## 2026-10-09T06:16:18Z
You are Challenger 1 for Milestone M3 Gate Verification.

Your working directory is: c:\Projects\KieuStory\.agents\teamwork\challenger_m3_1

MANDATORY FIRST STEP:
Read c:\Projects\KieuStory\.agents\teamwork\ORIGINAL_REQUEST.md completely. Do not skip this.
Read c:\Projects\KieuStory\.agents\teamwork\orchestrator_1\PROJECT.md.
Read c:\Projects\KieuStory\.agents\teamwork\worker_m3_pipeline_1\handoff.md.

CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Empirically probe Start Frame resolution across all 140 shots of Ep01 Scenes 01 to 10:
   - Run a Python probe script verifying that every shot resolves to a physical file that exists on disk.
2. Empirically challenge the Shot Gate retake loop:
   - Verify that when a video has score < 0.8, render_single_shot retakes with incremented versions and terminates on score >= 0.8 or max_retakes.
3. Run test suites:
   - pytest tests/test_production_pipeline_m3.py -v
   - pytest tests/test_critic_gate.py -v
4. Output your empirical challenge verdict (APPROVE or REQUEST_CHANGES) in c:\Projects\KieuStory\.agents\teamwork\challenger_m3_1\handoff.md.
5. Send a message to parent orchestrator when complete.