Forbairt (Development) — module user guide

# Forbairt (Development) — User Guide

The development module of Togra: how it works, surface by surface, and how it makes the development slate easier to run for a production company.

1. What Forbairt is for

Development is the messiest phase of a production company's life. A slate of projects sits in different states at once — one waiting on a rights option, one out to a director, one being pitched to broadcasters, one chasing development funding. The information that matters lives in inboxes, spreadsheets, a producer's memory, and a dozen Google Docs. Things slip: an option lapses, a writer's draft is overdue, a follow-up to an agent is forgotten, a market deadline passes.

Forbairt is the place that holds all of it. It is Togra's development hub — the home for everything that happens to a project before it is green-lit and handed to production. Its job is threefold:

1. One memory for the slate. Every read, pitch, option, writer deal, funding application and agent conversation is recorded against the project (or the slate) so nothing depends on someone remembering it.
2. Nothing slips. Deadlines — option expiries, reversion dates, writer-step due dates, pitch follow-ups, market deadlines, agent follow-ups, festival deadlines — surface automatically in your approvals inbox (and optionally by email).
3. A disciplined path to green-light. A readiness score and a packaging view tell you, at a glance, how close a project is to being financeable; a formal green-light gate records the decision and hands the project cleanly to production.

The module is organised by the lifecycle of a project, not as a flat wall of links. Five surfaces are surfaced up front; the rest sit in labelled groups behind More ▾ — IP, Slate, Outreach, Money, Compliance, and the Greenlight group.

2. The development lifecycle, end to end

Before the surface-by-surface detail, here is how the pieces fit together as a project travels through development. Each step names the surface(s) involved.

1. An idea arrives → log it in the Idea backlog. When it's worth real work, promote it to a project.
2. Material comes in to read → log coverage in the Reading log (pass / develop / option / wait for revision / refer out, with a rationale).
3. You option the underlying rights → record the option in Rights & options, with the expiry and reversion dates that will later nudge you before they lapse.
4. You commission a writer → set up a stepped Writer deal (treatment → draft → polish, each with a fee and due date) and track each delivered draft in Script drafts.
5. You attach talent and pitch → record director/cast attachments, log Pitches to buyers, and prospect Co-pro / financing partners and Agents & writers.
6. You raise development money → track the Dev funding pipeline and Dev spend (marking what's recoupable).
7. You assemble the package → the Packaging view rolls rights + creative + buyer interest + financing into one strength score, and lets you move each element along an interested → LOI → deal ladder.
8. You check readiness and green-light → Readiness & green-light scores the package against the dimensions a financier expects, then records the formal green-light decision and runs the handoff into production.
9. Across all of it, the Slate development funnel shows the whole slate by stage with aging flags and conversion metrics, and the approvals inbox keeps every deadline in front of you.

Throughout, Outreach surfaces (markets, festivals, buyers, guest review, distribution) and the Project notes journal keep the relationship and decision history attached to each project.

3. How the module is laid out

The Forbairt sub-nav (the "Development" module bar) presents:

• Primary tabs: Pipeline · Pitches · Reading log · Writer deals · Notes
• Greenlight group (More ▾): Packaging · Readiness & green-light
• IP group: Rights & options · Script drafts · Dev artefacts · Clone
• Slate group: Slate dev funnel · Idea backlog
• Outreach group: Submissions pipeline · Market Planner · Buyers · Agents & writers · Festivals · Co-pro prospects · Guest shares · Distribution
• Money group: Dev spend
• Compliance group: Children (child performance licences + Garda Vetting)

Most surfaces are project-scoped: open them bare and you get a project picker; open them with a project and you get that project's data. A few (Buyers, Agents & writers, Co-pro prospects, the Slate funnel, the Reading log) are group/slate-level registers shared across the whole slate.

4. The surfaces in detail

Primary

#### Pipeline (forbairt.php)
The landing surface — a launcher and slate overview. It gives you the kanban of in-progress development projects, links into every development tool, and is the natural jump-off point to a project's dev workspace. It doesn't capture data itself; it reads each project's stage and readiness and routes you to the right surface. Use it as your daily "where is everything" view.

#### Pitches (pitches.php)
A group-shared log of every pitch to a buyer.

• You capture: the project, the buyer (picked from your Buyers roster, or typed free-text), the format (In-person · Video call · Email · Deck only · Event / market), the pitched date, the outcome (Pending · Pass · Pass with feedback · Interested · Option · Commission · On hold), a pass reason when it's a pass, free-text feedback, attendees, venue, and a next step + next-step due date.
• Automation: the outcome date is auto-stamped when a pitch moves off "pending"; a pitch with a next-step due date raises a pitch follow-up nudge in your inbox as the date approaches.
• Connects to: the Buyers roster (picking a buyer bumps that contact's last-contacted date), and the Packaging view (the buyer-interest pillar reads pitch outcomes; you can move a pitch outcome forward inline there).

#### Reading log (reading-log.php)
Your coverage / triage desk — an audit trail of what was read and what you decided.

• You capture: title, source (Agent · Writer direct · Book scout · Producer intro · Submission call · Open submission · Other), source contact, kind (Spec script · Treatment · Book · Novel · Short story · Article · Stage play · IP pitch · Documentary proposal · Series bible · Other), received date, reader, read date, decision (Pending · Pass · Develop · Option · Wait for revision · Refer out), decision date, and a rationale (the point of the log — required on a pass).
• Automation: the list sorts live decisions (develop / option / revisions) above passes, so the active pile is always on top.
• Connects to: can link to a project (when you decide to develop), and pairs naturally with Pitches — the reading log is what comes in, pitches are what goes out.

#### Writer deals (writer-deals.php)
A stepped ledger of writer engagements — the contractual spine of script development.

• You capture: one deal per writer (name, currency, signed date, notes) with a list of steps — e.g. treatment / first draft / revisions / polish — each carrying a fee, a due date, a status (commissioned → delivered → accepted → paid, or cancelled), and delivered/paid dates.
• Automation: moving a step to delivered stamps the delivered date; moving it to paid stamps the paid date. A step still commissioned with a due date raises a writer-step-due nudge in your inbox as it approaches or passes.
• Connects to: Script drafts (the version-by-version artefact record sits alongside the contractual steps), and the readiness score (writer attachment).

#### Notes (project-notes.php)
A per-project journal — timestamped meeting notes, decisions and reminders, attributed to whoever wrote them, with pinning so the important ones stay at the top. The running narrative memory of a project that the structured fields don't capture.

Greenlight group

#### Packaging (packaging.php)
The per-project view of what makes a project financeable, pulled into one pane.

• It rolls up six pillars: Underlying rights · Writer attached · Director attached · Lead cast · Buyer / broadcaster interest · Financing partner — each shown as satisfied / partial / unmet (rights on an original work counts as not-applicable, so it doesn't drag the score down).
• It scores package strength — weak / building / strong — from those pillars.
• It is also an editor: move each element along its interested → LOI → deal ladder inline — a talent attachment's status and LOI-expiry, a co-pro prospect's status and next step, a pitch's outcome — each writing straight back to its own record. You can also set the rep on each talent attachment (which agency/agent represents them), drawn from your Agents & writers roster.
• Connects to: Rights & options, Agents & writers (rep picker), Pitches, Co-pro prospects — and it is exactly what the green-light gate reads to judge readiness.

#### Readiness & green-light (dev-readiness.php)
The readiness scorecard and the formal green-light gate.

• Readiness scores a project across the nine dimensions a complete development package usually has: Logline · Synopsis / treatment · Comparable titles · Writer attached · Director attached · Pitch deck / look book · Source rights option · Funding application · Milestone calendar. Each dimension is ready / partial / missing, links to the surface that fills the gap, and rolls into a single percentage. (Talent dimensions read the live talent register, so attachments register correctly.)
• The green-light gate is the formal decision to leave development. It is advisory, not blocking — an admin or lead can green-light with dimensions still open; those are recorded as acknowledged overrides with a rationale, because producers green-light on judgement, not a perfect checklist.
• The handoff runs on green-light: it advances the project stage, stamps the green-light date and development-began date (the latter is the start of the S487A development-cost window), snapshots the recoupable dev spend to carry into production, and shows a handoff checklist (finance plan → production contracts → budget lock → chain of title). The decision is a permanent record and can be reversed (rolling the stage back) — the record is kept either way.
• Connects to: Packaging (strength), Dev spend (the recoup snapshot), the finance plan (which then shows a "development costs to recoup" note), and the Slate conversion metrics (which are built on the green-light record).

IP group

#### Rights & options (rights.php)
The underlying-IP option lifecycle, so options don't quietly expire.

• You capture: underlying title, work type, rights holder + email, agent + email, territory, option fee, exercise fee, option start, expiry 1 and expiry 2 (renewal), renewal fee, status (active / renewed / exercised / lapsed / abandoned), a recommendation (renew / drop / negotiate / undecided), and — for turnaround clauses — a reversion / turnaround date and reversion / turnaround terms, plus free-text notes.
• Automation: options expiring within 90 days are flagged on the page; an option-expiry nudge fires in your inbox as an active option nears its expiry, and an option-reversion nudge fires before the reversion date — so the clock on rights reverting is tracked, not buried in notes.
• Connects to: the readiness "source rights option" dimension and the packaging rights pillar.

#### Script drafts (script-drafts.php)
Per-project draft history — one row per draft with a version label (e.g. 1st draft / revisions / polish / production draft), the writer, delivered date, page count, and a payment trigger (trigger text, amount, currency, paid date). Ordered by your own sort order. Pairs with Writer deals (the stepped fee contract) — drafts are the artefact record, writer deals are the commitment.

#### Dev artefacts (dev-artefacts.php)
The development-relevant slice of the file repository — scripts, treatments, decks, lookbooks and creative references — filtered out of the wider file store so you're not wading through contracts and insurance certs. Open or download each; full file management lives in the shared files surface.

#### Clone (project-clone.php)
Duplicate an existing project to seed a new one — for episodic, series or branded-content work where the finance shape, supplier list and crew template repeat. It carries structure across and blanks per-episode state (dates, statuses, signatures, green-light/dev-began stamps) so the new project starts clean in development.

Slate group

#### Slate dev funnel (slate-dev-funnel.php)
A read-only slate-wide rollup: every active project bucketed by stage (Idea · Optioned · In development · Packaging · Financing · Green-lit · In production · In post · Delivered), with aging-in-stage flags so stalled material surfaces — the aging threshold varies by bucket (a year-long option is fine; six months in Packaging is not), and the most-stalled sit at the top of each bucket.

It also carries the Slate conversion panel: in-development → green-lit → produced → shelved, with your green-light rate, green-lights by year, reversal rate, and median time in development. These are built on the green-light records; historical green-lights are inferred from stage history so the metrics are meaningful immediately (inferred events are flagged as estimates, distinct from decisions made through the gate). This is the slate's ROI view — how much development actually converts.

#### Idea backlog (ideas.php)
The pre-project queue — capture an idea with a format (Feature · TV drama · TV doc · Short · Animation · Commercial · Other), genre, source, and status (Parked · Pursuing · Promoted to project · Dropped). When an idea is ready for real work, promote it: Togra creates a project from it (in development stage) and marks the idea promoted, keeping the backlog as a record.

Outreach group

#### Submissions pipeline (submissions.php)
A cross-project dashboard of every festival and market submission and where it stands — bucketed by status (planned · submitted · shortlisted · selected · declined · withdrawn), with each title's deadline, submitted/decision dates and fee, plus an "open submissions with deadlines ahead" nudge. Filter to festivals or markets. You log and edit submissions in context (from Festivals or the Market Planner); this is the slate-wide rollup. (Replaces the old per-project readiness checklist, which the green-light Readiness gate now covers.)

#### Market Planner (markets.php)
The markets you attend to pitch and sell (Berlin / EFM · Cannes / Marché · TIFF · AFM · Series Mania …) — now relational, part of the shared festivals & markets catalog. Each market tracks its registration deadline, the projects you're taking (with a pitch lifecycle: planned → pitched → in discussion → deal/passed), and a pitch-meeting log (who you're meeting, when, the outcome and the next step) with follow-up nudges. A market-deadline alert fires in your inbox as a registration deadline approaches. Global markets are curated by your admin via the festival catalog.

#### Buyers (buyers.php)
The sell-side roster — distributors, sales agents, streamers, broadcasters, financiers and studios. Each buyer carries a kind (Broadcaster · Streamer / VOD · Sales agent · Distributor · Financier / equity · Studio · Other), website, country and notes; each has contacts (name, role, email, phone, last-contacted date). This roster powers the picker on Pitches, and a buyer's recent pitch history is visible from their card.

#### Agents & writers (agents.php)
The talent-side relationship CRM — the development team's memory of who you deal with and what you owe them next. (Distinct from Buyers, which is sell-side.)

• The roster: agencies (Talent agency · Literary agency · Management company · Production company · Other) and the people around them — agents, writers, directors, execs — filed under an agency or kept as freelance, each with role, email, phone, last-contacted date and notes.
• The interaction log (the memory): against any contact you log a submission / call / meeting / email / offer, with a direction (you sent / you received), a date, an optional project, a summary, an outcome (Pending · Positive · Passed · No response · Actioned), and a next step + next-step date. A pending follow-up with a due date raises an agent-follow-up nudge in your inbox.
• Footprint: each contact card shows Represents on the slate (talent attachments where this contact or their agency is the recorded rep — set via the Packaging rep picker, so an agent's client list is exact) and Attached on the slate (projects where this name is in the talent register).
• Automation: logging an interaction bumps the contact's last-contacted date. Agencies and people are in global search (⌘K), so you can find a contact and jump straight to their card.

#### Festivals (festivals.php)
The festival / market submissions tracker — a catalogue of festivals (with deadlines, fees, location, and the project types / stages / territories each applies to) and per-project submissions with a status (Planned · Submitted · Withdrawn · Shortlisted · Selected · Declined), submitted/decision dates, fee paid and format. A festival-deadline nudge fires for upcoming deadlines on matching projects.

#### Co-pro prospects (copro-prospects.php)
Pre-deal prospecting of partners and financiers (distinct from buyer pitches). Each prospect carries a role (Minority / Majority / Equal co-producer · Service partner · Financier · Distributor · Sales agent), a status (Prospecting · In conversation · Interested · Stalled · Deal signed · Passed), territory, contact, notes, and a next step + date. Active conversations and interested partners sort to the top, oldest-next-step first. Feeds the Packaging financing pillar; a pending next step raises a follow-up nudge.

#### Guest shares (guest-review.php)
No-login review links — share a treatment, deck or cut with a named guest (optional password, optional expiry, default 30 days). The guest opens it with no signup, reads, and leaves comments in a thread only you see; replies email both ways; you can revoke any time. The open/comment activity is logged.

#### Distribution (distribution.php)
Leak-traceable PDF distribution — send a script, treatment, deck or cut to named recipients with per-recipient tokenised URLs. Each copy is watermarked to its recipient; per-recipient open and download events are logged with timestamp. Source PDFs live outside the public web root. Use it when you need to know exactly who looked at what.

Money group

#### Dev spend (dev-spend.php)
The development-phase cash ledger — the money you spend before the formal production budget opens at green-light.

• You capture: per line a description, a category (option fees / script fees / R&D / travel / legal / accounting / market / funder contribution / other), amount + currency, a paid flag and date, and crucially a recoupable flag — recoupable lines form the dev recoupment basis carried into production at green-light.
• Two dashboards sit above the ledger: - Dev budget vs actual — a dev budget target (read from your Screen Ireland development application if one exists, else a target you set inline) against actual spend: spent / remaining / % used, with the recoupable figure highlighted. You also capture the development-began date here. - Dev funding pipeline — this project's funder applications rolled into applied / pending / awarded by currency, with the next deadline.
• Connects to: the green-light handoff (the recoupable total is snapshotted onto the decision and then shows on the production finance plan as a "development costs to recoup" note) — closing the loop from dev budget → spend → recoup → production finance.

Compliance group

#### Children (child-licences.php)
Section 3(2) child performance licences and the Garda Vetting register — surfaced in Forbairt for development convenience but shared with the Compliance pack. Captures the child licence details (special-category PII is encrypted at rest) and per-crew vetting status with renewal tracking. (Full detail in the Compliance & people guidance.)

5. The systems that tie it together

### The approvals inbox & deadline nudges
Development is full of dates that, missed, cost money or rights. Forbairt feeds them all into your single approvals inbox (and, if you opt in per-kind on the Notifications page, into a morning email). The development nudge kinds:

Each can be snoozed or dismissed from the inbox; the inbox always surfaces them group-wide, and email is opt-in per kind with a window you choose.

### Global search
Everything in Forbairt is findable from the ⌘K search — projects, pitches, reads, options, script drafts, ideas, festivals, co-pro prospects, buyers and their contacts, agencies and agents/writers, and dev-spend lines — and the search doubles as a jump-to-page palette for every module tab. Record hits rank above page jumps.

### The green-light gate as the spine
The single most important interaction in Forbairt is the green-light handoff, because it connects development to the rest of Togra. Packaging strength and the readiness score inform the decision; the decision snapshots the recoupable dev spend; the handoff advances the stage and seeds the production finance plan; and the record drives the slate conversion metrics. It is the one place where "is this project ready?" becomes a recorded, reversible, audited decision rather than an informal nod.

6. How this makes development easier for a production company

• One source of truth for the slate. Every option, read, pitch, writer deal, funding application and agent conversation lives against the project — not in someone's inbox or memory. New team members can see the whole history; a producer can pick a project back up after months away.
• Nothing slips. The eight development nudges mean an option never lapses unnoticed, a writer's draft is chased on time, a reversion date is acted on, a follow-up to an agent or buyer is never forgotten, and market/festival deadlines are met. This is money and rights protected.
• Packaging and readiness become disciplined, not vibes. The packaging strength score and the nine-dimension readiness check give an honest, shared picture of how financeable a project is — and where the gaps are — so green-light is a judgement made on evidence.
• A clean development-to-production handoff. Green-light advances the stage, stamps the dates the tax credits need, carries the recoupable dev spend forward, and seeds the finance plan — so nothing is re-keyed and nothing is lost crossing from development into prep.
• Slate ROI you can see. The conversion panel shows how much of your development actually reaches production, your green-light rate, reversal rate and how long projects sit in development — the numbers a head of development and a board actually want.
• Relationship memory. The Agents & writers CRM and the Buyers roster mean you never re-pitch the same agent from memory or lose track of a relationship; every interaction and its next step is recorded and nudged.
• An audit trail throughout. Reading-log rationales, green-light overrides and reversals, distribution open-logs and guest-share threads all create a defensible record of who decided what, when, and why.

7. Worked examples

A. From idea to green-light. Log the concept in the Idea backlog; when it's worth pursuing, promote it to a project. Read the source material into the Reading log (develop). Option the book in Rights & options (the expiry now nudges you). Commission a writer via a stepped Writer deal; track each draft in Script drafts. Attach a director and pitch broadcasters in Pitches; prospect a co-pro partner in Co-pro prospects; record the agent relationships in Agents & writers. Track development money in Dev spend and the funding pipeline. Watch the Packaging strength climb as elements lock, and the Readiness score with it. When it's there, green-light — and the project hands off to production with its stage advanced, dates stamped and recoupable spend carried forward.

B. Never losing an option. Every option in Rights & options carries an expiry and (where relevant) a reversion/turnaround date. As either approaches, the option-expiry and option-reversion nudges appear in your inbox — in time to renew, exercise, or let go on purpose rather than by accident.

C. Running a market. In the Market Planner, set which projects you're taking and your pitch targets; the deadline banner and the market-deadline nudge keep submission deadlines in view. Log the meetings you take, push the outcomes into Pitches, and add new contacts to your Buyers and Agents & writers rosters so the relationships persist after the market ends.

D. Commissioning a writer. Set up the Writer deal with steps (treatment / draft / polish), each with a fee and due date. As each due date approaches, the writer-step-due nudge fires; mark steps delivered and paid as they happen (dates auto-stamp); record the actual drafts in Script drafts; and log the spend (recoupable) in Dev spend so it carries into production at green-light.

This guide reflects the Forbairt module as shipped. Each surface also carries its own in-app contextual hints, and the in-app manual + Eolas knowledge base cover the surrounding modules (Airgead financing, Cearta rights, the accounting book of record, and the statutory tax-credit packs).