Blog Anatomy and Series Support

Reference material for post-level architecture. Read during Step 4, applied during the Phase 3 draft and Phase 4 revisions.

Quick Reference: Blog Anatomy

Fallback only. If the personal identity declares a composition resource, that file governs post-level architecture and overrides this section. A legacy persona/framework.md has that role.

Posts are stories about real problems that happen to involve a technology (and optionally a product). The reader should learn something even if they never touch the author's stack.

A typical post runs 1,500-2,000 words. 2,000 is a target, not a cliff — a tight 2,200 that earns every sentence is better than a padded 1,800.

This shape is a starting point, not a template to fill. Two of its parts are fixed schema — the TLDR and the author bio. Everything between them is one arrangement among several, and running the same arrangement every time is exactly the convergence audit 6 in skills/blog-writer/references/structural-audits.md exists to catch. Vary the opening and closing moves across posts, and record which ones a post used (see skills/blog-writer/references/post-shapes-schema.md).

The default arrangement:

TLDR — 2-4 bullet points. Sells the "so what" without spoiling the journey. Bullets, not prose. Each bullet should make the reader think "wait, really?" not "yeah, obvious." Written last, placed first.

Opening hook — A personal story, a public embarrassment, a confession. Never a thesis statement. Never "In this post, we'll explore..."

The problem, demonstrated — Show the failure. Screenshots, code, terminal output. Let the reader feel the pain before offering the fix.

The pivot — What changed. What we tried differently. Why it matters.

The technical meat — How it actually works. Code blocks, architecture, real output. This section earns the reader's trust.

The broader point — Zoom out. What does this mean for how we build software? Cultural references, analogies, and dry observations live here. Optional, and the first thing to cut. A zoom-out section placed after the story already landed is the epilogue habit — the most distinctive fingerprint of the model doing the drafting (see skills/blog-writer/references/structural-audits.md, "Know what drafted the text"). Some posts should skip it. Some should open with it instead. A post that ends on its strongest concrete moment does not need one.

CTA — Practical, specific, low-friction. Usually: install something, try something, read the next post. If a selected identity has product context, suggest a product-related CTA and confirm.

Author bio — Fixed schema, rotating kicker. The kicker is a dry joke that connects to the post's content. Use the selected personal identity's bio resource when available.

Varying the Shape

Audit 6 compares a planned post against recent ones and reports which axes have converged. Its invocation, routing, and correction loop are in SKILL.md Step 9. Vary the axes it reports; the menus below are what to vary them to.

Opening modes — public embarrassment or confession; cold open mid-incident; outcome first, then rewind; the delayed reveal that withholds the central number; a named artifact (the error message, the bill, the diff) before any framing.

Closing modes — stop on the strongest concrete sentence; the open thread, a question named and left unanswered; genuine ambivalence with both feelings intact; end hot on the spike rather than a quiet coda; the recontextualized callback that changes an earlier detail's meaning.

Change what the verdict asks for and no more. Rewriting every axis on every post rebuilds the same problem with different defaults — see the convergence trap in skills/blog-writer/references/structural-audits.md.

Series Support

Blog posts often belong to a series. Series state (episode numbers, callbacks, open threads) is tracked in _blog-skill/series-tracker.md in the Blog Home Directory. Read it at the start of every session; update it when a post is published.

• Maintain consistent title patterns
• Reference previous posts naturally in the opening
• Keep recurring characters consistent (personality, running jokes, callbacks) — see the personal voice resource for any established characters
• Each post must stand alone — a reader hitting part 2 first should not be lost
• End with a teaser for the next installment when applicable