# How do you compare, review and select AI-generated variants?

Keep related attempts as sibling Variants under one Asset, compare their actual media and stored Recipes, and explicitly Activate the completed Variant that should represent the Asset. Generate starts a new Asset; Regenerate replays a Recipe unchanged; Vary adds a deliberately changed sibling; Retry reruns one failed Variant unchanged. Copy starts a separate Asset from existing media, while Delete permanently removes an eligible result. The main Variant records the current selection without inventing a separate review state.

## Which attempts belong under one Asset?

Use one Asset for alternative results of the same creative object and media family. Use a new Asset for a different object or dependent deliverable. The public [Night Market recorded session](/#showcase) shows **Mara the Lantern-Keeper** as one Asset with three image Variants; the derived **Mara — idle loop** is a separate video Asset.

## What should you compare before selecting a Variant?

Compare the media against the brief, then inspect its Recipe and References. The recorded Mara sequence generated `37045c43`, regenerated pose as `e3fc8162`, regenerated expression as `4904331f`, and kept `4904331f` main.

![Initial Mara Variant](/showcase/37045c43-5628-4691-b122-f5d2ac1379ec-tile.webp)

![Mara sibling with changed pose](/showcase/e3fc8162-6844-4c32-9d26-6aa1c489c3f0-tile.webp)

![Selected main Mara Variant](/showcase/4904331f-1c34-416f-b7db-7f242412fe17-inspect.webp)

## When should you Generate, Regenerate, Vary, Retry, Activate, Copy, or Delete?

| Decision | Action |
|---|---|
| Start a new object | **Generate** creates an Asset and first Variant. |
| Replay a completed result unchanged | **Regenerate** creates a sibling from the same Recipe. |
| Deliberately change a completed result | **Vary** creates a sibling from a patched Recipe. |
| Repeat an unchanged failed attempt | **Retry** keeps its identity and Recipe. |
| Select the representative result | **Activate** changes the main Variant. |
| Start a separate Asset without generation | **Copy** records copied provenance. |
| Permanently remove eligible work | **Delete** has no trash or restore. |

Recorded regeneration output:

```text
✓ sibling asset:mara-the-lantern-keeper~0f4af497@4904331f · now main
```

## What protects the current selection?

The main Variant remains selected while regeneration runs; failure never changes it. Success selects the sibling only if nobody selected another Variant after submission. Activate another completed Variant before deleting the current one, and delete the Asset to remove its only Variant.

Review the lifecycle in [Core Concepts](/docs/concepts), compare visually with the [Web Workspace guide](/docs/web-workspace), and connect decisions to evidence in the [reproducibility guide](/docs/reproducible-ai-media). [Start with the MakeFX quickstart](/docs/quickstart) to compare results in a Space.