colophon-edit

Edit a colophon post

Revise an existing entry in place, keeping its voice and its frontmatter intact. colophon locates the entry and supplies the voice; you do the editing.

When to use

The user wants to change an existing post in a colophon project (not create a new one).

Requirements

This skill drives the colophon CLI. Before the first command, confirm it's installed:

command -v colophon || echo "colophon not found"

If it's missing, stop and offer the install — don't install it silently: go install github.com/jmylchreest/colophon/cmd/colophon@latest (or a release binary). Proceed only once it's on PATH.

Workflow

1. Find the entry. List entries to get the source file and metadata:

   colophon posts                       # slug, title, type, author, persona, tags
   colophon posts --author <a> --tag <t>  # narrow it
   

   Match the user's description to a row; the file is under the source's directory (see colophon sources). Read the file.

2. Re-load the voice so edits sound consistent with the rest of the post:

   colophon persona context <persona-from-frontmatter> --topic "<the post's subject>"
   

   If the post has no persona:, infer the voice from the post itself and similar posts.

3. Edit the file in place. Preserve:

   • the slug: (pinned — changing it breaks the URL; use aliases: for intentional moves),
   • the existing frontmatter fields you're not explicitly changing (byline author:, date:),
   • the author's voice, tense and formatting conventions. Make the smallest change that satisfies the request. For new cross-links, use [[wikilinks]].

4. Preview the change.

   colophon serve --open=<slug>     # opens that post; or --open=latest
   

Guardrails

• If colophon isn't installed, surface the install command and ask — never install it silently.
• Keep edits accessible: descriptive link text (never "click here"), alt text on meaningful images (hero_alt:/image_alt: for banners), and a logical heading order — fix these if you touch a section that violates them.
• Don't rewrite more than asked. Don't silently change the title's slug or the byline.
• Keep the post's draft/publish state unless the user asks to change it.
• If the edit affects metadata (description/SEO/tags), hand off to colophon-metadata.