ARIA
Your personal post-production assistant. It watches your email, catches conflicts, and keeps track of the things that slip through the cracks.
What ARIA does for you
Catches conflicts before they become problems
When someone emails that Ep 4's lock date moved but your mix room is still booked for the original date — ARIA catches that. It understands the post pipeline (lock → VFX turnover → online → colour → mix → delivery) and traces how one date change ripples through everything downstream.
Tracks VFX shot statuses across vendors
When House A emails that shots are approved but one needs revision, ARIA extracts that automatically. No more manually copying shot statuses from emails into spreadsheets.
Surfaces action items you might miss
When someone asks you to confirm the mix room by Thursday and that request is buried in paragraph 3 of a reply chain — ARIA pulls it out and adds it to your open loops.
Shows you the cascade
When a lock date slips, you see every downstream stage that needs to move, which new dates conflict with bookings, and which other episodes are affected. Instead of recalculating dates across a spreadsheet for 20 minutes, ARIA shows you the full impact in seconds.
Protects your delivery deadlines
Network delivery dates are contractual — they don't move. ARIA knows which dates are hard walls. When a cascade would push past a contractual deadline, you get an immediate escalation alert:
This is the alert that prevents the $40K rush-fee disasters.
Tracks VFX shots with revision counts
Every VFX shot is tracked per episode, per vendor: status (approved, in revision, delivered), which revision round you're on, turnover and delivery dates, and whether the delivery date is confirmed or conditional. The difference between "revision 1" and "revision 3" is budget and schedule risk — ARIA knows the difference.
Keeps a running count
The number in your menu bar is your ambient awareness signal. If it's 0, you're on top of everything. If it's red, something urgent needs you. You never have to remember to check — the number is always there.
Exports to spreadsheets
Your supervisor expects a master schedule in a spreadsheet. ARIA can export the current pipeline, VFX shot statuses, or conflict list as a CSV file you can open directly in Excel or Google Sheets. Click the CSV button in the dashboard header, or ask in the chat bar.
Your daily workflow
Morning
Open your laptop. Within 30 seconds, ARIA catches up on all overnight email. You'll see a notification like:
Click the ARIA icon in your menu bar → Open ARIA to see the details.
During the day
ARIA checks your email every 10 minutes while your laptop is open. When something important comes in, you get a subtle notification. Mostly it works silently.
When you need to know something, open the dashboard and ask in the chat bar:
Resolving items
When you see an open loop or conflict in the dashboard:
Every resolution is logged. So when someone asks "who decided we'd go with Studio B?" — the answer is in ARIA.
End of day
Glance at the menubar counter. If it's 0, you're clear. If not, decide whether the remaining items can wait until morning.
The Dashboard
Open by clicking the ARIA menubar icon, or go to localhost:3333
Stats bar (top right)
Quick numbers: conflicts, open loops, emails today.
Open Loops
Everything that needs your attention, one item at a time. Urgent items first. Each has a Done and Snooze button. Deal with one thing, then the next.
Conflicts
Date conflicts, cascade impacts, double-bookings, and delivery deadline breaches. = critical/urgent, = review when you can. Hard wall breaches (contractual deadlines at risk) show at the very top.
Episode Pipelines
Visual status of each episode across all your shows. See every stage (lock, VFX, online, colour, mix, delivery) with dates and status at a glance. Stages marked with a hard wall show a lock icon — those dates are contractual.
Chat bar (bottom of the page)
Type any question. ARIA answers from your local data. Press ⌘K to jump to the chat bar.
Privacy
Email is fetched to your laptop via Gmail's secure API. Same connection Gmail normally uses.
The AI runs entirely on your laptop. No email content is ever sent to any cloud service.
Email text is deleted after processing. Only dates, shot numbers, and statuses are kept.
Notifications show counts only. Never episode titles, vendor names, or show details.
FileVault encrypts your drive. If your laptop is lost, the data is unreadable.
Your show's confidential information stays on your machine, period.
Setting up a new show
Alex will help you set this up, but the concept is simple:
- 1 Name the show (ARIA supports multiple shows at once — perfect for overlapping gigs)
- 2 For each episode, define a picture lock date
- 3 ARIA calculates all downstream dates automatically (VFX turnover, online, colour, mix, delivery)
- 4 Set hard wall dates for network/contractual delivery deadlines — these are immovable, and ARIA will sound the alarm if a cascade threatens them
- 5 As dates change, ARIA recalculates the cascade, checks for facility double-bookings across all shows, and flags anything that breaches a deadline
The timing offsets between stages can be customized per show — every production has different turnaround times.
What ARIA doesn't do
Quick reference
| What you want | What to do |
|---|---|
| See what needs attention | Look at the menubar number |
| Get the full picture | Open the ARIA dashboard |
| Quick status check | Type "catch me up" in the chat bar |
| Check a specific episode | Type "what's the status of Ep 4?" |
| Check VFX shots | Type "VFX status for Ep 6" or "any shots in revision 3+?" |
| Resolve something | Click Done or Resolve |
| Push something to later | Click Snooze |
| Export for a spreadsheet | Click CSV in the dashboard header |
| Back up your data | Click Backup in the dashboard header |
| Ask any question | Chat bar — ⌘K |
Troubleshooting
ARIA icon not in my menu bar?
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.aria.menubar.plist
Dashboard not loading?
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.aria.dashboard.plistThen try localhost:3333 again.
Not getting email updates?
Need to re-authenticate Gmail?
For anything else, ask Alex.