[HN Gopher] Show HN: Fine-tuned Qwen2.5-7B on 100 films for prob...
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Show HN: Fine-tuned Qwen2.5-7B on 100 films for probabilistic story
graphs
Hi HN, I'm a computer systems engineering student in Mexico who
switched from film school. I built CineGraphs because my filmmaker
friends and I kept hitting the same wall--we'd have a vague idea
for a film but no structured way to explore where it could go.
Every AI writing tool we tried output generic, formulaic slop. I
didn't want to build another ChatGPT wrapper, so I went a different
route. The idea is simple: you input a rough concept, and the tool
generates branching narrative paths visualized as a graph. You can
sculpt those branches into a structured screenplay format and
export to Fountain for use in professional screenwriting software.
Most AI writing tools are trained on generic internet text, which
is why they output generic results. I wanted something that
understood actual cinematic storytelling--not plot summaries or
Wikipedia synopses, but the actual structural DNA of films. So I
spent a month curating 100 films I consider high-quality cinema.
Not just popular films, but works with distinctive narrative
structures: Godard's jump cuts and essay-film digressions,
Kurosawa's parallel character arcs, Brakhage's non-linear visual
poetry, Tarkovsky's slow-burn temporal structures. The selection
was deliberately eclectic because I wanted the model to learn that
"story" can mean many things. Getting useful training data from
films is harder than it sounds. I built a 1000+ line Python
pipeline using Qwen3-VL to analyze each film with subtitles
enabled. The pipeline extracts scene-level narrative beats,
character relationships and how they evolve, thematic threads, and
dialogue patterns. The tricky part was getting Qwen3-VL to
understand cinematic structure rather than just summarizing plot. I
had to iterate on the prompts extensively to get it to identify
things like "this scene functions as a mirror to the opening" or
"this character's arc inverts the protagonist's." That took weeks
and I'm still not fully satisfied with it, but it's good enough to
produce useful training data. From those extractions I generated a
10K example dataset of prompt-to-branching-narrative pairs, then
fine-tuned Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct with a LoRA optimized for
probabilistic story branching. The LoRA handles the graph
generation--exploring possible narrative directions--while the full
7B model generates the actual technical screenplay format when you
export. I chose the 7B model because I wanted something that could
run affordably at scale while still being capable enough for
nuanced generation. The whole thing is served on a single 4090 GPU
using vLLM. The frontend uses React Flow for the graph
visualization. The key insight was that screenwriting is
fundamentally about making choices--what if the character goes left
instead of right?--but most writing tools force you into a linear
document too early. The graph structure lets you explore multiple
paths before committing, which matches how writers actually think
in early development. The biggest surprise was how much the film
selection mattered. Early versions trained on more mainstream films
produced much more formulaic outputs. Adding experimental and
international cinema dramatically improved the variety and
interestingness of the generations. The model seemed to learn that
narrative structure is a design space, not a formula. We've been
using it ourselves to break through second-act problems--when you
know where you want to end up but can't figure out how to get
there. The branching format forces you to think in possibilities
rather than committing too early. You can try it at
https://cinegraphs.ai/ -- no signup required to test it out. You
get a full project with up to 50 branches without registering,
though you'll need to create an account to save it. Registered
users get 3 free projects. I'd love feedback on whether the
generation quality feels meaningfully different from generic AI
tools, and whether the graph interface adds value or just friction.
Author : graphpilled
Score : 84 points
Date : 2026-02-08 12:00 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cinegraphs.ai)
(TXT) w3m dump (cinegraphs.ai)
| mmarvin wrote:
| Awesome work. Would be cool if you could publish the list of
| movies that you chose for finetuning. Just out of curiosity.
| graphpilled wrote:
| Thanks! Here's the full list: 2001: A Space Odyssey, 81/2,
| Aguirre the Wrath of God, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, All That
| Heaven Allows, Apocalypse Now, Ashes and Diamonds, A Woman
| Under the Influence, Barry Lyndon, Bicycle Thieves, Breathless,
| Casablanca, Celine and Julie Go Boating, Chinatown, Chinese
| Roulette, Citizen Kane, City Lights, City of Pirates, Contempt,
| Daisies, Damnation, Dishonored, Earth, Electra My Love, El
| Topo, Eraserhead, Eyes Wide Shut, Film Socialisme,
| Fitzcarraldo, Fuego en Castilla, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Holy
| Motors, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, In a Year with 13
| Moons, India Song, Inland Empire, Irma Vep, Koyaanisqatsi, La
| Dolce Vita, La Jetee, Late Spring, L'Eau de la Seine, Le Voyage
| dans la Lune, Lolita, Los Olvidados, Lost Highway, Lucifer
| Rising, Man with a Movie Camera, Metropolis, Mirror, Mulholland
| Drive, Night Music, Ordet, Orpheus, Persona, Pickpocket,
| Playtime, Psycho, Rebecca, Rosemary's Baby, Rumble Fish,
| Scarface, Seven Samurai, Sherlock Jr., Singin' in the Rain,
| Stalker, Sunset Boulevard, Taste of Cherry, Taxi Driver,
| Testament of Orpheus, The 400 Blows, The Blood of a Poet, The
| Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Color of Pomegranates, The Green
| Ray, The Holy Mountain, The Isle, The Lady from Shanghai, The
| Night of the Hunter, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Seventh
| Seal, The Spirit of the Beehive, The Tales of Hoffmann, The
| Tree of Life, The Turin Horse, Time of the Gypsies, Tokyo
| Story, Touch of Evil, Trans-Europ-Express, Ugetsu, Un Chien
| Andalou, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Vampyr,
| Videodrome, Wavelength, Werckmeister Harmonies, Wild
| Strawberries, Moonlight Sonata, Stellar, The Haunted House
| Biased toward European art cinema, experimental work, and
| directors who broke conventional narrative rules.
| hasbot wrote:
| Can you provide more guidance on to use it? What makes a good
| first prompt? What if I don't like any of the recommended
| choices? Seems like I should be able to add my own.
| graphpilled wrote:
| There's a demo on the landing page that walks through it.
| Basically you input any idea--no matter how vague--and the
| system generates branching directions you could take it. You
| explore the branches, and when you're satisfied you can export
| and the system generates a technical screenplay based on your
| choices. There's no "right" first prompt--I've thrown some of
| my dumbest ideas at it just to see where the system takes me.
| That's kind of the point. Regarding adding your own branches--
| yes, that's on my roadmap. Letting users create their own
| options and shape the graph more directly. Still a work in
| progress!
| 999900000999 wrote:
| It's cool.
|
| My one issue is stories can't end in the tool. That should be an
| option instead of more branches appearing
| graphpilled wrote:
| Good point--you're right, there should be a way to mark a
| branch as an endpoint instead of forcing more branches. Adding
| that to the list. Thanks.
| ArchieScrivener wrote:
| Can I edit a node to modify the next branch, or add my own in if
| the offerings are not quite right? Do you foresee this being
| useful in evaluating scripts by pulling out the story structure
| and 'grading' the story graphing?
| graphpilled wrote:
| Not yet, but both are on the roadmap. Manual node editing is
| the next priority--letting you tweak branches or add your own
| directions.
|
| The script evaluation idea is interesting--you're not the first
| to suggest it. The extraction pipeline already identifies
| structural elements like scene mirroring and character arc
| inversions, so exposing that as an analysis tool isn't a huge
| leap. Definitely something I want to explore.
| riidom wrote:
| The output looks pretty useful. It got a bit weird when I wanted
| to explore alternative branchens and nodes started to overlap
| each other (I tried free/unregistered, if that helps).
| graphpilled wrote:
| Thanks for flagging that--the node overlap issue is a known bug
| when the graph gets dense. I'm working on better auto-layout.
| Appreciate the report.
| randomdude333 wrote:
| Ha, some days ago I made Qwen generate a scenario for a
| documentary Seeds in the Web [1]. I put the beginning in the
| start window and at some point it suggested to pass to episode 2,
| with a name compatible with the original scenario. How is that
| possible?
|
| [1] https://imar.ro/~mbuliga/glc-grok-qwen.html
| graphpilled wrote:
| That's wild. Hard to say for sure--could be that your
| scenario's structure pattern-matched something in Qwen's
| training data, or it picked up on implicit episodic cues in
| your writing. The base model has seen a lot of serialized
| content. What was the original scenario about?
| skeltoac wrote:
| I have a writing assistant working on a script and I'd like to
| give it access to your tool. Is this a mode of operation you want
| to support?
| graphpilled wrote:
| Interesting use case. I don't have a public API yet, but it's
| something I'd consider if there's demand. What kind of
| integration are you imagining--feeding prompts in and getting
| branches back, or something else?
| skeltoac wrote:
| Enthusiastic amateur here. I have no film school or real
| writing experience.
|
| I'd use it to explore branching first. My system has a rich
| knowledge tree and could write some very detailed prompts. We
| would discuss the results and integrate them into our tree.
|
| I want to have that visual graph representation for myself as
| well, but it seems like my text repo really needs some
| structural formality.
|
| I also think your system would be a good consultant for mine.
| We have questions about story writing, you have an endpoint
| for that.
|
| My current story is being written for the page, no film
| contemplated yet, so I haven't thought about access your
| screenplay tools yet.
| graphpilled wrote:
| That's a cool setup. An API that returns the branching
| structure as JSON would fit your use case well--you'd feed
| in a prompt, get back the graph, and integrate it into your
| knowledge tree however you want.
|
| I'll keep this in mind as I plan the API. If you want to
| stay in touch, I just created an X account--it's on my HN
| profile.
| Foreignborn wrote:
| I _really_ think you have an interesting tool, but the workflow
| loop isn't fully there.
|
| Please let me revise or remix a suggested node. I find them
| extremely engaging, and I can envision ways of sort of "spinning
| off" even further than it's suggestions. Think Brian Eno's
| Oblique Strategies.
|
| To me, this is hinting at really interesting creative processes
| that feel much more humane than how most LLMs work today.
| graphpilled wrote:
| The Oblique Strategies comparison is exactly the vibe I was
| going for--generative constraints that open up possibilities
| rather than closing them down. Node editing is the top priority
| right now. You're right that the loop isn't complete without
| it.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| so great to see Oblique Strategies by Eno surviving in minds
| of 2026
| idiotsecant wrote:
| The first group to package this idea into a smooth, usable,
| repeatable tool and pitch it to a big studio is going to make a
| lot of money and destroy media forever. I'm sure there are
| already a ton of people working on it, does anyone know of any?
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