Offer Updater

offer-updater — publish a verified free-AI-credit offer

Turn a screenshot or pasted text describing a free-credit offer into a valid, web-verified offers/<slug>.yaml, without ever inventing a value and never committing anything the curator did not explicitly approve. Schema reference: docs/schema.md. Ground rules: CONTRIBUTING.md.

Repo Sync Before Edits (mandatory)

Before touching offers/, offers/details/, or any git-tracked file:

branch="$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)"
git fetch origin && git pull --rebase origin "$branch"

• If the working tree is dirty (git status --porcelain non-empty): git stash push -m "offer-updater pre-sync", sync, then git stash pop. If pop conflicts, stop and ask the curator how to resolve before continuing.
• If origin is missing or the rebase conflicts: stop, report the error verbatim, and ask the curator before continuing. Never force-push or skip the sync.

What I do

1. Extract offer fields from your input (screenshot transcript, pasted text, or a source URL you supply), plus any claim instructions the input contains.
2. Verify on the web that the offer is still live and the terms match — keeping a full reference trace of every URL visited for evidence.
3. Normalize them into the frozen seven-field schema and pick a slug, writing the reference trace into offers/details/<slug>.json.
4. Validate the draft with the deterministic helper in this directory.
5. Present the git diff of exactly what would change (including the reference trace).
6. Commit only after you say yes — then open a tracking issue and PR.

The frozen schema (F5)

Pipeline

Step 1 — Extract

Read the screenshot/text and collect all seven fields. Hard rules:

• Never guess. A value you cannot read or confirm stays unknown; it is never approximated, inferred from similar providers, or copied from stale data elsewhere in offers/.
• If any required field is unknown after extraction, ask ONE targeted clarifying question naming exactly the missing fields, then stop. Do not write a partial file to offers/.

Illegible input (unreadable screenshot, truncated paste): say which parts are illegible and ask the targeted question above instead of guessing.

Claim instructions. While extracting, also capture HOW to get the offer if the input says so — signup URL, promo code, CLI command, plan tier, eligibility restrictions (region/student/new-user), or usage limits. Record them verbatim in the Step 5 presentation as a "How to claim" list; they feed the optional offers/details/<slug>.json claim_steps enrichment and the tracking issue body. Claim instructions never enter the seven YAML fields — they are supporting evidence only, and like everything else they are never invented: if the input is silent on how to claim, omit the section entirely.

X source posts become embedded evidence. If source_url (or any cited evidence in the input) is an x.com/twitter.com post, ALWAYS create the detail file offers/details/<slug>.json alongside the YAML with a social_proof entry of type x so the post renders as a quote card on the offer's detail page — never leave an X-sourced offer without it. Fill url from the post; fetch author/handle/text automatically from Twitter's public oEmbed endpoint (https://publish.twitter.com/oembed?url=<post-url>) rather than asking the curator to copy-paste. The oEmbed response's author_name maps to author (@author_name → handle); take text from the post content you already fetched in Step 2 (oEmbed returns HTML, not plain text). If oEmbed is unreachable, fall back to the text captured during verification. This embeds the post statically at build time (no third-party scripts, per docs/schema.md) and preserves the evidence if the post is later deleted. Add summary and claim_steps to the same file when you have them.

Step 2 — Verify on the web (trust policy)

Verification is on by default; the curator may explicitly say "skip verification", in which case verified_date keeps today's date ONLY if the input itself is first-hand evidence (a fresh screenshot), and every field the page would have confirmed must be reported as unverified in Step 6.

When verification runs:

1. Fetch source_url. If the curator supplied none, ask for it — an offer without an official source is unpublishable.
2. Render one of three verdicts, quoting the sentence(s) that prove it:
   • live — offer currently claimable and terms match the extracted values → verified_date: <today>, and record the quoted evidence as the comment header's source note.
   • expired / dead URL — page gone, offer withdrawn, or dates passed → do NOT create or update any offers/ file.
   • unverifiable — page unreachable, bot-walled, or silent about the claimed terms → treat as expired/dead above until proven otherwise.
3. Any offer that is not live is staged as needs_review/<slug>.yaml with a header note explaining what failed. Nothing unverifiable is ever committed — needs_review/ is gitignored precisely so a stray git add . cannot leak an unverified entry into the site.
4. Conflicts between the screenshot/input and the web page (different amounts, expiry dates, eligibility) are surfaced side-by-side in a small table — input claim vs page quote vs proposed resolution — and REQUIRE an explicit human decision before any file is written. Never silently pick a winner.

Reference trace — keep every URL you touch (mandatory)

During verification you will inevitably fetch more than just source_url: redirects, docs pages, pricing pages, announcement blog posts, changelog entries, or a secondary search result that confirms eligibility. Keep a trace of every relevant URL you visit and persist it as evidence — never discard the chain of sources that justified the verdict.

Rules:

• Collect as you go. Start the trace with source_url. Append every additional URL you actually fetched whose content informed the verdict (HTTP 200 and contains terms you quoted or relied on). Skip dead links, bot-wall pages, and incidental search-engine result pages that added nothing.
• Capture title + excerpt. For each URL, record title (page <title> or first h1, ≤200 chars) and a short text excerpt (the quoted sentence that proves the offer, ≤500 chars). These map directly to social_proof link fields in offers/details/<slug>.json — see docs/schema.md and schemas/offer-detail.schema.json for limits.
• Deduplicate and cap. Normalize URLs (strip fragments, trailing slashes), deduplicate, keep source_url first, then discovery order. Hard cap at 10 entries total for social_proof (schema limit); if the trace would exceed 10, keep source_url + the 9 most authoritative provider-domain pages and drop aggregators/third-party mirrors first. X/Reddit posts remain type x/reddit — only generic pages use type link.
• Persist in the detail file. The trace lives in offers/details/<slug>.json under social_proof as entries of type link (or x/reddit where applicable). If a detail file already exists, merge: preserve existing summary/claim_steps, append new trace entries that are not already present (compare normalized url), and never duplicate the same URL. If no detail file exists, create one with the trace as its social_proof (at least one entry is enough to satisfy minProperties: 1).
• Evidence only. Every traced URL must be one you fetched and verified. Never invent titles, excerpts, or URLs. If a fetch failed, do not add it.
• Why this exists. The reference trace is the audit trail that lets any future curator re-verify the offer without re-discovering sources, and it satisfies docs/schema.md "Evidence only" for social_proof.

The Step 3 normalizer and Step 5 presentation both consume this trace.

Step 3 — Normalize

Slug = lowercase ASCII words separated by single hyphens (^[a-z0-9]+(-[a-z0-9]+)*$), matching the target filename offers/<slug>.yaml. Draft template (written to needs_review/<slug>.yaml until Step 6):

# Verified <YYYY-MM-DD> against <source_url>
# ("<short quote proving the offer text>")
title: ...
provider: ...
category: ...            # api_provider | coding | image | voice | video
amount: ...
expiry_date: null        # or YYYY-MM-DD
source_url: https://...
verified_date: YYYY-MM-DD

The comment header is mandatory curation evidence: quote the sentence(s) from Step 2 that prove title/amount/expiry. Optional enrichment (summary, claim steps, social proof / reference trace) lives in offers/details/<slug>.json — see docs/schema.md for its rules. When a reference trace was collected in Step 2, the detail file MUST contain it as social_proof entries of type link (or x/reddit for social posts), merged as described above. Example detail with a reference trace:

{
  "summary": "Cerebras grants $20 in inference credits for new signups.",
  "claim_steps": ["Create an account at inference.cerebras.ai.", "Credits apply automatically at signup."],
  "social_proof": [
    {
      "type": "link",
      "url": "https://inference.cerebras.ai/policies/credits",
      "title": "Cerebras Inference Credits Policy",
      "text": "New users receive $20 in free inference credits upon signup."
    },
    {
      "type": "link",
      "url": "https://cerebras.ai/blog/announcing-free-credits",
      "title": "Announcing Free Inference Credits",
      "text": "We are offering $20 in free credits to try Cerebras Inference."
    }
  ]
}

Step 4 — Validate (deterministic, same rules as CI)

python3 .claude/skills/offer-updater/validate_offer.py <draft.yaml>
# also validate the detail file if one was created/updated:
python3 scripts/build.py --help  # validates offers/details/*.json as part of the build

Exit 0 + OK means the file is byte-for-byte compliant with what CI enforces — it cannot fail the build. Any failure names the offending file and field; fix ONLY formatting/validation errors here. If fixing would require inventing a value, go back to Step 1's clarifying-question rule instead. For detail files, watch the social_proof limits: ≤10 entries, url ≤200 chars, title ≤200 chars, text ≤500 chars — the validator reports the exact offending index.

Step 5 — Present the diff

Show the curator exactly what would change, no more and no less:

git diff --no-index -- <existing-file-if-any> needs_review/<slug>.yaml  # updates
# and for the detail file:
git diff --no-index -- offers/details/<slug>.json needs_review/details/<slug>.json  # if new or updated

plus the full draft content for brand-new offers (and the detail JSON if one was created). State plainly: the target path (offers/<slug>.yaml or offers/details/<slug>.json), whether it is a new file or an edit, and the verification verdict + evidence quote. If claim instructions were extracted, include them under a "How to claim" heading. Always list the reference trace under a "References verified" heading — each URL with its title and the quoted excerpt — so the curator can see the audit trail before approving.

Step 6 — Commit gate (hard rule)

Nothing is committed, moved into offers/, pushed, or opened as a PR without the curator's explicit yes.

• Acceptable confirmation: a clear affirmative from the curator in the conversation ("yes", "commit it", "ship it") AFTER seeing the Step 5 diff. Silence, topic change, or ambiguity is a NO.
• On YES: move the draft into offers/ (git mv for edits), stage the matching offers/details/<slug>.json if one was created or updated (it now carries the reference trace), run the validator once more on its final path (validate_offer.py for the YAML and python3 scripts/build.py or python3 scripts/validate_offers.py for the detail JSON), then follow CONTRIBUTING.md:
  1. Create the tracking issue with gh issue create (unless the curator supplied one). Title: Add <provider> <short offer name>. Body: provider, what is free, amount, expiry, source URL, the full References verified list (one bullet per traced URL with title), and any extracted "How to claim" steps, plus the verification date.
  2. Branch <type>/<issue>-<slug> from current main.
  3. Commit with a Conventional Commits message referencing the issue, e.g. feat(offers): add <Provider> offer (#<issue>), and push.
  4. Open the PR whose body starts with Closes #<issue>, include the verification verdict + evidence quote, the References verified list, and the local-check results (validator, scripts/build.py, test suite).
• On NO / no answer / unverifiable: leave the draft in needs_review/, summarize why (including which reference URLs were checked and why they failed), and stop. Re-running the skill later resumes from Step 2.

Why this gate exists

The directory's entire value is trust: every listed offer was verified by a human against a live official page (§9.3 link-rot/scam mitigation). An agent that auto-commits unverified entries converts one dead URL into a broken promise to every visitor. When in doubt, park it in needs_review/ and ask.