The Cover Generator Was Asking for the Wrong Thing

I sat down to make a cover for an episode with Jaineel Mistry.

Guest picked. Photo in. Logo and template loaded from my show settings. I pressed Generate.

"Please provide: Guest Name, Guest Photo, Logo, and 1:1 Template."

All four were right there on the screen.

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The message was lying, but not on purpose.

The cover generator has two modes. Solo episodes are built around the topic. Guest episodes are built around the guest. Behind the scenes, the check before generating asked for a topic in both modes. Guest episodes never have one, so every guest episode failed. Then it showed the guest-mode message, which made it look like something on your end was missing.

Nothing was. You could re-upload the photo all day and get the same answer.

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That's fixed. Guest episodes only need what guest episodes use: the guest's name and photo, a logo, and your square template.

Then I hit the next wall. The covers generated, and then: "auto-save failed: Load failed ()". They showed up on screen but never landed on the episode. A browser safety rule was blocking the step that saves them. That's fixed too, so the covers you generate now stay with the episode.

Two smaller things came with it.

If the episode already has a guest attached, their saved photo now loads by itself. Before, it only showed up if you picked them from the dropdown again.

And if you switch guests while a photo is still loading, the old one gets dropped. You won't end up with one guest's name on another guest's face.

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And that error box now tells you what's actually missing instead of listing everything. If only the photo is missing, it says photo. If the guest has no saved photo, the photo box says so.

Next, I want to clean up duplicate guest records, so the right photo is always the one attached to the episode.

Your guest put an hour into your show. Their cover should take a minute, not a support ticket.