Content Factory — Orchestrator

This skill runs a content pipeline where the evidence is generated before the writing starts. The model is one component. The pipeline around it is what makes the output worth publishing.

Read SETUP.md once before the first run — the pipeline expects a handful of files to exist and a few decisions to have been made.

The one rule that makes everything else work

content-lab/<slug>/PIECE.md is the single source of truth for a piece.

Update it after every meaningful step, not at session end. Any session must be able to pick up any piece from PIECE.md alone: read LEDGER.md → read the piece's PIECE.md → do what its next_action line says. Never rely on chat context surviving.

That rule is enforced rather than encouraged: LEDGER.md is rendered from the PIECE.md files, so a piece whose frontmatter you let go stale disappears from the shared view. Only one session may hold a piece, so PIECE.md has exactly one writer — which is why the ledger can never be clobbered by a parallel session.

Load this before any task

1. memory/MEMORY.md — the skill's own memory index. Load it FIRST, before touching a piece, so past friction shapes what you do instead of being rediscovered at cost. Then open any memory/<file>.md whose description looks relevant.
2. Surface a one-line "Loaded N factory memories: …" so the owner knows what informed you.

A per-piece Decision log is scoped to THAT piece and dies with it. Anything that would change how the NEXT piece runs belongs in memory/ or in a modules/*.md rule — writing it only into PIECE.md means nobody will ever read it again. This is the part of the system that compounds. Do not skip it.

Tasks

Task: new-piece

Trigger: "/content-factory new <topic>", "new piece: <topic>", or the owner describes an idea for a page that needs the pipeline.

0. lock.py status, then lock.py claim <slug> once the slug is agreed (step 1). Note the port it prints — that is your preview server for this piece.
1. Propose a slug (kebab-case, matches the final URL fragment). Confirm it.
2. Create content-lab/<slug>/ with subdirs recon/ scripts/ evidence/ evidence/raw/ assets/ assets/raw/ drafts/.
3. Copy templates/PIECE.md → content-lab/<slug>/PIECE.md; fill the frontmatter; paste the owner's idea and thoughts into the Idea section verbatim. Their exact words carry intent that your summary of them will not.
4. Nothing to do for the LEDGER — it is generated. The row appears the moment PIECE.md exists and something syncs (lock.py touch <slug> will do it). Never hand-edit it.
5. Proceed to S1 unless told otherwise.

Task: run-stages

Drive the piece through the lifecycle:

In checkpoint mode (the default): stop and wait ONLY at Checkpoint 1 and Checkpoint 2. Everything between runs autonomously. In interactive mode: also confirm the outline and the draft before moving on.

Task: resume

Trigger: "resume <slug>", "continue the <slug> piece", "/content-factory resume <slug>".

0. lock.py claim <slug> FIRST. If it exits 1 the piece is live in another session: stop, say so, do not read-modify-write its files. Note the port it prints. (If it says [reclaim], the previous session died — read its PIECE.md carefully before assuming the last step it recorded actually finished.)
1. Read content-lab/LEDGER.md for the cross-piece picture — which pieces are live, and whether yours shares lab infra with a sibling. It is a generated view; the lock you just took is the authority on who owns what.
2. Read content-lab/<slug>/PIECE.md fully.
3. Set session_note to what you are about to do; do what next_action says.
4. Re-verify any recorded blocker before acting on it, especially one whose only resolution is asking the owner. A previous session's "X does not exist, ask about it" is a claim, not a fact — it was written with whatever that session happened to search. Cost of checking: one query. Cost of not checking: a stalled pipeline and a question that never needed asking.

Task: status

Trigger: "factory status", "/content-factory status".

1. lab/lock.py status FIRST — it regenerates the LEDGER as a side effect, so everything you read afterwards is current. Each lock reads MINE / LIVE / DEAD / STALE.
2. Read the regenerated LEDGER.md + each active piece's PIECE.md frontmatter. Report: slug, status, stage, next action, budget spent, lab resources, who holds it.
3. lab/do.py sweep — which VMs are still alive and billing, and which are GUARDED by another piece.

Report these as findings, not details: a DEAD lock (a session died mid-piece, so its PIECE.md may overstate what actually finished), anything under the LEDGER's ⚠ headings (shared infra, orphan locks, slug mismatches), and any VM alive that no piece claims.

Task: refresh

Trigger: "refresh <slug>", "/content-factory refresh <slug>". Manual, monthly-ish.

1. Re-run the piece's scripts/ against current infra (fresh VM if the manifest used one).
2. Diff new results against committed evidence; re-render clones.
3. Flag drifted claims and stale screenshots; propose edits; bump "Last verified" only after the owner approves.

Parallel sessions

Several pieces can run at once in separate Claude Code sessions. S1–S7 are fully parallel. S8 is one-at-a-time, enforced by a lock. You never have to reason about whether another session is around: ask the tools.

L=.claude/skills/content-factory/lab/lock.py

python $L status                                   # who is live, what is free — ALWAYS first
python $L claim <slug> --stage S2 --note "recon"   # exits 1 if a LIVE session holds it
python $L touch <slug> --stage S4                  # heartbeat + stage update as you move
python $L release <slug>                           # when you stop, even mid-piece

Claim is re-entrant. Re-claiming a piece you already hold is a no-op that exits 0, so claim again any time you are unsure — after a compaction, after a long gap, before a risky write. It costs nothing and it is the cheapest way to be certain. If claim exits 1 it is because a provably live session holds it: pick another piece or ask. Do not --force past a LIVE lock.

The lock knows who you are: it records CLAUDE_CODE_SESSION_ID and the claude process pid, both of which the harness exports into every shell. So a crashed session's lock is reclaimed automatically (no --force, no six-hour wait), and a session that legitimately works a piece for ten hours is never declared stale underneath itself.

The two shared files you must NOT hand-edit

1. content-lab/LEDGER.md is generated. Every row is rendered from that piece's PIECE.md frontmatter plus the live locks. Editing it does nothing — the next sync overwrites you. To change what the ledger says, edit the PIECE.md you hold the lock for; claim/touch/release re-render it for you. This is what makes parallel work safe: no session ever writes a file another session also writes. Force a re-render with python .claude/skills/content-factory/lab/ledger.py sync.
2. The git index. See rule 5 below.

Keep these PIECE.md frontmatter fields honest — they are the ledger's only inputs: status, stage, updated, lab_resources (everything alive for this piece, "" when idle), and at S9 url, shipped, seeded.

Rules

1. Claim before you touch a piece, in new-piece and resume alike; release when you stop. Never write into a workspace you do not hold — not its PIECE.md, not its evidence. lock.py check <slug> exits 0 only if the lock is yours; use it as a guard when a piece has been idle in your context for a while.
2. Use YOUR port. claim prints one (8140–8199), nudged off any port a live piece already holds, so two pieces can never land on the same one. Two servers on one port means the second dies silently and you verify against the OTHER piece's pages. See modules/verify.md V0.
3. Before S8, work touches ONLY content-lab/<slug>/ — zero shared files.
4. S8 is serialized by a real lock:

   python $L ship-claim      # blocks if another piece is mid-ship
   #   ... the shared registry, shared templates, static assets, the commit ...
   python $L ship-release    # the moment the commit lands

   ship-claim also warns if the git index is already dirty — that is another session's staged work, and a bare git commit would swallow it.
5. Git is global — treat it as a shared resource. git commit with no paths commits the WHOLE index, so another session's staged files land in your commit and nobody notices. Never bare git commit when the index may hold foreign work; always name paths. Never git add -A. Hold the SHIP lock while staging and committing, even for a small fix. The same lock covers any shared MEMORY.md index you append a line to. (But see memory/lesson_path_scoped_commit_ignores_the_index.md — hunk-scoping the index and path-scoping the commit at the same time silently does the wrong thing.)
6. Lab isolation. VMs are per-piece (cf-<slug>); shared infra is namespaced cf-<slug>. do.py destroy and sweep --kill refuse to touch a VM that another live session holds, or that another piece names in its lab_resources — so record borrowed boxes there, in both pieces. A guarded sweep says what it skipped instead of reporting "clean".
7. Benchmarks needing clean numbers always get their own VM.
8. If a file changes underneath you (an edit tool says it moved on disk, or content you did not write appears), STOP, re-verify your own edits survived, and say so. A lock makes that unlikely, not impossible — a session that skipped the protocol still exists.

Hard rules

• Never skip a checkpoint in checkpoint mode. Never publish live without Checkpoint 2.
• Every experiment is a committed script — no unscripted evidence.
• No orphan claims: if it is not in claims.md → evidence file or primary source, it does not ship.
• Costs: estimate in the manifest before running; log actuals in the PIECE.md Cost log; if a run will exceed the approved estimate by >50%, stop and ask.
• Knowledge base: read anytime; write ONLY at S9 with explicit approval, entry by entry.
• Voice: the knowledge base's voice file is canonical; the writer profile adds site deltas only.
• Lab teardown is part of the stage, not optional cleanup. do.py sweep must come back empty at the end of S4 — except for VMs it reports as GUARDED (another piece is using them) or that your own lab_resources documents as deliberately alive. Never sweep --kill --force to make the output look clean: that is how you delete the box another session is mid-experiment on.
• Secrets live in the repo-root .env (gitignored) — never in content-lab/, never in PIECE.md, never in an evidence file you commit.
• Ship commits are hunk-scoped, not just path-scoped, whenever a file you touched was ALREADY dirty. Run git diff <file> on every shared file first and stage only your hunks. After committing, verify the COMMITTED tree is self-consistent (git show HEAD:<file>), not just the working tree you tested.
• Skill feedback goes to memory/ in this skill. Project-wide facts go wherever your setup keeps them.

When NOT to use this skill

• Polishing an existing page with no new evidence → a normal edit.
• A quick copy change, template fix, or config tweak → a normal edit.
• Anything with its own dedicated skill → that skill.

The factory is expensive by design: it exists for pieces where first-hand evidence is the whole point. Using it for a page that does not need evidence just adds ceremony.