scott-newsletter

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

1. Read recent newsletters in newsletter/ to match structure and voice.
2. Pull fresh production data when needed using nopeek for INGEST_TOKEN; never read .env directly.
3. Update production rollups before downloading the DB when current stats matter: update_posts, update_embeddings, update_related_posts, optionally rollup_analytics, then backup_database.
4. Back up local data/site-data.db, remove WAL/SHM files, then download production DB via /api/ingest/download.
5. Query data/site-data.db with mcp-sqlite-tools for recent posts, GitHub commits/PRs/releases/issues, subscriber counts, and sent newsletters.
6. Use repo history and nearby posts as receipts before making claims.
7. Draft the newsletter with sections for the month’s main story, posts, open source, talks/client work when relevant, and a short sign-off.
8. 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.