| name | scott-newsletter |
| description | Drafts or improves scottspence.com monthly newsletters in Scott's voice. Use when creating newsletter/YYYY-MM-DD.md, summarising recent posts, GitHub activity, talks, tools, or preparing monthly email copy. |
Scott Newsletter
Use this skill for monthly scottspence.com newsletter emails.
Quick Start
Build evidence first, draft into newsletter/YYYY-MM-DD.md, keep it
personal and conversational, then validate with Prettier and cspell.
Never send the newsletter unless Scott explicitly asks.
Workflow
- Read recent newsletters in
newsletter/ to match structure and
voice.
- Pull fresh production data when needed using
nopeek for
INGEST_TOKEN; never read .env directly.
- Update production rollups before downloading the DB when current
stats matter:
update_posts, update_embeddings,
update_related_posts, optionally rollup_analytics, then
backup_database.
- Back up local
data/site-data.db, remove WAL/SHM files, then
download production DB via /api/ingest/download.
- Query
data/site-data.db with mcp-sqlite-tools for recent posts,
GitHub commits/PRs/releases/issues, subscriber counts, and sent
newsletters.
- Use repo history and nearby posts as receipts before making claims.
- Draft the newsletter with sections for the month’s main story,
posts, open source, talks/client work when relevant, and a short
sign-off.
- Validate with
pnpm exec prettier --check <file> and
pnpm exec cspell <file> --config cspell.json --wordsOnly.
Voice rules
- Scott-like, informal, blunt, technical, and reflective.
- en-GB spelling. No em dashes.
- Prefer concrete details: repo names, PRs, posts, talks, numbers,
shipped tools, and trade-offs.
- It is fine to say “Right, so,” “vibes,” “waffling,” “dogfooding,” or
similar when it fits naturally.
- Avoid generic marketing copy, corporate polish, and fake neutrality.
- Keep private/client work anonymised unless already public.
Newsletter shape
Use frontmatter:
---
title: 'Short Human Title - Month YYYY'
date: YYYY-MM-DD
published: true
---
Default structure: hook, one or more main sections, Blog Posts, Open
Source or related project updates, Fin. Add
<!-- cspell:ignore ... --> for project/tool names rather than
changing prose.
Safety
- Do not read, print, grep, or paste secret files or secret values.
- Use
pnpx nopeek load .env --only INGEST_TOKEN when production
ingest access is needed.
- Do not send via
newsletter_send or production APIs unless Scott
explicitly asks to send.
