SUB/WAVE news dispatch

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:

1. What's new. One or two lines. What shipped, in plain words.