Imported from nicks-sidehustle/petpalhq-next (.claude/skills/cp-pp-strategy/SKILL.md). Install upstream with npx skills add nicks-sidehustle/petpalhq-next --skill cp-pp-strategy. Copyright stays with the author.

Block 1: Strategy

Pipeline position: 1 of 6 — runs before Research.

See also: docs/GUIDE_CREATION_PROCESS.md §"High-level flow" step 1.

Purpose

Anchor the new guide to the site's content architecture before any writing happens. Wrong hub assignment or scope mismatch is expensive to fix later. This block produces a signed-off decision document (written to _relay-state.json) that every downstream block trusts.

Inputs

slug — from _relay-state.json (set by pipeline dispatcher)
Site state file: ~/.claude/projects/-Users-Nick-petpalhq-next/memory/project_petpal_v2.md
Roadmap file: ~/.claude/plans/yes-can-you-research-functional-whale.md

Steps

1. Read site state

Read ~/.claude/projects/-Users-Nick-petpalhq-next/memory/project_petpal_v2.md to understand:

How many guides are currently live
Which hubs exist and their spoke counts
Which verticals are thin (use this as the gap signal)

2. Check the roadmap

Read ~/.claude/plans/yes-can-you-research-functional-whale.md. Find the row in the topic table matching the slug (or nearest match). Extract:

hub — the hub slug this topic belongs to
vertical — Cats & Dogs / Aquarium / Reptile / Birds / Playground
AOV tier
Any notes about the topic

If the slug is not in the roadmap, note that explicitly and ask the owner to confirm hub + vertical before proceeding.

3. Verify the gap is real (anti-cannibalization)

A demand-doc / gap-analysis can be stale. Before spending research budget, confirm the gap still exists against current inventory — don't trust the roadmap row alone.

How:

ls src/content/guides/ and grep the topic keywords across guides to find overlapping existing pages.
Extract every related: slug across all guides and diff against the actual files to find phantom links (referenced-but-missing). But a recent internal-link-graph repair may have already closed those gaps, so a "phantom link / broken related-link" rationale can be moot — verify it still holds before relying on it.
Read the nearest overlapping guide's picks + shortAnswer to judge whether the proposed guide is genuinely differentiated.

Decision rule:

A broad roundup plus a deeper TYPE-spoke or SPECIES-spoke is legitimate — the site already does this (e.g. the canister-filters spoke sits under the filters-and-media roundup; a cat-specific food guide under a dog-only LID guide). If you proceed, cross-link the spoke to its roundup.
A second broad roundup on the same topic = cannibalization. Drop it. Instead, optimize the existing guide for those keywords (a Tier-2 move, not a new page).

Precedent: in the 2026-06-23 Tier-1 batch, 2 of 8 proposed guides (a dog hypoallergenic-food and a frequent-bath-shampoo) were near-duplicates of existing guides and were dropped; the aquarium "phantom-link" rationale was already moot because the link graph had been repaired. Building them would have cannibalized existing pages.

If the gap fails this check, stop and tell the owner — do not lock a slug/title or advance to Research.

4. Confirm or revise decisions

Present a decision summary to the owner:

Proposed strategy for: <slug>
─────────────────────────────────────
Hub:        <hub-slug>
Vertical:   <vertical>
Category:   <category> (e.g. "Smart Tech", "Enclosures", "Nutrition")
Guide type: spoke (default) | hub (rare — confirm explicitly)
Pillar:     <pillar> (e.g. "summer-2026", "core", "holiday-2026")
Scope:      <N> picks at <AOV range>
─────────────────────────────────────
Does this look right? Confirm or revise each field.

Wait for owner confirmation. Do not proceed to writing the state file until owner says "yes" or provides corrections.

5. Write _relay-state.json

After approval, update _relay-state.json with:

{
  "hub": "<confirmed-hub-slug>",
  "vertical": "<confirmed-vertical>",
  "category": "<category>",
  "guideType": "spoke",
  "pillar": "<pillar>",
  "scope": "<N picks at $X-Y AOV>",
  "currentBlock": "research"
}

Exit condition

_relay-state.json contains confirmed hub, vertical, category, guideType, pillar, and scope — AND owner has explicitly approved. Only then set currentBlock: "research".

Hard rules

Must end with explicit hub + scope decision before any downstream block can run.
Do not guess hub assignment — surface ambiguity and ask.
Do not start writing frontmatter or picks in this block.

Handoff

Tell the owner: "Strategy locked. Run /content-pipeline-petpal <slug> to advance to Research, or pause here."

cp-pp-strategy

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