/ce-promote
Turn a feature that just shipped into copy-pasteable, user-facing announcement copy — right inside the engineering workflow.
Purpose
After you ship, the messaging shouldn't wait for a separate marketing pass. ce-promote figures out what shipped, picks the right channels, and drafts the copy. It is spiral-agnostic by default: with nothing installed it draws on a lite layer of editorial and social-media expertise to produce strong channel-specific copy. When the Spiral CLI (see references/spiral-cli.md) is present and authed, it uses Spiral so the drafts are voice-matched to your brand — a subtle enhancement, never a requirement.
This skill drafts only. It never posts, publishes, commits, or opens PRs. Posting is a human action. The output is always drafts for you to review, edit, and ship yourself.
Usage
/ce-promote # Derive what shipped from context, draft defaults
/ce-promote [free-form description] # You describe what shipped
/ce-promote a tweet thread and a LinkedIn post # Request specific channels
/ce-promote 3 tweet options for the new export feature
Phase 1 — Figure out what shipped
If the user gave a free-form description of the feature, use it as the source of truth.
Otherwise, derive it from context (use what's available; don't block on any one source):
- Merged/active PR —
gh pr view --json title,body,url 2>/dev/null (and gh pr view for the current branch). The title and body usually state the user-facing value.
- The diff —
git diff main...HEAD --stat and skim notable changes to ground the claim in what actually changed.
- Changelog — the top/
[Unreleased] entry in docs/changelog.md, CHANGELOG.md, or similar.
- Recent commits —
git log --oneline -15 for the arc of the change.
Then write a 1–3 sentence summary of the user-facing value — what a user can now do that they couldn't before, and why they'd care. Describe the outcome, not the implementation. ("You can now export any report to CSV in one click" — not "Added a CsvSerializer and an export endpoint.")
If you can't confidently tell what shipped, ask the user one short question rather than guessing.
Phase 2 — Pick channels
Default to a small, sensible set:
- An X post or short thread (lead with the value; thread only if the change warrants it)
- A one-line changelog / release blurb
Scale to what the change warrants and to what the user asked for. If they named channels ("LinkedIn", "email", "a blog intro", "a short demo script"), draft those instead of or in addition to the defaults. A small fix needs one or two short drafts; a flagship feature can justify a cross-channel set. Don't force a fixed template.
Phase 3 — Draft the copy
First, detect Spiral's state with two quick, non-blocking commands:
which spiral
spiral auth status --json 2>/dev/null
Classify into one of three states:
- Absent (no binary,
which spiral finds nothing) → Path 0 (install), then Path A if set up, else Path B.
- Otherwise read
spiral auth status --json:
- Ready — JSON with
"authenticated": true (equivalently "status": "authenticated") → Path A (voice-matched).
- Unauthed — JSON with
"authenticated": false → Path 0, then Path A if the user signs in, else Path B.
- If the output isn't JSON (older CLI that ignores
--json on auth status), fall back to the legacy signal in that same output: ready iff it contains spiral_sk_, else unauthed.
Never let a Spiral failure, timeout, or odd output block or slow the skill — when in doubt, treat it as not-ready and continue.
Path 0 — Offer Spiral setup (first run, declinable)
When Spiral isn't ready, offer to set it up once — unless the user previously opted out. The point is one proactive nudge, never a recurring one, and never a blocker: a decline always proceeds to Path B. Any dismissal records the opt-out, so a single first-run decline stops the offer for good in this repo — the user is never asked twice.
Read references/spiral-cli.md for the exact setup prompt (built with the platform's blocking-question tool), the connect/install steps, and how the opt-out is recorded so later runs skip this. In short:
- Unauthed → the agent runs
spiral login --json (CLI >= 1.8.0; non-blocking, the API key never passes through the agent). On status: already_authenticated → use Path A. On status: pending → surface the auth_url, the user approves in their browser, then poll spiral auth status --json until authenticated: true → Path A. Never have the user paste a key into chat. (Older CLI without agent login → suggest npm i -g @every-env/spiral-cli@latest, or have the user run spiral login themselves.) Escape hatch: "or the agent can just draft directly, without Spiral's personalization and humanization."
- Absent → guide the user to install + connect in one step via the pairing-code command from Settings → Connect an Agent.
- Decline → record the opt-out (best-effort) and go to Path B.
Skip Path 0 entirely — straight to Path B — when the opt-out is already recorded, or when running headless / non-interactive (no human to answer). If a human is present but no blocking-question tool is available, do not skip — fall back to a numbered list of the two options in chat and wait for a reply (per the Ask section of references/spiral-cli.md).
Path A — Spiral ready (voice-matched)
Use the Spiral CLI so drafts match the user's brand voice. Read references/spiral-cli.md before composing the prompt — multi-channel vs. single-channel-variations is phrasing-driven (channel keywords / cue words vs. --num-drafts) and getting it wrong silently returns the wrong number or shape of drafts. The exact phrasing rules live there; don't restate them from memory. Essentials:
- Always pass
--instant and --json. Parse drafts[] (each carries its own channel) plus session_id.
- Present every returned draft, grouped by
channel. Spiral decides how many drafts per channel — multi-channel runs often return several per channel — so never assume one-per-channel or drop extras.
If the spiral write call errors or returns no usable drafts, silently fall back to Path B for the affected channels.
Path B — Direct drafting (lite editorial & social expertise)
No Spiral needed — draft strong copy directly using a compact layer of editorial and social-media fundamentals. (The Spiral path goes further: brand-voice matching, humanization, saved styles, and cross-channel campaign orchestration.)
Editorial fundamentals — every channel:
- Lead with the user-facing outcome: what someone can now do, not how it was built.
- One idea per piece. Cut windup, hedges, and throat-clearing.
- Be concrete and specific; show the value, don't assert it.
- Plain, active language. Strip AI tells — "thrilled/excited to announce," "game-changer," "in today's fast-paced world," "unlock/leverage/seamless," em-dash padding.
- Sanity check: read it as if saying it to one user. If a person wouldn't say it, rewrite it.
Social fundamentals — distributed channels:
- The first line is the hook and has to earn the next line (feeds truncate). No preamble.
- Match each channel's native shape and length; never reuse one draft verbatim across channels.
- One clear CTA where the channel supports it.
- Hashtags: 0–2, only where the channel expects them — never a wall of tags.
Per channel:
- X — value in the first line; ~1–3 tight lines. Thread only when there's more than one beat worth its own line.
- Changelog / release blurb — one declarative line naming the new capability. Plain, not promotional.
- LinkedIn — a short paragraph: human angle (why it matters), then the what. Warmer than X.
- Email — benefit-stating subject + 2–4 sentence body + one CTA.
- Blog intro — one strong opening paragraph framing the problem and the new capability; leave the deep-dive to the author.
- Demo script — 3–6 spoken beats: hook, problem, action, payoff.
Drafts per channel: one strong draft by default; produce more only when asked ("3 tweet options"), capped ~3.
Phase 4 — Present the drafts
Show every draft as a clean, copy-pasteable block, labeled by channel. For each:
### X post
<the copy>
- If Spiral produced them, also surface the
session_id and each draft's url so the user can open and tweak them in the Spiral web app.
- Offer to revise (tone, length, angle, more variations, another channel).
- Do not post, publish, schedule, commit, or open a PR. End by reminding the user the drafts are theirs to ship.
Examples
Single-channel variations — "3 tweet options":
User: /ce-promote 3 tweet options for the new one-click CSV export
→ Summarize the value. Spiral path: spiral write "3 tweet options for one-click CSV export" --instant --num-drafts 3 --json (no cue words). No-Spiral path: write 3 distinct tweets directly. Present all three.
Multi-channel set — "a campaign across X, LinkedIn, and email":
User: /ce-promote draft a launch across X, LinkedIn, and email
→ Spiral path: spiral write "announcing one-click CSV export — a launch across X, LinkedIn, and email" --instant --json returns a set of drafts per channel (Spiral decides the count — often several), each carrying its channel. (--num-drafts ignored here.) No-Spiral path: draft one X post, one LinkedIn post, one email directly. Present every returned draft, grouped by channel.