Add /blog-next: the pipeline had no owner for what to write

.claude/agents/blog-batch-orchestrator.md

@@ -14,16 +14,18 @@ record - you write plans and reports, not post prose.
 ## The outer loop
 
 0. **Setup once**: feature branch; session-random dev server (`PORT=$((20000 +
-   RANDOM % 20000)) bin/dev`); read the 20.09 plan §12 queue + refresh-debt
-   rows; optionally start a NotebookLM deep-research run for fresh angles.
-1. **Pick next row** - premise audit FIRST: live GSC for the topic (plans
-   decay), dedup check. Collision → record the rescope verdict in the plan and
-   take the next row. Real-code mining (this repo, ~/dev/elital) happens here
-   so the coordinator gets a sanitized digest, not repo access questions.
-2. **Dispatch ONE `blog-post-coordinator`** with the topic row, branch, the
-   dev-server port/base-URL from step 0, the digest, and an explicit
-   "premise audited: yes/no" flag (you did step 1, so say yes - it saves the
-   coordinator a duplicate GSC/dedup pull). WIP=1: wait for its
+   RANDOM % 20000)) bin/dev`); read the 20.09 plan **§13** queue + refresh-debt
+   rows (§12's R-queue is retired - do not draft from R1-R9).
+1. **Pick next row** - run the `blog-next` skill's Stage A through C for the
+   row: premise audit FIRST (live GSC/GA4, plans decay), dedup check, research,
+   then the gated outline. Skipping Stage C here is how a batch run loses the
+   outline gate the single-post path gets. Collision → record the rescope
+   verdict in the plan and take the next row. Real-code mining (this repo, ~/dev/elital) happens here so the
+   coordinator gets a sanitized digest, not repo access questions.
+2. **Dispatch ONE `blog-post-coordinator`** (`model: fable`) with the topic row,
+   branch, the dev-server port/base-URL from step 0, the digest, the gated
+   outline, and an explicit "premise audited: yes/no" flag (you did step 1, so
+   say yes - it saves the coordinator a duplicate GSC/dedup pull). WIP=1: wait for its
    SHIPPED / RESCOPE / BLOCKED report before the next row. Independent
    research/recon agents (read-only) may run in parallel; never a second
    committing coordinator in the same checkout - if a second one must run,

.claude/agents/blog-post-coordinator.md

@@ -12,8 +12,11 @@ docs already answer.
 
 Input contract (from your spawner): the topic row (slug, angle, dedup notes),
 the branch to commit on, the dev-server port/base-URL for the scroll gate
-(never assume 1313; if missing, start your own on a session-random port), and
-any source-material digest (real-code mining, trends facts). If a required input is missing, derive it from
+(never assume 1313; if missing, start your own on a session-random port),
+any source-material digest (real-code mining, trends facts), and the approved
+outline if one was gated upstream (the `blog-next` skill produces one; treat it
+as the agreed structure and report back if the draft has to depart from it).
+If a required input is missing, derive it from
 `docs/projects/2510-seo-content-strategy/20-29-strategy/20.09-content-plan-revision-aug-2026.md`
 before asking anyone.
 
@@ -24,8 +27,9 @@ before asking anyone.
    RESCOPE verdict back to spawner instead of writing.
 2. **Writer**: spawn a `content-creator` agent with the full packet - voice
    guide 90.11, cadence anchor from `docs/workflows/blog-writer-reference-samples.md`,
-   blog-pipeline STEP 4-4d rules, verified internal links, frontmatter hard
-   rules, latest-versions-as-present framing, zero fabrication. Two-pass write.
+   blog-pipeline STEP 4-4d rules, verified internal links, the approved outline
+   if you were given one, frontmatter hard rules, latest-versions-as-present
+   framing, zero fabrication. Two-pass write.
 3. **Critic panel** (parallel, resumable via SendMessage): `core-reviewer` as
    (a) tech fact-checker - fetch every cited source, verify every claim and
    every line of copyable code; (b) slop/SEO - AI-pattern scan, SEO checklist,

.claude/skills/blog-next/SKILL.md

@@ -0,0 +1,226 @@
+---
+name: blog-next
+description: >
+  Decide WHAT to write next and whether it is worth writing - by auditing the
+  content plan against live search data, rebuilding the plan when it fails the
+  audit, researching primary sources, and gating an outline. This is the
+  find-the-topic half of the pipeline; it never writes a post. Use whenever the
+  user asks what blog post to write next, for the next post, a new post, a batch
+  of posts, or a blog sprint; when they point at the content-plan queue; when
+  they ask to groom, restock, rebuild or sanity-check the content plan; and when
+  they name a topic themselves, because the premise audit is what catches a
+  decayed row or a dedup collision before anyone spends a draft.
+  NOT for LinkedIn posts (use linkedin-post-jt), course chapters (see
+  docs/projects/2605-tech-for-non-technical-founders/60-69-policies/),
+  landing/services pages (page-cro, landing-page-optimization), or revising a
+  draft that already exists - that is blog-post-coordinator's job.
+---
+
+# Blog: what to write, and whether to write it
+
+Two halves, deliberately split. **You own "what and whether."** Drafting,
+reviewing and shipping are the other half and belong to the agents below.
+
+| Stage | Owner |
+|---|---|
+| A. Plan health + pick, or REBUILD the plan | **this skill** |
+| B. Research | **this skill** |
+| C. Outline + outline gate | **this skill** |
+| Draft → 3 critics → cold-eyes → ship gates → commit | `blog-post-coordinator` |
+| N-post sprint, cluster sweep, one PR, CI watch | `blog-batch-orchestrator` |
+
+You produce one of three things, never a draft: a **topic row**, a **rebuilt
+plan section**, or a **HOLD** saying the slot should not be spent.
+
+**Read before starting; this skill does not copy them, so a correction lands
+everywhere:**
+
+- `docs/workflows/blog-pipeline.md` - canonical process. STEP 1-3 is Stages A-B.
+- `.okf/workflows/analytics-access.md` - properties and every measurement trap.
+  Stage A is unsafe without it.
+- `docs/projects/2510-seo-content-strategy/20-29-strategy/20.09-content-plan-revision-aug-2026.md`
+  - §13 is the live queue (§12 retired). §13a/§13d record the traps, including
+  the ones that killed rows in this same file.
+
+## Stage A - find candidates, then audit them
+
+**Search demand cannot generate topics on this property; it can only veto them.**
+Two audits in Aug 2026 falsified the queue's own lead item, and the reason was
+structural: the blog earns ~0.69 named non-brand clicks/day and the ICP is
+absent from the query data (`vibe*` ≈ 200 impressions / 0 clicks). A
+search-driven queue here returns HOLD forever. So generate candidates from the
+three sources below, then use search to kill the bad ones.
+
+### A1 - generate candidates (do this FIRST, before touching GSC)
+
+1. **Live trend research.** What is the audience arguing about right now? The
+   HN Algolia API is free and needs no auth:
+   ```
+   curl -s "https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?tags=story&numericFilters=created_at_i%3E<epoch>,points%3E200&hitsPerPage=50"
+   ```
+   (compute `<epoch>` separately - inlining `$(date ...)` in the URL mangles it).
+   Then `?query=<title>` to recover each story's real URL and HN id for citation.
+   **Look for a cluster, not a single story.** One hot post is noise; five
+   front-page posts arguing the same thing in three weeks is a conversation the
+   audience is already having, and a post that enters it has a reason to exist
+   that search data can never supply.
+2. **Paul's raw material**, when he supplies it - one sentence about something
+   that happened is a topic ("the agents cancelled half their backlog"). Treat
+   this as the highest-value source when present; he may not always have it.
+3. **Our real work** - this repo and `~/dev/elital`. The 2026-08-20 batch's best
+   material was a commit-documented outage. Sanitize: shapes and lessons yes;
+   prompts, model IDs, proprietary numbers no.
+
+A candidate is only worth writing when an external hook meets first-hand
+evidence. A hot topic we have nothing to say about is somebody else's post.
+
+### A2 - audit the candidates (search as veto, never as source)
+
+1. **Pull live GSC/GA4** per `analytics-access.md`. Never query from memory of
+   property IDs.
+2. **Run every trap against your own numbers before quoting them** - the
+   named-vs-page test (one-way: `named ≪ page` voids the page CTR; the converse
+   licenses nothing), truncation, Trap C (page-level *position* is an artifact
+   whenever the CTR is), Trap D (query-vs-query is the legitimate level;
+   page-vs-page carries almost no signal).
+3. **Are these impressions human?** Before treating volume as demand, look at the
+   query strings. Combinatorial permutations of one stem, non-words, or 100+
+   impressions at top-10 positions with a flat zero on clicks mean synthetic
+   traffic, not demand you are failing to convert. `analytics-access.md` carries
+   the tell and two worked examples.
+4. **Name the post's job, then apply the matching floor.** A post is written to
+   rank, or to be a credible asset for a reader who already arrived from LinkedIn
+   or a conversation. These are judged differently and conflating them is how the
+   queue filled with rows nobody should have written.
+   - **Search-purposed:** convert to clicks/day against the blog's non-brand rate
+     (§13c: 62 named non-brand clicks / 90 days ≈ 0.69/day). Compute the ceiling -
+     best-case position at a defensible CTR, minus what the topic already earns,
+     minus cannibalisation. **A search post whose ceiling cannot move the number
+     is not a post.** Say so and stop.
+   - **Arrival-purposed:** the search floor does not apply and quoting it is a
+     category error. The test is whether the piece would survive a sceptical
+     founder reading it after a LinkedIn click - does it say something true that
+     the competition does not, backed by work we actually did. Most trend-driven
+     candidates are this kind. Say which kind it is in the topic row, so nobody
+     later kills a good asset with the wrong metric.
+5. **Dedup** per `blog-pipeline.md` STEP 1/3b. A filename grep is not a coverage
+   audit - regexes are order-dependent and miss real pages. Confirm each hit and
+   check whether two of our pages already split the query.
+6. **Reconcile with §13.** N1 is a downgraded hypothesis, not a win.
+7. **P0 gate** (20.09 §1): if outreach is stalled, content halts. Read the plan's
+   own log - Paul overrode it 2026-08-20, scoped to one post - and report the
+   gate's state plus his last call rather than halting on the rule alone.
+
+**Overriding the queue:** only on *falsifiable* grounds - a dedup collision, a
+dead page, a premise the numbers contradict. Record the verdict and the number
+that killed it. Ordering *preference* is Paul's: flag it, take his row.
+
+### When the audit kills the row - rebuild, do not dead-end
+
+If the row fails, or the queue is dry, or the survivors all fail the demand
+floor, **the deliverable becomes a rebuilt plan section**, not a shrug. Write it
+into 20.09 as a new dated subsection. Each candidate carries:
+
+- the live figure it rests on, with its pull date, window and property
+- which traps were run against it, and what they returned
+- the demand ceiling in clicks/day and what it is being compared to
+- the dedup result, naming any page that already owns the query
+- a verdict: WRITE / UPGRADE / FLAG / DO-NOT-WRITE, with the reason
+
+Record DO-NOT-WRITE rows too, with their numbers. A row nobody logged gets
+re-proposed from intuition next quarter.
+
+**When live data cannot settle it, name the cheap experiment** instead of
+guessing - a date/device split, a look at the live SERP for what sits above us,
+a title test with a measurable before/after. Fifteen minutes of checking beats
+a spent content slot.
+
+**Gate Stage A before quoting it.** Its output is nothing but measurements, and
+CLAUDE.md requires a measurement verified before it is reported. Hand a
+`core-reviewer` the raw pulls and the row you propose - goal and artifact, never
+your conclusion - and ask it to re-derive. Both Aug 2026 runs had a material
+error caught here and nowhere earlier.
+
+Stage A output: a topic row (slug, angle, live figures, demand ceiling, dedup,
+reviewer verdict), a rebuilt plan section, or a HOLD.
+
+## Stage B - research primary sources
+
+**Fetch sources; do not recall them.** Training memory is not a citation.
+
+1. **Web search** per `blog-pipeline.md` STEP 3 - official docs, release notes,
+   primary reports. This is Stage B's job; the coordinator starts at the writer
+   and never re-runs research.
+2. **NotebookLM** to interrogate a body of sources: `notebook_create` →
+   `source_add` (`source_type: "url"`, `urls` takes a list) → `notebook_query`.
+   To *find* sources: `research_start` → `research_status` →
+   **`research_import`**; without the import nothing enters the notebook. Check
+   `server_info` first - `stale` means ask the user to run `nlm login`;
+   `unverified` means the check failed, not that credentials are bad.
+3. Ask what a draft needs: what changed and when, the official position, where
+   practitioners disagree, the strongest counter-argument. Not "summarize this."
+4. **Mine our real code** (this repo, `~/dev/elital`) for first-hand material.
+   Sanitize: shapes and lessons yes; prompts, model IDs, proprietary numbers no.
+5. Verify every statistic against its source. Zero fabricated clients, stats,
+   quotes or personas - `.okf/content/claims-canon.md` records "Sarah" as banned.
+6. Internal links per `blog-pipeline.md` STEP 3b.
+
+Stage B output: a sourced digest - every claim with its URL, links verified.
+
+## Stage C - outline, then gate it
+
+Write the outline: hook shape, H2 sequence, what the reader does differently
+after each section, where internal links land, the CTA.
+
+Apply `blog-pipeline.md`'s cut test here, where a cut costs a line instead of a
+section. Pick a cadence anchor and hook shape from
+`docs/workflows/blog-writer-reference-samples.md`, checked against recent
+siblings so the post does not repeat an overused shape - that file and STEP 4b
+own the current count.
+
+**Gate it: author ≠ verifier.** A different agent type than whoever wrote the
+outline - `core-reviewer`. Brief it with goal and artifact, never your
+conclusions; ask for measurements. A panel handed your inference returns it
+wearing independent confidence.
+
+An outline that fails is rewritten before any prose exists.
+
+## Hand off - and keep going
+
+**Default is unattended.** A gated outline is not a place to stop and wait; hand
+it straight on and let the gates decide. Paul asked for delivery without a human
+in the loop (2026-08-22), and the stop list below is the whole of what he still
+owns.
+
+**One post** → `blog-post-coordinator` with the topic row, branch, dev-server
+port, research digest, **the approved outline**, and `premise audited: yes`.
+
+**Several posts** → `blog-batch-orchestrator` with N; it runs Stages A-C per row.
+
+Session dev server, once, never 1313: `PORT=$((20000 + RANDOM % 20000)) bin/dev`.
+
+Pass `model` explicitly on every spawn. Both agents declare `model: fable`; if a
+fable spawn fails, fall back to `opus` and say you did.
+
+Full unattended contract, including the completion promise and why it must be
+about gates rather than quality: `docs/workflows/autonomous-delivery-prompt.md`
+§"Running CONTENT unattended".
+
+## Three exits, and only three
+
+A run ends in exactly one of these. **Two exits are not enough** - a loop whose
+only outcomes are "shipped" or "try again" will always ship something.
+
+- **SHIPPED** - gates green, committed, PR open, verdicts quoted.
+- **HOLD, with evidence** - a terminal success, not a failure. Every candidate
+  failed its floor, or the queue is dry after rescopes. Record the numbers that
+  killed each one so nobody re-proposes them from intuition next quarter. Never
+  invent a topic to fill the slot; on 2026-08-22 two runs correctly ended here.
+- **BLOCKED on a named decision** - one of the five below, named explicitly, with
+  the conservative option already taken meanwhile where one exists.
+
+**What genuinely needs Paul** (everything else: decide, record, continue):
+whether a claimed client engagement or number is real · publishing outward ·
+overriding a documented gate · pricing/naming/internal numbers · split and
+irreversible calls. A figure you cannot source is not a decision for him - drop
+the claim.

.claude/skills/blog-next/evals/evals.json

@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+{
+  "skill_name": "blog-next",
+  "evals": [
+    {
+      "id": 0,
+      "name": "plain-next-post-request",
+      "prompt": "what should we write next on the blog?",
+      "expected_output": "A topic row, a rebuilt plan section, or a HOLD - each grounded in a live GSC/GA4 pull with the measurement traps applied. Must NOT draft a post. Must report the 2607 P0 gate state.",
+      "files": []
+    },
+    {
+      "id": 1,
+      "name": "user-names-own-topic",
+      "prompt": "let's do a post on Rails 8 background jobs - solid queue vs sidekiq, that feels like a gap. can you get it started?",
+      "expected_output": "Runs the premise audit ANYWAY rather than accepting the named topic. Should find solid-queue-vs-sidekiq-complete-comparison and rails-8-solid-queue-migration-guide already exist and report a dedup collision / RESCOPE, not start writing.",
+      "files": []
+    },
+    {
+      "id": 2,
+      "name": "rebuild-the-stale-plan",
+      "prompt": "our content plan is out of date and I don't trust the queue anymore. rebuild it from what the search data actually says.",
+      "expected_output": "Produces a rebuilt plan section where each candidate carries its live figure + pull window, which traps were run, a demand ceiling in clicks/day, dedup result, and a WRITE/UPGRADE/FLAG/DO-NOT-WRITE verdict. DO-NOT-WRITE rows recorded with their numbers.",
+      "files": []
+    }
+  ]
+}

.gitignore

@@ -68,7 +68,14 @@ claude-flow.config.json
 # only - regenerate with /ruflo-core:init-project; hand-authored skills/agents
 # elsewhere under .claude/ stay tracked)
 .claude/helpers/
-.claude/skills/
+# Generated skills are ignored; hand-authored ones are un-ignored by name below.
+# `*` not `/` so git descends into the directory and the negations can match.
+.claude/skills/*
+!.claude/skills/README.md
+!.claude/skills/blog-next/
+# `:33` (.claude/**/*.json) still matches inside an un-ignored directory, so a
+# hand-authored skill's JSON needs its own file-level negation to ship.
+!.claude/skills/blog-next/**/*.json
 .claude/commands/claude-flow-*.md
 .claude/agents/browser/
 .claude/agents/consensus/