setup

/guide:setup — Configure Your Content Pipeline

"Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?" No. Let's set this up properly instead.

Interactive setup for the Guide content pipeline. Creates your content/config.yaml by asking what you care about, where you get your information, and how you write.

Run this once. After that, /guide:pipeline handles everything.

When This Runs

• First time: User runs /guide:setup directly, or /guide:pipeline detects no config and suggests it
• Reconfiguration: User runs /guide:setup again to add sources, change themes, etc. — existing config is read and updated, not overwritten

Steps

Step 1: Read Existing State

• Check if content/config.yaml already exists
• If yes, read it — this is a reconfiguration, not a fresh setup. Pre-fill answers from existing values.
• Check if defaults/config.yaml exists in the plugin directory for the schema reference

Step 2: Voice Profile

Ask:

"First — how do you write? Do you have an existing writing voice document, or should we figure it out together?"

If they have a voice file: Ask for the path (e.g., thoughts/writing-voice.md). Read it to confirm it looks like a voice profile.

If they don't: Ask a few questions to build one:

• "Describe your writing style in 3 words"
• "What kind of writing makes you cringe?" (these become anti-patterns)
• "Any corporate jargon that should never appear in your content?" (seed the blocklist)
• Write a basic voice profile to thoughts/writing-voice.md and reference it in config

Step 3: Themes

Ask:

"What topics matter to you? Think both personal (what you care about as a human) and professional (what you work on)."

Let them list freely. Organize into themes.personal and themes.professional in the config. Suggest categorization but don't force it.

If they're stuck, offer examples:

• Personal: transformation, fitness, creativity, parenting, travel, vulnerability
• Professional: engineering, AI, leadership, product, design, startups

Step 4: Sources

Ask:

"Where do you get your information? Let's set up your signal sources."

Walk through each source type:

RSS feeds:

"Any blogs or newsletters you read regularly? Give me URLs or names and I'll find the RSS feeds."

• If they give names, search for the RSS feed URL (try common patterns: /feed, /rss, /atom.xml)
• Validate each feed actually returns entries
• Set sensible freshness_hours defaults (72 for daily, 168 for weekly)

Gmail newsletters:

"Do you get newsletters via email? We can pull those in too." "You'll need the gws CLI installed and a Gmail label for the newsletters you want to process."

• If they want Gmail: help them pick a label name, explain they need to create a Gmail filter
• If not: set gmail.enabled: false

Hacker News:

"Want Hacker News top stories in the mix? (default: yes, 30 stories)"

Web search:

"Any specific topics you'd like web-searched daily? (optional)"

Step 5: Content Cadence

Ask:

"How often do you want to create content?"

• LinkedIn: posts per week (default 3), word range (default 150-300)
• Blog: frequency (default biweekly), word range (default 1000-2000)
• YouTube/long-form: interested yes/no

Step 6: Notifications

Ask:

"How do you want to receive your daily brief?"

Options:

• iMessage (recommended with --channels): ask for phone number
• Slack: ask for webhook URL
• Files only: no notifications, just read them in content/daily/

Step 7: Write Config

• Generate content/config.yaml from all answers
• Create content/ directory structure (daily/, drafts/, pipeline/, captures/)
• Show the config to the user for confirmation
• Save it

Step 8: First Run

Ask:

"Config saved. Want to run the pipeline now and see your first brief?"

If yes: run /guide:pipeline.

Output

• content/config.yaml — the pipeline configuration
• thoughts/writing-voice.md — voice profile (if generated)
• content/daily/, content/drafts/, content/pipeline/, content/captures/ directories created

Edge Cases

• Config already exists: Read it, show current settings, ask what to change
• RSS feed URL is invalid: Skip it with a warning, don't block setup
• No sources configured: Warn that the pipeline will have limited signal, but allow it
• User wants to skip steps: Let them — every field has sensible defaults from defaults/config.yaml