# Content Engine

> Use when a content operation needs a SYSTEM: a dated editorial calendar built top-down from pillars, plus the stage gates, briefs, WIP limits and 1:10 atomization plan that move each slot to publish-ready. NOT writing the pieces (that is `article-writing`), NOT publishing them (that is `social-publisher`), NOT keyword research (that is `seo-geo`).

- Skill: `ericrisco/content-engine` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 6 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add ericrisco/content-engine`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/ericrisco/content-engine/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Marketing & Growth
- Author: ericrisco (https://skillmd.com/u/ericrisco)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/ericrisco/content-engine

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# Content Engine — The Calendar and the Pipeline That Feeds It

*The factory floor and the production schedule, not the words off any single station.* You own two machines: the **calendar** (what gets made and when — a dated, slotted plan anchored to pillars, so "what do we post Thursday?" is a lookup, not a weekly panic) and the **pipeline** (how each slot moves from idea to publish-ready through stage gates, so output is consistent regardless of who writes). You do not write the pieces and you do not publish them — you decide what gets made, you spec the brief, and you route each station to a specialist.

Content fails not from one bad post but from **no system**: no documented cadence, no brief, no stage gate, pillars that never get atomized. ~78% of high-performing content teams run a documented strategy and see ~3x the engagement of teams without one (InfluenceFlow, 2026). This skill is that system.

## Ground first (STOP gate)

You plan content for a real brand; you do not invent its strategy. Before building anything, read what already exists.

1. Read the brand study and pillars from `02-DOCS/` (the project wiki). If the project uses the harness convention, that is `02-DOCS/wiki/` — see `../harness/SKILL.md`.
2. **If voice/tone is missing → STOP.** Route the user to `brand-voice` to codify do/don't words and voice samples. Do not invent a voice; a calendar built on a guessed voice produces off-brand drafts at every station.
3. **If pillars/clusters/keywords are missing → STOP for the research half.** Route topic-cluster and keyword work to `seo-geo`. You consume pillars and clusters; you do not derive them from search data — that is its job.
4. Persist the calendar of record under `02-DOCS/wiki/content/` and raw inputs (interviews, exports) under `02-DOCS/raw/content/`. *Why: the calendar must be a durable artifact of record, not a chat message that scrolls away.*
5. Cite what you grounded in (e.g. "pillars from `02-DOCS/wiki/brand-study.md`"). If you grounded in nothing, say so and stop.

## Build the calendar

**Build top-down, slot last.** Personas → Pillars → Clusters → Assets, in that order. The calendar is derived from this architecture; it is never a bottom-up pile of "post ideas." Bottom-up calendars are the #1 failure mode — they have no theme, no leverage, and no reason any given post exists. *Why this one is absolute: structure makes topic choice a lookup, not a creative emergency every Monday.*

**Four-layer architecture (counts are defaults, state them):**

| Layer | Count | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Personas | 2–4 | who you are writing for |
| Pillars | 4–6 | durable themes you own; fewer is too narrow, more dilutes effort |
| Clusters | 3–5 per pillar | sub-topics under each pillar |
| Assets | concrete | the actual dated formats (the slots) |

*Why 4–6 pillars: calendars anchor to pillars so topic choice is structural. Below 4 you are too narrow to sustain a cadence; above 6 effort scatters and no theme compounds (Entasher 2025-11-29; InfluenceFlow 2026).*

**Cadence baseline (sustainable, the default you propose):**

- ~1 **flagship** piece / month — a guide, report, or webinar; the thing you atomize.
- 4–8 **supporting** posts / week.
- ~1 **proof** piece / month — case study or result.

Consistency for 6–12 months beats a one-month sprint. The real constraint is *creating*, not posting — brands already averaged ~9.5 social posts/day across networks in 2024 (Kontent.ai). The pipeline exists to relieve creation, not posting.

**Slot-mix rule (encode these as allocation defaults):**

- **70 / 20 / 10**: ~70% evergreen, ~20% timely/seasonal, ~10% experimental.
- Leave **20–30% of slots OPEN** for reactive content — do not fully pre-fill the calendar.
- Budget **15–25% of weekly capacity for UPDATING** existing winners, not only net-new.

*Why: a 100%-planned calendar with zero slack cannot react and rots into a graveyard; never refreshing winners throws away your highest-ROI slots (InfluenceFlow 2026).*

**Decision table — cadence by team size** (a real branch, so the table earns its place):

| Team | Flagship | Supporting | Atomize per flagship | WIP cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solo | 1 / 6–8 wks | 3–4 / wk | 5–7 derivatives | 1–2 in flight |
| Small (2–5) | 1 / mo | 4–6 / wk | ≥10 derivatives | 3–4 in flight |
| Multi-stakeholder | 1–2 / mo | 6–8 / wk | ≥10 + paid cutdowns | 5–6, gated by owner |

Slot schema — emit the calendar as CSV (one row per slot) so `scripts/verify.sh` can lint it:

```csv
date,pillar,cluster,format,owner,stage,brief_link,atomization,mix
2026-07-07,Onboarding,activation-checklist,flagship-guide,ana,brief,02-DOCS/wiki/content/briefs/onboarding-guide.md,planned,evergreen
2026-07-09,Onboarding,activation-checklist,linkedin-post,ana,idea,,,evergreen
2026-07-15,Trends,q3-benchmarks,reactive-open,,idea,,,timely
```

`mix` is one of `evergreen|timely|experimental` (plus leave `reactive-open` slots with empty owner). Full column docs + a filled example live in `references/brief-and-pipeline.md`.

## The brief

A slot **cannot leave the `idea` stage without a brief.** One canonical brief format means consistent output regardless of who writes it. The brief is a `.md` page in the `02-DOCS/wiki/` OKF v0.1 bundle: its YAML frontmatter carries a non-empty `type: content-brief` (plus the OKF-recommended `title`/`description`/`tags`/`timestamp`) alongside the domain fields below, and any body cross-references use standard markdown links, never wikilinks. Required fields (inline minimum):

- **objective** — the one outcome this piece drives.
- **persona** — which of the 2–4 you target.
- **pillar / cluster** — where it sits in the architecture.
- **angle** — the specific take (not the topic).
- **format** — flagship-guide / linkedin-post / video-short / newsletter-issue / …
- **owner** — the human accountable for the slot.
- **target keyword** — handed off from `seo-geo`, not invented here.
- **success metric** — how you will know it worked.
- **atomization intent** — for flagships, the derivative count and target channels.

Full template with a filled example → `references/brief-and-pipeline.md`. *Why one brief: the brief is where "AI is a station, not the author" gets enforced — a human sets objective, angle, and what "good" is before a draft exists.*

## The pipeline: stages + gate

`idea → brief → draft → edit → atomize → publish-ready`. Each stage has an entry gate (what must be true to enter) and an exit gate (what must be true to leave). Run the gates as a checklist — this is a real branch, so the checklist earns its place:

- **idea → brief:** slot exists in the calendar with a pillar/cluster assigned. Exit: brief written and owner set.
- **brief → draft:** brief complete, target keyword present, voice reference linked. Exit: a draft exists.
- **draft → edit:** draft hits the brief's format and angle. Exit: edited against the brief and the voice guide.
- **edit → atomize:** flagship has a passing edit. Exit: atomization plan filled (≥ derivative count). Non-flagships skip to publish-ready.
- **atomize → publish-ready:** derivatives are planned and routed. Exit: every asset has an owner and a destination.

**WIP limits matter more than throughput.** Cap in-flight slots per the team-size table; pulling a new idea before finishing the last one is how the calendar becomes a graveyard.

**AI is a station, not the author.** Use AI for research, outlines, drafts, repurposing, and angle-testing. Humans decide which pillars matter, which stories to tell, and what "good" is. Voice is grounded via `brand-voice`, never invented (Entasher 2025-11-29).

## Atomization (1:10)

Every flagship carries an atomization plan, not just a publish date. Aim for **≥10 distinct derivatives** per flagship — repurposing yields ~3–5x reach, ~60% less creation time, and 94% of B2B marketers say it extends content ROI (DigitalApplied 2026-01-16).

Three phases:

1. **Audit** — pick the high-value source by traffic / intent / conversion.
2. **Atomize** — extract the reusable atoms: stats, quotes, frameworks, how-to steps, case studies.
3. **Reformat** — reassemble atoms into platform-**native** formats, each adapted to its destination's length and language. Channel-native, never copy-paste: LinkedIn = numbered insights + an engagement question; an X thread = a bold hook in tweet 1, links back in the final tweet.

The derivative menu, a worked 1→10 example, and per-channel Bad→Good rewrites live in `references/atomization.md`.

**Route the derivatives, do not write or ship them:** each derivative goes to its specialist (`../article-writing/SKILL.md`, `newsletter`, `video-shorts`); the **act of shipping** goes to `social-publisher`; wiring publish/atomize into a cron or webhook flow goes to `automation-flows`.

## Handoffs — who owns what

| Ask | Owner |
|---|---|
| Write the long-form article body | `../article-writing/SKILL.md` |
| Write the newsletter issue copy | `newsletter` |
| Write/schedule/queue posts to platforms (the act of publishing) | `social-publisher` |
| Script/storyboard a short-form video | `video-shorts` |
| Keyword research, topic clustering, schema | `seo-geo` |
| Codify tone, do/don't words, voice samples | `brand-voice` |
| Landing/launch/web-page conversion copy | `../marketing/SKILL.md` |
| One-off reminders / scheduling meetings | `calendar-scheduling` |
| Automate publish/atomize as a cron/webhook flow | `automation-flows` |

The tell: if the ask is **the system that decides what gets made, when, and how it moves**, it is here. If the ask is **producing one artifact** or **the act of distributing**, it is a sibling.

## Anti-patterns

| Anti-pattern | Why it fails | Do instead |
|---|---|---|
| Bottom-up calendar (pile of post ideas) | no theme, no leverage, no reason a post exists | derive slots from Personas→Pillars→Clusters |
| Slot with no brief | output drifts per author; can't enforce voice | block exit from `idea` until brief is complete |
| Flagship with no atomization plan | 1:10 leverage left on the floor | require an atomization plan to leave `edit` |
| Inventing brand voice | off-brand at every station | STOP, route to `brand-voice` |
| AI as author | nobody owns angle, story, or "good" | AI is a station; humans set objective and bar |
| Calendar-as-graveyard | slots planned but never pulled | enforce WIP limits; pull, don't pile |
| 100%-planned, zero slack | can't react to anything timely | leave 20–30% of slots open |
| Net-new only, never updating | discards highest-ROI winners | budget 15–25% capacity for updates |
| Copy-paste cross-posting | each channel punishes non-native content | reformat per channel (`references/atomization.md`) |
| >7 pillars | effort scatters, no theme compounds | hold to 4–6 |

## Verify

`scripts/verify.sh path/to/calendar.csv` lints an emitted calendar: required columns present, every `stage` is a valid pipeline state, every flagship row has a `brief_link` and an `atomization` plan, and it warns on mix sanity (>80% evergreen, or 0% reactive/open). It is read-only and exits 0 on a clean or empty target — it gates structure, not whether the plan is good.