Every well-used field guide fills with margin notes, and this studio’s guide is no exception. The notes are not edits to the entry — the entry never changes — they are the record of what the sittings taught: which light flatters her card, which outfit line keeps failing in the editor, which setting produced the cover frame.
Notes are kept to a strict form. One note per sitting, dated, three lines at most: what was tried, what the card said about the results, what to repeat. Anything longer becomes a second, competing description of the character — and competing descriptions are precisely what the card exists to prevent.
Read the notes before a sitting, never during a prompt. The prompt takes the card word for word; the notes only choose the day’s changing line — the outfit, the corner, the hour. Kept that way, a year of marginalia makes the work better without ever moving the character.
A guide that is followed, annotated honestly and never rewritten is the cheapest senior staff member a studio can have.