Signal Mine

/digital-marketing-pro:signal-mine

The intelligence layer between "interesting" and "ours to say". Raw input comes from anywhere — a newsletter, a Reddit thread, three competitor posts, notes from yesterday's sales calls. The output is only the angles this brand has standing to make, each mapped to a pillar, with everything else explicitly dropped.

The mapping is the value. Any model can turn news into generic content ideas; the discipline is refusing the ideas that do not serve this brand's authority.

Inputs

• The dump — pasted material, in any shape. More is fine; this skill's job is triage.
• The brand profile — pillars, audience, positioning, competitors from ~/.claude-marketing/brands/{slug}/. No profile → stop: signal-mining without pillars produces trend-chasing, which is the exact failure mode this skill exists to prevent. Run /digital-marketing-pro:brand-setup first.

Process

1. Split the dump into discrete signals (a claim, an event, a sentiment, a number, a competitor move).
2. For each signal, ask the standing question: does this brand have something to say here that its audience would rather hear from it than from anyone else? Pillar fit is necessary but not sufficient — authority fit decides.
3. For signals that pass: name the angle (the brand's specific take, not a summary of the signal), the pillar, a format, and a timeliness window.
4. For signals that fail: list them as dropped, with the reason. This list is half the deliverable — it is the record of discipline, and the user may overrule it with context you lack.

Output structure

# Signal mine — {brand}, {date}

## Angles ({n})
### A1. [The angle — the take, not the topic]
**From signal:** [one-line source reference]
**Pillar:** [brand pillar]  **Timeliness:** [act this week / evergreen / expires ~date]
**Format:** [post / article / newsletter section / campaign hook]
**Why this brand:** [one sentence of standing — why this take is credibly ours]

## Dropped ({n})
- [signal] — [why: off-pillar / no standing / competitor's story to tell /
  stale by the time we publish / compliance risk]

## Sourcing note
[Which signals carry claims that need verification before anything cites them —
route those through /digital-marketing-pro:verify-claims before drafting]

Critical rules

• An angle is a take, not a topic. "AI regulation is changing" is a topic. "The new rules reward exactly the disclosure work our clients already do" is an angle. Return angles.
• Authority beats relevance. A signal can be perfectly on-pillar and still be dropped because the brand has nothing distinctive to add. Say that plainly.
• Timeliness is honest. A "react this week" label on something that takes three weeks to produce is a plan to be late. Match the window to the brand's real production speed.
• Claims from pasted material are unverified by definition. Nothing cites a pasted number until it has been through verification — pasted text carries no provenance, and provenance is the house rule.
• The dropped list always ships. An output with ten angles and no rejections means the triage did not happen.