Website Publisher

Website Publisher

The management layer on top of AuthorClaw's static-site builder. Generates your site, keeps it in sync with your books, drafts blog posts from your project artifacts, and pushes the rendered site to your host.

This skill is deliberately not a CMS. AuthorClaw is for producing books — shipping a working site is part of that, but maintaining a fully interactive web property isn't. Authors who need comments, forms, ESP integration UIs, or deep analytics should keep using the WordPress / Squarespace / Ghost they already have.

What it does

1. Sites — register, link, manage

A "site" is a deployable unit (one author or one pen name typically). Each site has:

• A config (slug, name, tagline, base URL, primary color, social links)
• A list of linked projects (when those projects complete, their books auto-publish to the site's books list)
• A list of blog posts (drafts + published — drafted by this skill)
• A deploy target (Netlify / Vercel / Cloudflare Pages / rsync / manual zip / none)

POST /api/sites           Create a site
GET  /api/sites           List all sites + freshness status
PATCH /api/sites/:id       Update config / linked projects / deploy target
DELETE /api/sites/:id      Remove a site
POST /api/sites/:id/link-project   { projectId }

2. Auto-add books on project completion

When a book-production or novel-pipeline project completes AND the project is linked to one or more sites, the book is auto-added to each site's books list. Idempotent on slug — re-completing the project updates the existing entry.

The author still has to render + deploy explicitly — auto-publishing a brand-new book without review would be too aggressive. The dashboard shows each site's pendingChanges count so the author knows when a render is needed.

3. Blog post drafter

Four post types, each pulling different project artifacts into a focused prompt:

POST /api/blog-posts/draft
{
  "postType": "behind_the_scenes",
  "projectId": "project-12",
  "siteId": "my-pen-name-site",   // optional — auto-add to site's queue
  "authorAngle": "I want to talk about how I cut chapter 7 four times"
}

Drafts go to pending review. Author edits in the dashboard, then the post is rendered + deployed with the next publish.

4. Render + deploy

POST /api/sites/:id/render    Re-render the static site files
POST /api/sites/:id/deploy    Push the rendered files to the host
POST /api/sites/:id/publish   Combined: render + deploy in one call
GET  /api/site-deploy/doctor  Probe which deploy CLIs are installed

Deploy adapters supported (each shells out to the host's CLI; we don't bundle them):

• netlify — netlify deploy --prod (requires netlify-cli)
• vercel — vercel deploy --prod (requires vercel)
• cloudflare-pages — wrangler pages deploy (requires wrangler)
• rsync — push to your own server via SSH (requires rsync)
• manual-zip — produces a ZIP file at workspace/exports/website/ that you upload manually via your host's web UI. The safe default. Works on every host without auth setup.
• none — render only, no deploy

Tokens are read from process.env at deploy time using a configured tokenEnvVar name. Tokens are never stored in AuthorClaw config.

What this skill does NOT do

• ❌ Not a CMS (no comments, forms, plugins, themes marketplace)
• ❌ Not an ESP integration (paste your own ConvertKit / MailerLite / Beehiiv embed code into the site config — already supported)
• ❌ Not an SEO settings panel (we already auto-emit sitemap.xml, RSS feed, and OG tags from your config)
• ❌ Not multi-tenant (local-first; one author's machine, their sites)
• ❌ Not a scheduling system (a future cron handler can do this; it's not built in v1)

Recommended workflow

1. Set up — POST /api/sites once. Configure title, baseUrl, social links, deploy target.
2. Link your projects — POST /api/sites/:id/link-project for each book project you want featured on the site.
3. Write your books — when projects complete, books auto-add to the site's books list. Author sees pendingChanges increment.
4. Draft blog posts as new releases ship — release announcements, behind-the-scenes, excerpts, teasers.
5. Publish — POST /api/sites/:id/publish renders + deploys in one call. Or render and deploy separately for control.

When to NOT use this skill

If you already have a working WordPress / Squarespace / Ghost / Wix site that fits your workflow, AuthorClaw can still complement it (cover gen, blog post drafts you paste into your CMS, etc.) — but you don't need this skill. Use it when you want a clean static site that auto-syncs with your AuthorClaw projects with minimal hosting cost ($0 on Netlify free tier for most authors).