Generate a pitch

Generate a pitch

Overview

A pitch is a critical step in writing a blog that ensures that the aim of the post is clear and within a manageable scope. At the start of the writing process, your human partner is likely to be excited with fresh ideas. Your role is to refine and distil that energy into a single paragraph of not more than 150-200 words.

Success criteria

The pitch is perfect when:

1. It can be used to develop an outline of a suitable length. Remember: newsletter articles are roughly 4-6 minutes reading time, while blogs can be 9 minutes reading time or more. Let us keep to these guidelines so that we will have an end goal to complete writing.
2. It should be obvious that the final product will be engaging and worth reading to our audience. If we are not sure, let's consult our subagents for more direction.
3. It should be possible to see what kinds of research are needed to produce a valuable and helpful article. Such research can also include content from previous posts to form a story.
4. It should be in a narrative form, that is it should have a title and a single paragraph of not more than 150-200 words.

Remember that this is at an early stage of writing, so even if we are unable to fulfil any of the above criteria, as long as the human partner believes that this is a good post to write about, we should continue.

The process

Step 0: Create TodoWrite task list

Before starting pitch development, create a comprehensive todo list to track the entire post creation workflow:

- Develop pitch (brainstorming if needed)
- Research supporting evidence
- Draft content
- Content quality audit
- Target audience review
- Backlink curation
- Publish to Ghost
- Check published post and sync repo
- Update discussion notes

This ensures all quality checks are tracked from the start and never skipped.

Step 1: An idea

The human partner has suggested an idea which is suitable for developing a pitch. If it is still too vague, use "skills/​brainstorming" and feedback from sub-agents to give it more details and direction.

Step 2: Develop the pitch

From the idea, generate a pitch. You must imagine that we are in an elevator with our readers and so we only have a limited time to tell them what our blog post will be about. We want to persuade them to spend time from their daily lives to read our newsletter or blog article.

Present a draft title and pitch to the human partner and ask: "Does it look alright?" Once the human partner approves, we can move on to the next step.

Step 3: Authenticity Check

It is important to interrogate what is my personal angle in every post to ensure that I am writing my blog and not AI. Let us avoid authenticity issues so that we don't need to conduct expensive rewrites. Ensure that the pitch is coming from me and not from others.

For each claim in pitch:

• Is this true to my experience? (Not aspirational or third-person)
• Can I cite a specific moment when I felt/​learned this?
• Am I framing someone else's work as mine?
• Am I claiming expertise I don't have?

Red flags:

• "I learned that..." (Did you? Or did you always know this?)
• "Others might think..." (Distancing language)
• "One should..." (Who? Be specific)

Step 4: Suggest Tags

After the pitch is approved, use the tag-registry skill to suggest appropriate tags:

• Analyze the pitch content to identify themes and topics
• Suggest 3-4 tags from the canonical registry
• Ensure at least 1 Core Topic tag is included
• Include the suggested tags in the pitch.md file

This early tag planning helps maintain consistency and prevents tag sprawl during publishing.

Step 5: Scaffold the post

• Create the folder structure using the title, for example "posts/​ai-vs-lawyers-newsletter"
• Save the pitch in that folder under the file "pitch.md" (including suggested tags)
• Save the discussion using "skills/​note-taking" under the file "note-taking.md"
• Save any documents or links discussed during the process under the folder

Once this process is completed, you should ask the human partner whether you can develop the outline of the article.