Guide

Guide — The Hitchhiker's Guide to Content Creation

"A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have." A good morning brief is a close second.

An automated content pipeline for Claude Code. Fetches signals from RSS feeds, Gmail newsletters, and Hacker News, then produces a narrative daily brief, multiple LinkedIn drafts, and blog outlines — written in your authentic voice, delivered to your phone.

Security & Trust

Guide is not just prompt text — it ships executable helper scripts and workflows. When configured, it can read newsletter content from Gmail, fetch external URLs from those newsletters, and send notifications through iMessage or Slack.

Use it only in environments and accounts you trust, review the scripts before enabling them, and keep credentials such as Slack webhooks or Gmail auth outside the repository.

Quick Start

1. Install:

   /plugin install guide@heart-of-gold-toolkit
   

2. Set up — the wizard walks you through sources, themes, and voice:

   /guide:setup
   

3. Run:

   /guide:pipeline
   

Skills

/guide:setup

Interactive configuration wizard. Asks what RSS feeds you read, whether you use Gmail newsletters, what topics matter to you, and how you write. Creates content/config.yaml and offers to run your first pipeline.

Run once to get started. Run again any time to add sources or change settings.

/guide:pipeline

The daily content engine. Fetches ~100 signals, scores them against your themes, and produces:

• A narrative brief — opens with "The Story" (what's happening in the world right now, woven from 3-5 signals), followed by tiered reading list and content angles
• 3 LinkedIn drafts — each from a different angle, different tone, different entry point
• Blog outline — weekly, when an angle deserves deeper treatment (emotional arc structure)
• YouTube/long-form ideas — topics worth ranting about on camera

Then commits everything to git, pushes to GitHub, and sends a rich mini-brief via iMessage with clickable links.

Source weighting: Newsletters (1.5x) > Gmail digests (1.2x) > HN (1.0x). Voice captures get 2x weight — your own thoughts are the highest-value input.

/guide:capture

Daily thought capture. Morning intentions or evening reflections.

/guide:capture       # morning mode (auto-detected before noon)
/guide:capture pm    # evening mode

Works from the terminal or via iMessage replies when running with --channels plugin:imessage@claude-plugins-official. Get a nudge, reply with your thoughts, Claude saves the capture with detected themes and connections.

/guide:write-post

Guided blog writing in seven phases:

1. Context gathering
2. Scaffolding
3. Guided dictation
4. Shaping
5. Iteration
6. Publish preparation
7. Audio narration

Can pick up blog outlines generated by the pipeline (needs_write_post: true in frontmatter).

/guide:claude-code

Headless Claude Code handoff for second opinions, code review, targeted analysis, or follow-up on a bounded task.

Use it when you want another agent harness to invoke Claude Code non-interactively, capture the result, and summarize it back. The skill ships with a small wrapper script that standardizes claude -p / resume usage across installs.

/guide:codex

Headless OpenAI Codex CLI handoff for code analysis, refactoring, or automated editing. Use when you want to invoke codex exec / codex resume non-interactively and bring the result back.

/guide:gemini

Headless Google Gemini CLI handoff for code analysis, refactoring, or automated editing. Use when you want to invoke gemini / gemini resume non-interactively and bring the result back.

How the Pipeline Works

Sources (RSS + Gmail + HN)
  ↓
Scout → fetch scripts (fetch-rss.py, fetch-gmail.sh, fetch-hn.sh)
  ↓
Analyze → score 1-5 against themes, dedup vs last 3 briefs, find 4-6 angles
  ↓
Create → narrative brief + 3 LinkedIn drafts + blog outline + YouTube ideas
  ↓
Edit → voice fidelity check (base 85, jargon -10, claims -5, threshold 75)
  ↓
Deliver → git commit + push + iMessage brief with GitHub links

Configuration

Full schema in defaults/config.yaml. Key sections:

Section	What it controls
voice	Voice profile path, tone keywords, 17-term jargon blocklist
themes	Personal + professional topics for signal scoring
sources.rss	RSS/Atom feeds with freshness windows
sources.gmail	Gmail label, max items (uses gws CLI)
sources.hackernews	Top stories limit
sources.web_search	Search keywords (optional)
agents	Model assignments per pipeline phase (scout: sonnet, creator: opus, etc.)
cadence	LinkedIn 3x/week, blog biweekly targets
notifications	iMessage recipient, Slack webhook
output	Directory paths for briefs, drafts, pipeline state, captures

Running on a Schedule

Option A: launchd (one-shot, headless)

cp scripts/com.heart-of-gold.pipeline.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
# Edit: WorkingDirectory, Hour, PATH
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.heart-of-gold.pipeline.plist

Uses claude -p "Run /guide:pipeline..." --model sonnet in headless mode. Lock file prevents concurrent runs.

Option B: Persistent session with iMessage

claude --channels plugin:imessage@claude-plugins-official

Set up in-session crons with CronCreate for the pipeline (e.g., 2 AM daily), morning capture nudge, and evening capture nudge. This enables two-way iMessage interaction — briefs arrive in your self-chat, you reply to give feedback or do captures.

Scripts

Script	Language	What it does
fetch-rss.py	Python	Parse RSS/Atom feeds, filter by freshness, strip HTML
fetch-gmail.sh	Bash	Fetch Gmail newsletters via gws CLI +triage helper
fetch-hn.sh	Bash	Fetch HN top stories via Firebase API, parallel item fetching
notify.sh	Bash	Send iMessage (osascript) or Slack (webhook) notifications

Dependencies

• Python 3.10+ with feedparser and pyyaml
• jq, curl, and zip
• Bun runtime for the share-server reference implementation and CLI handoff skills
• Optional: gws CLI (Gmail), osascript (iMessage), bun (iMessage plugin server), tailscale CLI (private viewer exposure)

Tests

287 story-based tests + 10 security red-team tests:

pytest                                                    # standard suite
pytest --override-ini="python_files=test_*" \
       --override-ini="python_functions=test_*"           # include red-team