Someone asks for “a carousel.” They mean five squares for Instagram. They paste a paragraph. They want it by lunch.
If you run /images you will get five pictures. They might even match. They will not take a new caption at 4 p.m. without another generation. That is a storyboard. It is not a carousel.
/carousel is the command that keeps the set a set you can still edit. The pictures can share a world. The words stay native. The order can still change. Finish it in the Design Editor, not in a photo dump.
The thread after this essay is the same Ask conversation twice. First the world. Then the slides, attached with @out:.
A world is not a deck
Tuesday’s garden is a good world. One child. One moth. One night. /images is the right command when the deliverable is frames.
Build four consistent moon-garden story scenes with the same child, moth guide, palette, and environment, with no readable text or logos.
Those files belong in the Image Editor. Crop. Correct. Keep the moth the same moth. Do not typeset a lesson on top of the moss.
A carousel has a different Friday. Someone will rewrite slide three. Legal will cut a claim. The hook on slide one will get shorter. If those words live in pixels, the afternoon is a new generation.
Name the slides, reserve the field
/carousel asks for coordinated frames and a place the copy can still live.
Turn the accepted world into five editable slides with large empty cream fields for native copy. No readable text, logos, or fake UI.
@out:moon-set is the previous result in the same conversation. You are not describing the garden again from memory. You are pointing at the file you already accepted.
Leave the cream field empty on purpose. That is the product. Write the real lines later, as type. If the model invents a headline, you received a picture of a carousel. You can hang it. You cannot edit it.
This is the same reserved-field rule as poster, flyer, or banner. A slide is a small poster that has to survive a swipe.
The expensive mix-up
Three ways this goes wrong, all of them common.
You run /image five times and call it a carousel. You get five arguments. Faces drift. Palettes argue. You spend an hour making strangers related.
You run /images and typeset on the rasters. The first caption is fine. The fifth is a lie you cannot select.
You ask /carousel to invent the lesson. The model writes a course you did not approve. Now the slides are both a picture and a claim.
Ask this out loud:
Do the words still have to move?
If yes, /carousel. If no, and the job is a world, /images. If the job is one still, /image — that split is When to use /image instead of /images.
Is this a swipe or a wall?
A wall is /poster. A tiny cover for a video is /thumbnail. A carousel is a set you will reorder.
One idea, five beats
A good carousel is one idea told in order. Habit. Feature. Question. Not five posters stapled together.
Name the count. $count:5 is a deliverable. “A few slides” is how you get seven and a fight.
Name what must stay the same: palette, person, product, empty field. Then name what is allowed to change: the beat, the crop, the proximity.
Do not put the manuscript in the pixels. If you need words first, /write them — How /write is different from a picture of text — and keep that draft as the source. The slides attach it. They do not reprint it as a photograph.
When the set lands, open the Design Editor. Change slide three. Duplicate the project. Export the pack. Keep the source.
The rest of the language is in What AskGL is. The week this sits inside is the command list.
Then open Ask. Make the world. Accept it. Ask for the slides with @out:. That is a carousel.
Frequently asked questions
Is /carousel the same as /images?
No. /images is rasters that share a world. /carousel is an editable slide set. Captions stay native in the Design Editor.
Can I write the slide copy in the prompt and bake it in?
You can. You will regret it at 4 p.m. Reserve the field. Keep the words as words.
Where does a carousel finish?
In the Design Editor. That is where type, order, and export stay objects you can still change.
