Your First Guide: One Hour of Play, One QA-Passing Page

A true scene first

Your site runs, but the shelves still hold someone else’s sample goods — and Google only ranks pages that answer player questions. An empty site earns no traffic. The good news: you won’t write a single sentence yourself. You play, take notes, and paste prompts; AI produces pages that meet the spec, and every page passes a QA gate automatically.

Three new words first — the next five lessons run on them:

frontmatter (the registration card): the block between the two --- at the top of every article — title, description, category. AI fills it; you never hand-write it.
the QA gate (Zod schema): a built-in inspector — a malformed card fails pnpm build and tells you exactly what’s wrong. It blocks junk before players see it.
draft (the flag): unverified content gets draft: true — visible only to you; flip it off once verified.

Which query wants which page (the intent table — the next three lessons each take one row):

Players search	They want	You build
`codes / redeem`	redeemable codes	the codes page (Lesson 14)
`how to`	to learn the game	a guide page (this lesson)
`best / tier`	to know who’s strong	a tier list (Lesson 15)

Step 1: point your AI assistant at the site folder

Open tool #6 from Lesson 9: Cursor / ZCode — use “Open Folder” and pick AnvilWiki; Claude Code / Codex (terminal) — cd AnvilWiki first, then start the tool. Open a new conversation.

You’ll see: the path ends in AnvilWiki. Ask it “what folder are you in?” to confirm.

It now knows three things unprompted: the site’s format rules (AGENTS.md), the built-in skills, and the card schema.

Step 2: play one hour, take notes

How well AI writes is eight-tenths decided by your material. Fragments typed on your phone are fine:

What mechanics does this boss have? Where did I die, and why each time?
What build/route got me through?
Where did I see that code? What’s the code, the reward, the expiry?

Twenty fragments per hour covers three pages. Want a system later? The repo’s requirements/ has two fill-in templates (fact-source table + benchmark table) each with a paste-ready research prompt — notes are enough for now.

Step 3: the guide-page prompt (paste whole, `<>` replaced)

Turn the points below into a guide page (tools with skills: use /anvil-new-article).
[Material]
Game/Boss: <name>
Points: <spoken notes, mechanic observations, numbers — as many as you have>
[Requirements]
Follow AGENTS.md content rules; first read docs/content-format.md and src/content.config.ts.
frontmatter: title ≤80 chars incl. game name; description 40–165 chars; summary 40–60 words, direct answer;
category from existing navigation.ts keys; reuse existing tags; add draft: true for anything unverified.
Body: no H1; H2s phrased as questions with the answer in the first paragraph; data in tables; use Callout/Accordion/StatBar.
Never invent numbers — missing data becomes [TBD] plus a list of questions for me.
Run pnpm check-content && pnpm build; both green or not done; on failure, fix and rerun.

You’ll see: AI reads the rule files, writes the page, runs the QA gate, reports all-green. Check: pnpm dev, open the article — title, tables, first-paragraph answer all there.

Three classic mistakes (made for you in advance)

“Write me a good guide”: material is the first citizen of any prompt — vague in, invented out.
Letting AI fill in numbers it cannot know: missing data becomes [TBD] and a question list — empty beats invented.
Inventing new categories or tags: use only the set created during the rebrand; new categories are Development Manual territory.

Three words to know (just these)

Covered above: frontmatter, the QA gate, draft. Close the manual — can you say each in one sentence?

✅ Acceptance (all must hold)

☐ Your first guide page passes pnpm check-content && pnpm build (all green)
☐ You eyeballed the page: title right, tables render, answer up front
☐ The TBD list is either filled in, or the page wears a draft flag

Next lesson

Guides mastered. Next lesson is the highest-traffic page on the site — and the easiest to wreck: the codes page, with the thickest red line in the manual. Go to Lesson 14 · The Codes Page