subwave-news-dispatch - SKILL.md Agent Skill

name: subwave-news-dispatch description: Write a news post for the SUB/WAVE "Dispatches" page, a short human-friendly tutorial about a feature, fix, or release. Use this skill whenever the user wants to "write a news post / dispatch / news article", "announce a feature on the news page", "add a changelog entry to the site", "post an update about ", "write release notes for the site", or "tell people about " for SUB/WAVE. The skill knows where the markdown lives (web/content/news), the frontmatter schema, the what/how/why structure, and that every draft must be run through the `humanizer` skill before saving. It does NOT publish or deploy; it just writes the .md file, and the /news page picks it up on the next build.

SUB/WAVE news dispatch

Write one news article for the Dispatches page (/news). Each dispatch is a short, plain-English mini-tutorial about something that shipped: what it is, how to use it, and why it helps. Not a changelog line.

Why this skill exists

The news page reads markdown straight off disk (web/lib/news.ts reads web/content/news/*.md), so adding a post is just writing one file in the right shape. The easy-to-get-wrong parts are the frontmatter schema, keeping the tone human (short tutorial, not release-note jargon), and remembering to humanize the draft. This skill encodes all three.

Where the file goes

web/content/news/YYYY-MM-DD-slug.md

The YYYY-MM-DD- prefix is only for sorting files on disk; it's stripped from the URL. The page slug is the frontmatter slug if present, otherwise the filename minus that date prefix. So 2026-05-30-clone-a-voice.md serves at /news/clone-a-voice.
Pick the date from when the feature actually shipped. For a real commit: git show -s --format=%cs <sha>. Evergreen "this is what SUB/WAVE does" posts use the Spotlight category and any sensible recent date.
The eight seed articles already in web/content/news/ are the reference set. Match their length and voice.

Frontmatter schema

---
title: Make your DJ sound like anyone     # the headline; sentence case, no trailing period needed
date: 2026-05-30                          # ISO yyyy-mm-dd; drives ordering (newest first)
category: Feature                         # Release | Feature | Fix | Announcement | Spotlight
version: v0.2.0                           # optional, shows as a dateline tag
author: The SUB/WAVE desk                 # optional, byline on the article page
excerpt: One or two sentences shown on the index card and used as the meta description.
---

category describes the nature of the post, not the raw conventional-commit type. A fix(web) commit that listeners will notice is usually a Feature or Fix dispatch; a chore: release is a Release; an evergreen feature explainer is a Spotlight.
excerpt is required in practice. It's the deck on the index and the meta description / OG description. Keep it concrete.
Watch the YAML. title and excerpt are parsed as YAML, so a colon-then-space inside the value (a new bit: a moon phase) makes the parser read it as a nested key and the build fails. Avoid raw : in those values (reword, or use a comma), or wrap the whole value in double quotes. The same goes for a value that starts with a quote, [, {, @, or `.

Structure of the body

Aim for ~150-350 words. Three beats, in this order:

What's new. One or two lines. What shipped, in plain words.
How to use it. The concrete steps. Real commands, the exact filename/folder, where to click in admin. Use fenced code blocks for commands and paths. This is the part readers came for.
Why it helps. The benefit, in one short paragraph. What it lets them do now that they couldn't before.

Use ## subheads (sentence case) to break those up. Look at the seed articles for the rhythm. The first paragraph gets an automatic vermilion drop cap, so open with prose, not a heading.

Writing rules

No em-dashes. Reword with a comma, a colon, parentheses, or a full stop instead. This is a hard rule for the wire.
Short sentences. Vary the rhythm. First person ("we traced it to the Opus mount", "nothing for you to do") is fine and reads human.
No changelog-speak, no inflated significance, no rule-of-three padding.
Be specific: real paths, real commands, the real button name in admin. Pull the detail from git log, the PR, or the relevant manual page under web/components/manual/.
Straight quotes, sentence-case headings, no decorative emoji.

Required: humanize before saving

ALWAYS run the finished draft through the humanizer skill, apply its edits, then write the .md file. This is not optional. It's the step that keeps the wire from reading like AI release notes, and it's where the em-dash and rule-of-three habits get caught.

Verify

cd web && npm run lint && npm run build

Confirm the new slug appears under ● /news/[slug] in the build output (it's statically prerendered). A frontmatter typo shows up here as "Failed to collect page data for /news/[slug]".
The article shows on /news automatically, newest first, and the sitemap (web/app/sitemap.ts) picks it up via getNewsSlugs(). No other file to touch.
Optional spot check: cd web && npm run dev, open http://localhost:7700/news, confirm the headline, dateline, and body render.

Worked example (abridged)

File: web/content/news/2026-05-30-clone-a-voice.md

---
title: Make your DJ sound like anyone
date: 2026-05-30
category: Feature
version: v0.2.0
author: The SUB/WAVE desk
excerpt: PocketTTS can now clone a voice from a single WAV. Drop a clip in the voices folder, point a persona at it, and that's the voice on air.
---

Voice cloning used to be a Chatterbox-only trick. PocketTTS can do it too now...

## What's new

PocketTTS does zero-shot cloning from one reference WAV...

## How to use it

Drop the `.wav` into the voices folder:

```
state/voices/morning-host.wav
```

Then open a DJ persona in admin and set its voice to that filename. Save.

## Why it helps

Your station gets a real on-air identity...