ur-grue Push Notification Writer
What This Skill Does
Writes three push notification variants for a news story or content update, each optimized for different urgency levels and character limits, ready to paste directly into a CMS or notification platform.
When To Use This Skill
- A breaking or developing story needs to reach mobile readers immediately
- You are scheduling a push notification for a feature story, newsletter edition, or podcast episode and want to maximize tap-through
- You need to adapt one story into multiple notification tones — urgent, informational, and curiosity-driven — for A/B testing or different audience segments
- You are writing notifications under strict character limits and need every word to earn its place
What You Need To Provide
Required: The story or content to promote (headline, one-sentence summary, or a brief paragraph describing the news); the platform or character limit (iOS: ~110 characters visible on lock screen, Android: ~65 characters in collapsed view, or a custom limit).
Optional: Urgency level (breaking, developing, scheduled feature); tone preference (neutral news, conversational, provocative); the publication's voice (formal broadsheet, digital-native, tabloid energy); a specific detail or number that should appear in the notification.
How the Assistant Approaches This
Extracts the single most compelling fact. Reads the input and identifies what makes this notification worth interrupting someone's day — the new information, the surprising number, the consequence that affects the reader personally. This fact anchors all three variants.
Writes three variants at different urgency registers:
- Breaking/Urgent — leads with the news, no wasted words. Reads like a wire alert. Prioritizes speed of comprehension over curiosity.
- Informational — gives enough context that the reader understands the significance without tapping. Still concise, but explanatory rather than breathless.
- Curiosity-driven — opens an information gap that can only be closed by tapping. Uses tension, a question, or a surprising framing. Best for features, analysis, and non-breaking content.
Enforces character limits ruthlessly. Counts characters for each variant against the stated platform limit. If a variant exceeds the limit, it is rewritten — not truncated. Every variant displays completely on the lock screen without ellipsis.
Adds a tap-through rationale. After the three variants, one sentence explains which variant suits which scenario (e.g., "Use Variant A for push-alert subscribers who opted into breaking news; Variant C for the general audience segment to maximize tap-through on a feature").
Output Format
Three labeled notification variants, each on a single line with a character count in brackets. No preamble. After the variants, one line of deployment guidance. Total output: under 150 words.
**Variant A — Breaking/Urgent** [XX chars]
[Notification text]
**Variant B — Informational** [XX chars]
[Notification text]
**Variant C — Curiosity-Driven** [XX chars]
[Notification text]
---
*Deployment: [One sentence on which variant to use for which audience segment or scenario.]*
Quality Criteria
- Every variant fits within the stated character limit — no truncation or ellipsis
- The breaking variant leads with the news fact, not a label or preamble
- The curiosity-driven variant creates a genuine information gap without being clickbait or misleading
- No variant uses all-caps, excessive punctuation, or emoji unless the publication voice explicitly calls for it
- Each variant is meaningfully different in approach — not three rewordings of the same sentence
- Deployment guidance is specific to the input scenario, not generic advice
- The notification makes sense without any additional context — a reader seeing it cold understands enough to decide whether to tap
Example
Input
Story: A new study published in a major medical journal found that adults who sleep fewer than six hours a night are 2.5 times more likely to develop early-onset cognitive decline than those who sleep seven or more hours. The study tracked 14,000 participants over 12 years.
Platform: iOS (110-character lock screen limit)
Tone: Digital-native news voice — clear, direct, slightly conversational
Output
Variant A — Breaking/Urgent [98 chars] Sleep under 6 hours? Study of 14,000 people links it to 2.5x higher risk of early cognitive decline.
Variant B — Informational [108 chars] A 12-year study of 14,000 adults found sleeping under 6 hours a night raises early cognitive decline risk 2.5x.
Variant C — Curiosity-Driven [103 chars] The sleep threshold that changes your cognitive risk — and most people are already below it. New study.
Deployment: Use Variant A for health and science subscribers who expect data-forward alerts. Use Variant C for the general push list to drive tap-through on a feature package.
Known Limitations
- The assistant cannot predict tap-through rates. The three-variant structure supports A/B testing, but actual performance depends on send time, audience segment, and device context — factors outside the skill's scope.
- Push notifications for legally sensitive stories (court rulings, ongoing investigations, unconfirmed reports) require editorial and legal review before sending. This skill optimizes for clarity and engagement, not legal caution.
- Character counts are based on standard Unicode characters. Emoji, special characters, or non-Latin scripts may display differently across devices and could affect visible length.
Related Skills
- caption-writer — write social media captions to accompany the same story
- seo-meta-description-writer — write the meta description for the article the notification links to
- ab-social-post-tester — generate A/B test variants for the social promotion of the same story