Seedance draft mode, plus a review gate worth copying
Two cost-control habits from Sirio's video: iterate in 480p draft mode and finalise once in 1080p, and refuse to spend until a human has approved the inputs.
Sirio's video rebuilds an app-style 'swap the character, keep the performance' pipeline with an agent, Replicate and a Seedance 2.5 API. Most of the video is about getting around the model's face and music checks. We are deliberately not covering those steps. ReelStack doesn't publish filter-evasion instructions. Use character replacement only on footage you own, with performers and characters who've agreed to it.
Draft mode is the tip anyone can use. Seedance 2.5 lets you generate a 480p draft as many times as you like, then finish that exact draft at 1080p. It isn't upscaling; he compares it to a pencil sketch before paint. The trap: the draft is tied to its task ID, not the file. If you download the draft and upload it again as a reference, that's a new request that doesn't carry over your settings, so you may not get the same video. Finalise from the task ID.
Other practical points. Seedance's API wants URLs rather than file uploads, so inputs go to a temporary host first. Keep API keys in a .env file and never paste them into chat. If the agent made the request, it can edit and resend the same payload, for example adding a description of the location, without you rebuilding it by hand.
The gate is the design idea we'd copy. His tool won't generate until you've watched and approved the prepared input clip end to end, checking for holes in hair, hands and bodies. It never renders the paid 1080p version without a second approval. The repo ties approval to file hashes, so any change means approving again.