Restaged is a Codex skill that transforms documentary, travel, street, and human-centered photography into restrained surreal cinematic tableaux, keeping the real people and gestures while rebuilding an impossible world around them.
Is this a standalone app or a skill I use inside Codex?It is a Codex skill: a folder of instructions you clone into your Codex skills directory, then invoke by asking Codex to use it on an image — there's no separate app or UI.
How do I install and use it?Clone the repo into ~/.codex/skills/reality-restaged, restart your Codex environment, then give Codex a photo and ask it to 'use the reality-restaged skill' on it.
Do I need anything besides Codex itself?You just need a working Codex CLI/environment with skills support and an input photograph; no extra API keys or packages are mentioned.
What should I watch out for when using it?It avoids generic AI fantasy tropes, plastic skin, oversharpening, duplicated faces, and distorted anatomy by design, but since it relies on Codex's image generation it inherits whatever quality limits that model has — there's no guarantee of pixel-perfect results.
Does it work on any OS running Codex?Yes — it's just a cloned skill folder, so it works anywhere Codex CLI runs (Linux, macOS, Windows).
What is 'Master Lock Mode'?It's a mode for when a composition already looks right: you tell Codex to only change one specific element (e.g. 'only change the fish tail') and everything else — composition, lighting, color, subject placement — stays locked.
What is the core creative rule behind the transformations?The skill follows 'One impossible thing': instead of piling on surreal objects, it finds a single strong intervention (scale, shadow, repetition, gravity, reflection, material, or absence) that changes the meaning of the photo.
How does it decide what to change in a photo?It analyzes the source image first for the visual hero, relationships between subjects, culturally meaningful details, accidental documentary moments, and the strongest visual contradiction, then builds a restrained surreal composition around that.
Why did the author build this?It grew out of a personal workflow for reinterpreting documentary photos collected while traveling, treating the original photo as memory from which a second, impossible reality is constructed.
What are similar projects?photo-abstract-editorial, travel-memory-sticker-card, guizang-yingzao-skill, gc-minimal-zine-poster, kid-papercraft, handraw-style, muyang-illustration-skills, xxg-portrait-rebuild-light
Which topics is it in?photography, creative-tools, stable-diffusion, prompt, image-editing, image, workflow, image-generation, prompt-engineering, skill, generative-ai, codex
Creator
traveler0621
Size
15.7 MB
Stars
292
Updated
CommitAug 12
Age
2mo
Commits · 90 Days