Files
paperclip-docs/skills
Aron PrinsandClaude Opus 5 325c9eb819 seo: hand-write titles and descriptions for all 192 pages (#115)
## Why

The build derived `<title>` from the **sidebar label** and the
description from the **first paragraph clipped to 220 characters**. Both
are the wrong source. A sidebar label is written for a 240px-wide nav
that supplies its own context; a search result has none.

On production that produced:

- **7 pages titled "Overview"**, and 32 pages sharing a title with
another page
- **109 of 193 descriptions cut off mid-word**, and 174 over 160
characters (where Google truncates)

```
/guides/welcome/key-concepts/
  BEFORE (220):  ...and if you misunderstand them early, the product wi
```

Near-identical titles are the weak-differentiation signal behind
"crawled — currently not indexed", which is the exact symptom on this
property.

## What changed

`seo_title` and `seo_description` frontmatter on **every one of the 192
pages**, written by hand against each page's real content and optimised
for the click — lead with what the reader can do, name the concrete
things covered, no keyword stuffing, no repeating the title.

| | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Duplicate titles | 32 pages | **0** |
| Duplicate descriptions | — | **0** |
| Descriptions cut mid-word | 109 | **0** |
| Descriptions over 160 chars | 174 | **0** |
| Title length (incl. suffix) | up to "Overview" | **26–60** |
| Description length | 31–240 | **122–158** |

**No prose was rewritten.** I measured content overlap between the
colliding pairs first — only 17–23%, so these were always distinct pages
wearing the same label, not duplicate content. The `docs/` diff is **564
insertions, zero deletions**.

### Examples

```
BEFORE — all seven identical:  "Overview | Paperclip Docs"
AFTER:  "Adapters Overview"      "API Overview"        "CLI Overview"
        "Deployment Overview"    "Bundled Skills"      "Optional Skills"
        "Experimental Features"

BEFORE — both identical:  "Issues | Paperclip Docs"
AFTER:  "Issues: Creating and Tracking Work"   /guides/day-to-day/issues/
        "Issues API"                           /reference/api/issues/
```

```
/guides/getting-started/five-minute-path/
BEFORE (220):  The shortest route from a running Paperclip instance to an agent that has
               just completed work for you. After Paperclip is installed, the path takes
               about 5 minutes: create a company, hire a CEO agent, approve its first s
AFTER  (131):  Install Paperclip, create a company, hire a CEO agent, and approve its
               first strategy — a working AI company in about five minutes.
```

## Plumbing

- **`site/build-release.mjs`** prefers the authored fields; the derived
path stays only as a fallback the CI gate prevents ever reaching.
`<title>`, `<meta name="description">`, and the `TechArticle` JSON-LD
all read from the same source.
- **`site/app.js`** uses the same fields, so a client-side transition
cannot leave a different title on screen than the crawler was served.
Verified in-browser: navigating `/guides/day-to-day/issues/` →
`/reference/api/issues/` swaps to exactly the server-rendered values, no
JS errors.
- **`scripts/verify-seo-metadata.mjs`** (new) enforces presence,
uniqueness, length, complete-sentence endings, and the
frontmatter-safety rules. Wired into `docs:test` and CI as its own step.

I negative-tested the gate rather than assuming it works — it correctly
fails on a duplicate title, a mid-word description, and a missing field,
and passes again once restored.

## Automating it going forward

`skills/sync-docs/SKILL.md` now:

- gains an **"Authored SEO metadata"** section: why the fields exist,
the enforced rules as a table, and how to actually write them (title
names the subject not the nav position; description writes for the
click; never generate mechanically from the first paragraph — *that is
the fallback the gate exists to prevent*).
- requires both fields in the **page-authoring instruction** given to
every subagent, with guidance on when to update an existing description
versus leave it.
- runs `docs:test:seo-metadata` and `docs:test:crawlable-links` as
**fail-loud gates in Phase 7** before commit.
- documents all six build gates in the files/gates section.

So once this lands, a new page cannot ship without hand-written
metadata, and a title collision cannot reach production.

## Verified

All six verifiers pass:

```
Static route verification passed
Asset fingerprint verification passed
Hierarchical Skills nav verification passed
Skill source block verification passed (11 skill pages, 1 control page)
Crawlable-link contract passed: 40886 internal links across 194 pages resolve in one hop
Authored-SEO contract passed: 192 pages carry a unique, hand-written seo_title and seo_description
```

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
2026-08-25 22:51:42 +02:00
..

skills/

Claude Code skills that ship with this repo. These are committed alongside the docs so the sync workflow stays reproducible across machines and contributors.

Available skills

Skill What it does Invoke
sync-docs Keeps these docs in lockstep with the parent paperclipai/paperclip codebase. Two modes: nightly (tracks parent main, preview deploy) and release (on parent tag, merges to main, ships live). /sync-docs

Using a skill from this repo

Skills here are plain Markdown files with frontmatter. Claude Code discovers them by directory.

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
ln -s "$PWD/skills/sync-docs" ~/.claude/skills/sync-docs

The /sync-docs slash command becomes available in any session.

Option B — project-level skills dir

If your Claude Code setup supports per-project skills (.claude/skills/), link from there:

mkdir -p .claude/skills
ln -s "../../skills/sync-docs" .claude/skills/sync-docs

Either way, the skill files themselves stay versioned in skills/, so updates flow with normal git operations.

Why skills live in the repo

The doc-sync workflow is repo-specific (it knows about our anchor-map.json, our branch model, our voice rules). Shipping it inside the repo means:

  • Anyone cloning the repo gets the workflow.
  • Changes to the workflow review like any other PR.
  • The skill's prompts evolve alongside the docs they produce.