Article

${var} — Selector: [angle:arg] [--visual]. The angle prefix picks the article type; append --visual (or visual) anywhere to also generate a Replicate hero image.

• empty → standard general long-form article on an auto-selected trending topic. If the resolved topic is a single explainable mechanism, it becomes a technical explainer instead.
• <topic> (no recognized prefix) → standard article on that topic.
• repo:<owner/repo> → repo thesis-driven article about that repo. repo:<angle> (e.g. repo:architecture) or bare repo: uses the repo from memory/watched-repos.md with that angle / an auto-selected angle — this preserves repo-article's original input.
• lens:<topic> → lens project-through-a-lens essay framed by that lens (e.g. lens:unix philosophy). Bare lens: auto-selects the lens.
• --visual appended to any of the above → after the body is written, generate a Replicate hero image (optional REPLICATE_API_TOKEN; ships text-only if absent).

Examples: "", "entropy trajectory reasoning --visual", "repo:aaronjmars/aeon", "repo:roadmap", "lens:regulation wave --visual".

Today is ${today}. Write a high-quality, publication-ready article. No placeholders.

Shared preamble (every run)

1. Read memory/MEMORY.md for context on what topics/articles have been covered recently.
2. Read the last 3–7 days of memory/logs/ for recent activity — and don't re-report something already covered.
3. Parse ${var} into angle + visual:
   • Detect a standalone --visual or visual token anywhere in ${var}; if present set visual = true and strip that token. Otherwise visual = false.
   • From what remains: if it starts with repo: → angle = repo, arg = the rest. If it starts with lens: → angle = lens, arg = the rest. Otherwise → angle = standard, arg = the whole remaining string (empty ⇒ auto-select).
4. Dispatch to the matching angle section below. If visual = true, run the Visual add-on after the article body is written, regardless of angle.

Angle: standard — long-form article / technical explainer

A single long-form article. It takes one of two structures depending on the topic:

• General article — a broad trend, development, or event. 600–800 words.
• Technical explainer — a single explainable mechanism, technique, algorithm, or system. 600–1000 words, using the explainer structure below.

Topic selection (standard)

• If arg (the topic) is set, use it verbatim. If it clearly names a single mechanism/technique/system → technical explainer structure; otherwise → general article structure.
• If arg is empty, pick deterministically — first hit wins:
  1. Explainer candidate: a single most non-obvious mechanism inside the newest file in output/articles/ from the last 3 days; else the newest "Paper Pick" in memory/logs/ from the last 7 days (its headline mechanism); else a specific technique/algorithm/system surfaced in the last 7 days of logs. If a strong single-mechanism candidate exists → technical explainer on it. Reject any candidate broader than a single mechanism (e.g. "AI agents" — too vague; "MCP tool-routing via vector search" — usable).
  2. General candidate: otherwise search the web for the most interesting recent development in AI, crypto/DeFi, or consciousness research — pick whichever has the most compelling story today (WebSearch) → general article.

Voice (technical explainer)

If a soul/ directory exists, read the soul files for voice calibration: soul/SOUL.md (identity, worldview, opinions), then soul/STYLE.md (writing style, sentence structure, anti-patterns). This is you explaining a mechanism to a smart friend — more precision than a general article, same voice. No textbook tone, no "let's explore." If soul/ is empty, default to clear, direct, neutral.

Research

General article: read 2–3 source articles with WebFetch to gather facts and quotes.

Technical explainer: run three distinct WebSearch queries so you triangulate rather than echo one source:

1. "<topic>" how it works — mechanism explanations
2. "<topic>" benchmark OR results OR latency OR cost — concrete numbers
3. "<topic>" limits OR criticism OR fails OR doesn't work — failure modes and pushback

If the topic is from a paper, also fetch the paper metadata and abstract:

curl -s "https://api.semanticscholar.org/graph/v1/paper/search?query=TOPIC&limit=5&fields=title,authors,abstract,url,publicationDate,openAccessPdf" \
  || echo "curl failed — use WebFetch on https://www.semanticscholar.org/search?q=TOPIC instead"

Use WebFetch to read the 2–3 best sources in depth. At least one source must be primary: a paper (arXiv / OpenReview / Semantic Scholar), official documentation, the project's own README, or a code repo. Blog summaries alone are not enough — they often mangle the mechanism.

Extract:

• The single core mechanism — the one move that, once you grok it, makes the rest fall into place.
• A vivid analogy for the mechanism, and the precise place where the analogy breaks down (the breakage is the interesting part).
• 3–5 specific numbers — benchmarks, latencies, costs, error rates, training compute, parameter counts. Each number gets a source URL.
• What would falsify this — what result, if observed, would mean the mechanism doesn't work as claimed. If you can't name one, the explanation isn't sharp enough — keep digging.

Write

General article — 600–800 words in Markdown. Include:

• A compelling title
• A short intro hook
• 3–4 substantive sections
• Cited sources (with URLs) at the bottom

Technical explainer — 600–1000 words. Structure (every section required):

# <Title>

**Key idea in one sentence:** <one-sentence claim about the mechanism>

## The Setup
2-3 sentences. What problem does this solve? Why now?

## The Intuition Pump
A vivid analogy that builds the reader's mental model in 3-4 sentences. Then one sentence on **where the analogy breaks down** — that's where the real mechanism lives.

## How It Actually Works
A numbered walkthrough of the mechanism in **3-7 steps**. Each step is one or two sentences. Use concrete examples — name the specific function, layer, message, opcode, contract. No "the system processes the input" — say what the system actually does.

## Numbers That Anchor It
3-5 bullet points. Each bullet is a specific number with a source link, e.g.:
- 8.4× faster end-to-end than baseline at 4K context ([source](url))

## What Would Break This
1-2 sentences naming a result that, if observed, would falsify the claim. This forces honesty.

## Why It Matters
2-3 sentences. What does this unlock? Who should care?

## Sources
- [Title 1](url) — primary
- [Title 2](url)
- [Title 3](url)

Voice rules (technical explainer): First person where it fits. Explanatory > opinionated, but not bloodless. Technical precision > hedging — if you don't know, say so, don't fudge. Short paragraphs. Em dashes. Concrete > abstract. Reference specific systems, papers, people — no "researchers have shown," name them. Cite inline: every number, every claim that could be wrong, gets a link.

Save & notify (standard)

• General article: save to output/articles/${today}.md.
• Technical explainer: save to output/articles/explainer-${today}.md. If a hero image was generated (see Visual add-on), put it at the very top: ![hero](../images/explainer-${today}.<ext>) — relative path, skip the line if no image — and add an HTML comment with the image prompt used (for future audits).

Update memory/MEMORY.md to record the article and its topic (add to the Recent Articles list/table). Append the consolidated log entry (see Log), then notify via ./notify:

• General article:

  New article written: [title]
  
  https://github.com/${GITHUB_REPOSITORY}/blob/main/output/articles/${today}.md
  

  Use the $GITHUB_REPOSITORY env var (GitHub Actions sets it to owner/repo of the running instance).

• Technical explainer:

  technical explainer: [title]
  
  [the one-sentence "key idea" line, verbatim]
  
  [hero image URL if generated — original Replicate URL still works for ~24h]
  
  read it: output/articles/explainer-${today}.md
  

Angle: repo — thesis-driven article about a watched repo

Config

Reads repos from memory/watched-repos.md. Resolve the target repo:

• If arg looks like owner/repo (contains a /) → that's the repo to cover; the angle is auto-selected in Phase 2.
• Else if arg is a non-empty keyword (e.g. architecture, recent progress, roadmap) → it's the angle; pick the repo from memory/watched-repos.md (if multiple are listed, the one with the most activity in the last 7 days).
• Else (arg empty) → repo from memory/watched-repos.md (most active of the last 7 days), angle auto-selected.

An article without a thesis is filler. This angle runs five phases and only advances when the current phase's gate passes.

Phase 1 — Research (gather, don't write yet)

Run these in parallel where possible (substitute the resolved owner/repo):

# Repo metadata
gh api repos/owner/repo --jq '{name, description, language, stargazers_count, forks_count, open_issues_count, topics, created_at, updated_at, pushed_at, default_branch}'

# Commits in last 7 days (paginated)
gh api repos/owner/repo/commits -X GET \
  -f since="$(date -u -d '7 days ago' +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ 2>/dev/null || date -u -v-7d +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)" \
  --jq '.[] | {sha: .sha[0:7], msg: .commit.message | split("\n")[0], author: .commit.author.name, date: .commit.author.date, url: .html_url}' --paginate

# Merged PRs in last 7 days
gh api 'repos/owner/repo/pulls?state=closed&sort=updated&direction=desc&per_page=50' \
  --jq '[.[] | select(.merged_at and (.merged_at > (now - 86400*7 | todate))) | {number, title, user: .user.login, merged_at, additions, deletions, url: .html_url}]'

# Open PRs
gh api repos/owner/repo/pulls --jq '[.[] | {number, title, user: .user.login, created_at, draft, labels: [.labels[].name], url: .html_url}]'

# Issues opened/closed in last 7 days (exclude PRs)
gh api 'repos/owner/repo/issues?state=all&since='$(date -u -d '7 days ago' +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)'&per_page=100' --paginate \
  --jq '[.[] | select(.pull_request | not) | {number, title, state, created_at, closed_at, labels: [.labels[].name]}]'

# Last 3 releases
gh api repos/owner/repo/releases --jq '.[0:3] | .[] | {tag_name, name, published_at, body}'

# README (fallback: WebFetch raw URL if base64 decode fails)
gh api repos/owner/repo/readme --jq '.content' | base64 -d

From the commit list, find the most-frequently-touched files. Read the top 2–3 of those with gh api repos/owner/repo/contents/<path> plus any CHANGELOG.md, ROADMAP.md, or architecture docs.

External context — three distinct WebSearch queries:

1. "owner/repo" site:news.ycombinator.com OR site:lobste.rs OR site:reddit.com
2. "owner/repo" twitter OR x.com (or the project name if distinctive)
3. One query to anchor positioning against a comparable/competing project.

Gate 1 — enough story? If all of the following hold, abort and notify REPO_ARTICLE_SKIPPED: insufficient activity (log reason, write no article):

• <3 commits in the last 7 days, AND
• 0 merged PRs in the last 7 days, AND
• no release in the last 30 days, AND
• no external mentions surfaced in step 3.

Quiet-repo exception: if the repo has historical importance but is currently slow (e.g. only 1–2 commits this week, no release), do not skip — instead narrow the article's focus to the single most substantive recent change (a specific commit, a contested issue thread, a roadmap update) and write a shorter piece around that. Prefer publishing a tight 600-word piece on one real change over skipping.

Phase 2 — Thesis

Write one falsifiable claim in ≤25 words. The claim must be disprovable by specific evidence — not a vibe.

• Good: "aaronjmars/aeon is pivoting from scheduled digests to reactive skill chains — 4 of 7 merged PRs this week added or consumed output/.chains/*.md contracts."
• Bad: "Aeon is an interesting agent framework." (not falsifiable)

If an angle is forced (from arg), the thesis must relate to it (e.g. angle architecture → an architectural claim). If no angle is forced, pick the one with the strongest evidence from: shipping velocity shift, architectural pivot, community growth inflection, roadmap commitment, deprecation/scope cut, performance or scale milestone.

Gate 2 — falsifiability. Finish the sentence: "This claim would be wrong if ____." If you can't complete it with something concrete and checkable, rewrite the thesis.

Phase 3 — Draft (600–900 words, Markdown)

# [Title that asserts the thesis or a consequence of it — not "A look at X"]

[1-paragraph hook, ≤80 words: lead with the thesis or a surprising number that sets it up.]

## The claim
> [The falsifiable thesis, verbatim, as a blockquote.]

## Evidence
[Two to four sub-paragraphs. Each MUST cite at least one specific commit SHA, PR#, file path, release tag, or external mention. Link the source inline.]

## Counter-evidence / what would change my mind
[One paragraph. What recent signals argue against the thesis? Be honest. If genuinely nothing does, say so — but only after looking.]

## Why it matters
[One paragraph. Who benefits or loses if the thesis is true? Connect to an ecosystem trend, user need, or competing project.]

---
*Sources*
- [Label](url)
- [Label](url)
[≥4 total, ≥1 in-repo (commit/PR link) and ≥1 external (news/social/doc).]

Phase 4 — Self-edit (required)

Run this checklist. Rewrite any line that fails. Target: 8/8 passing.

1. Thesis visible in first 100 words? If not, rewrite the hook.
2. Every section has ≥1 specific number, SHA, PR#, filename, or date? (generic adjectives don't count)
3. Zero banned phrases (see Banned phrase lexicon section below — check against that explicit list).
4. Counter-evidence is real — not a strawman like "some might say it's complex".
5. Sources ≥4 links, ≥1 in-repo, ≥1 external.
6. Title asserts something (not "A look at X" / "Exploring Y").
7. Word count in 600–900 (hard bounds — trim or expand).
8. No placeholder phrases like "[TBD]", "[link]", "[title]".

If any item still fails after one rewrite pass, publish with status REPO_ARTICLE_DEGRADED and note which items failed in the log — don't hide it.

Phase 5 — Save, log, notify (repo)

1. Save the article to output/articles/repo-article-${today}.md. (If a hero image was generated via the Visual add-on, put ![hero](../images/repo-article-${today}.<ext>) at the top.)
2. Append the consolidated log entry (see Log) before notifying.
3. Update the Recent Articles table in memory/MEMORY.md (Date | Title | Topic).
4. Notify via ./notify:

   *[Article title]*
   
   Thesis: [one sentence]
   
   Read: [link to output/articles/repo-article-${today}.md in THIS repo — get the repo name from `git remote get-url origin`, not the watched repo]
   

Banned phrase lexicon (repo angle)

Reject a draft that contains any of these. Match case-insensitively, whole phrase or obvious variant:

• "in today's fast-paced world"
• "leveraging" / "leverage" (as a verb meaning "use")
• "robust"
• "game-changer" / "game-changing"
• "under the hood" (unless the section actually walks through internals)
• "taking X to the next level"
• "at the end of the day"
• "diving into" / "deep dive"
• "delving into" / "delve"
• "comprehensive suite"
• "cutting-edge"
• "seamlessly" / "seamless"
• "empowers" / "empowering"
• "revolutionize" / "revolutionary"
• "unlock" (metaphorical, e.g. "unlocks new possibilities")
• "streamline" (as filler)
• "best-in-class"
• "paradigm shift"

If a banned phrase is the most accurate word in a technical context (e.g. actually describing leverage in a derivatives article), keep it and note the exemption in the log.

Constraints (repo angle)

• Never publish without a thesis.
• Never pad to hit word count — 600 honest words beat 900 padded.
• Never fabricate a SHA, PR number, or quote. If real evidence isn't available, weaken the thesis or skip.

Angle: lens — the project through a surprising lens

Writes articles that explain the project through a different lens each time — framed so a reader who's never heard of the project understands why it matters, via something they already care about. NOT a repo progress update (that's the repo angle above). arg is the lens (e.g. "unix philosophy", "regulation wave", "open source funding"); if empty, auto-select from trending topics + angle rotation.

Read before deciding anything: memory/MEMORY.md, the last 7 days of memory/logs/, memory/watched-repos.md, and memory/project-lens-angles.md (may not exist on first run — treat absence as empty history).

Why models fail at this by default: they slide into feature-listing wrapped in philosophical language, forced parallels with no mechanism, and marketing tone. This angle prevents that with a research → thesis → draft → self-edit pipeline where each phase has hard gates. If the gates can't pass, abort — don't publish a weak article.

Phase 1 — Context

Read before deciding anything:

• Last 14 days of output/articles/project-lens-*.md and memory/project-lens-angles.md — know which angle categories and theses are exhausted.
• 2–3 most recent output/articles/repo-article-*.md and output/articles/push-recap-*.md — know what shipped lately.
• Repo state: gh api repos/{owner}/{repo} --jq '{name, description, stargazers_count, forks_count, open_issues_count, updated_at}'. If unreachable, continue with memory only and log the gap.

If memory/watched-repos.md is empty or missing, abort and notify: "project-lens: no watched repo configured."

Phase 2 — Pick the lens

If arg is set, use it verbatim. Classify into one of the 8 categories below for logging.

If arg is empty:

1. Run 2–3 WebSearch queries on what's being debated right now in tech, crypto, AI, regulation, open source, or philosophy (e.g., "AI agents" autonomy debate last 7 days, crypto regulation April 2026, open source funding model 2026).
2. From results, identify 3 candidate angles with non-obvious connections to the project.
3. Pick the one that (a) hasn't appeared in the last 14 days and (b) has the strongest concrete connection. Record the choice and the rejected candidates with one-line reasons.

Angle categories (no repeat within 14 days):

1. Current events — Something happening this week/month.
2. Philosophy / big ideas — Unix philosophy, cathedral vs bazaar, composability, anti-fragility, skin in the game, swarm intelligence, etc.
3. Industry comparison — How a well-known company/project solved a similar problem differently.
4. User story — POV of a specific persona (solo dev, DAO, research lab, crypto community) with and without this tool.
5. Contrarian take — Challenge a common assumption; use project as evidence.
6. Technical deep-dive for non-technical readers — One architectural decision, plain language, bigger implications.
7. Historical parallel — Computing / internet / non-tech history with a concrete mechanism (not surface resemblance).
8. Ecosystem map — Where the project sits: adjacent, complementary, competing.

Phase 3 — Research (gate: collect evidence before drafting)

External side — required minimums:

• 3+ WebSearch queries on the lens topic (different framings, not rewordings)
• WebFetch on the 2+ most relevant sources
• ≥3 distinct domains across cited sources
• ≥3 concrete facts extracted: names, numbers, dollar amounts, dated quotes, specific events
• Recency: ≤30 days old for "current events"; ≤180 days for industry comparison / contrarian / ecosystem; ≤5 years for philosophy / historical
• Log every URL consulted

Project side — required minimums:

• 2+ recent articles in output/articles/ read end-to-end
• gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/commits --jq '.[0:10] | .[] | {sha: .sha[0:7], msg: (.commit.message|split("\n")[0])}' — last 10 commits
• ≥3 specific project references you plan to use: named features, file paths, commit hashes, architectural choices. Not vague claims like "the project uses AI" or "it has good UX."

If you cannot hit these minimums, abandon the angle and re-run Phase 2 with a different category. Log the abandoned angle and why.

Phase 4 — Thesis lock (hard gate)

Before drafting, write ONE falsifiable claim in ≤30 words that links the lens to the project. Example:

"Running agents as scheduled GitHub Actions — rather than as persistent servers — trades a few seconds of latency for a property the AI industry barely has: versioned, audit-trailed, publicly forkable autonomy."

Rules:

• Falsifiable: a reasonable critic could argue the opposite.
• Specific: names concrete things (cron jobs, not "infrastructure"; audit-trailed, not "better").
• Not a tautology. Not marketing. Not "this is cool because X."

If you can't state the thesis in one sentence, the angle isn't working — return to Phase 2. Do not proceed with a fuzzy thesis.

Phase 5 — Draft (700–1000 words)

Save to output/articles/project-lens-${today}.md with this structure:

# [Title: leads with the lens, works for a reader who doesn't know the project]

[¶1-2: external hook. Start with the trend/idea/event/question the reader already cares about. Do NOT name the project yet.]

## [Section: establishes the external frame]
[Build the lens with one or more of your concrete facts — a quote, a number, a specific event.]

## [Section: introduces the project through the frame]
[Project enters here — but through the lens, not as a feature list. Describe how it embodies, challenges, or extends the idea with specific code/design references.]

## [Section: one non-obvious technical or strategic detail]
[Where the article earns its existence. Point to something in the code, architecture, or approach a reader wouldn't get from the README.]

## [Section: zoom back out]
[A concrete forward claim — specific enough to be wrong. Not "this is exciting." Something like "this suggests X won't happen for 2-3 years because Y" or "this is the same mistake [named case] made, and it took [duration] to recover."]

---
*Sources:*
- [source title](url) — what it was used for
- ...

Draft requirements:

• Title must work for a reader who doesn't know the project name.
• ≥3 external citations rendered as inline links.
• ≥3 specific project references (named features, file paths, commit hashes, named decisions).
• 700–1000 words (count before submitting).

Phase 6 — Self-edit (hard gates — all must pass)

Go through this checklist after the first draft. If any gate fails, rewrite the affected section once. If the second pass still fails, abort and log — do not publish a weak article.

• Title does NOT name the project
• First 2 paragraphs do NOT name the project
• ≥3 external citations with URLs (inline)
• ≥3 specific project references (named, not vague)
• Falsifiable thesis visible in the article text
• 700–1000 words
• No banned phrases: revolutionary, groundbreaking, game-changing, paradigm shift, disrupting, unlocks, empowers, the future of X, leverage / leveraging, at scale, democratize (unless quoting a source that used the word)
• Every parallel/comparison states a concrete mechanism — not surface resemblance
• Closing section makes a specific forward claim (not generic optimism or "time will tell")
• No feature-list paragraphs ("the project does X, Y, Z") — if found, cut and keep ONE element

Phase 7 — Output (lens)

1. Save output/articles/project-lens-${today}.md. (If a hero image was generated via the Visual add-on, put ![hero](../images/project-lens-${today}.<ext>) at the top.)
2. Append to memory/project-lens-angles.md (create if missing):

   ## ${today}
   - Angle: [category]
   - Thesis: [one-line falsifiable claim]
   - Title: [article title]
   - Sources: [3-5 URLs]
   

3. Notify via ./notify:

   *New Article: [title]*
   
   [3-4 sentence summary: the external thing the article connects to, the thesis claim, one specific project detail.]
   
   Read: [URL to output/articles/project-lens-${today}.md — use `git remote get-url origin` for this repo]
   

4. Log the consolidated entry (see Log).

Anti-patterns (prevention beats self-edit catch)

• Forced parallels — every comparison needs a concrete mechanism, not surface resemblance. "X is like Y because both are new" fails; "X is like Y because both decoupled [specific function] from [specific bottleneck]" passes.
• Feature-dump via the lens — pick ONE architectural decision and interrogate it, don't list what the project does.
• Marketing tone — aim for trade-publication prose, not a company blog.
• False novelty — if you can't point to what's actually new, name what's old that still works and why.
• Vague closings — the final section must make a claim specific enough that a reader could come back in six months and say "you were wrong" or "you were right."

Constraints (lens angle)

• Never publish if Phase 6 self-edit fails twice — abort cleanly.
• Never reuse an angle category within 14 days (check memory/project-lens-angles.md).
• Never invent facts to fill the citation minimum — if research is thin, abandon the angle.

Visual add-on (--visual) — Replicate hero image

Runs only when visual = true, after the article body is written and saved, for any angle. Use Replicate's Nano Banana Pro (Gemini 3 Pro Image). It renders text labels well — exploit that by writing prompts that ask for labeled diagrams or schematics, not stock-photo metaphors. Set IMG_BASENAME to match the article file for the angle: explainer-${today} (standard/explainer), article-${today} (standard/general), repo-article-${today} (repo), or project-lens-${today} (lens).

1. Preflight: if $REPLICATE_API_TOKEN is empty or unset, log IMAGE_SKIPPED reason=no-token and skip to step 5 (no-image path). Do not attempt any Replicate call. The article must ship without an image in this case.

2. Craft the prompt. Aim for technical illustration energy, not marketing. Strong prompt templates:

   • Schematic: "Technical schematic illustration of , dark navy background, thin cyan and amber lines, labeled boxes reading '', '', '', arrows showing data flow from <A> to <B> to <C>, blueprint aesthetic, 16:9"
   • Conceptual: "Editorial illustration capturing : , flat geometric style, restrained palette of two accent colors on near-black background, no human figures, 16:9"
   • Data-flow: "Network diagram of : nodes labeled '<A>', '<B>', '<C>' connected by directional arrows, weights shown as line thickness, monospace labels, technical-paper figure style, 16:9" Avoid: photorealistic faces, stock-business imagery, "AI brain" tropes, gradient slop.

3. Generate with fallback enabled from the start (Nano Banana Pro can rate-limit; Seedream 5.0 lite is the fallback):

   curl -s -X POST \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $REPLICATE_API_TOKEN" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -H "Prefer: wait" \
     -d '{
       "input": {
         "prompt": "YOUR_DETAILED_PROMPT_HERE",
         "aspect_ratio": "16:9",
         "number_of_images": 1,
         "safety_tolerance": 5,
         "allow_fallback_model": true
       }
     }' \
     "https://api.replicate.com/v1/models/google/nano-banana-pro/predictions"
   

4. Persist locally — Replicate CDN URLs expire. Download and commit:

   mkdir -p images
   IMAGE_URL=<extracted from response.output>
   EXT=$(echo "$IMAGE_URL" | grep -oE '\.(jpg|jpeg|png|webp)' | tail -1)
   EXT="${EXT:-.jpg}"
   LOCAL_PATH="output/images/${IMG_BASENAME}${EXT}"
   curl -sL "$IMAGE_URL" -o "$LOCAL_PATH" \
     || (echo "curl failed — retry via WebFetch or skip"; exit 0)
   

5. No-image path (token missing, API down, rate-limited, or download failed): log IMAGE_SKIPPED reason=<concrete reason> and proceed with the article. Add a one-line note at the top of the article: <!-- hero image skipped: <reason> -->. The text must stand on its own. Never fail the whole skill because of an image problem.

Once the image is saved, add the hero-image line to the top of the article file (![hero](../images/${IMG_BASENAME}.<ext>)) and include the original Replicate URL in that angle's notification if the angle's notify format has an image slot.

Log

Append one entry under a single ### article heading in memory/logs/${today}.md, as bullet points. Start with a discriminator line naming the branch/mode that ran, then the branch-specific fields:

### article
- Branch: standard | repo | lens   (+visual if --visual ran)

Standard branch fields:

- Mode: general-article | technical-explainer
- Topic: [topic]
- Title: [title]
- Key idea: [one-sentence claim]   (technical-explainer only)
- Image: generated | fallback-model | skipped (<reason>) | n/a
- Image prompt: [prompt used, or "n/a"]
- Primary source: [URL]            (technical-explainer only)
- File: output/articles/${today}.md | output/articles/explainer-${today}.md
- Notification sent: yes | no

Repo branch fields:

- Repo: owner/repo
- Thesis: [verbatim]
- Angle: [arg or auto-selected]
- Word count: N
- Self-edit checklist: X/8 passing
- Image: generated | fallback-model | skipped (<reason>) | n/a
- Status: REPO_ARTICLE_OK | REPO_ARTICLE_DEGRADED | REPO_ARTICLE_SKIPPED

Lens branch fields:

- Angle: [category]
- Thesis: [one-line]
- External sources: [count] across [N] distinct domains
- Project references: [count]
- Self-edit gates: all passed | failed at [gate name] → rewrite → [passed | aborted]
- Image: generated | fallback-model | skipped (<reason>) | n/a
- Status: published | aborted
- Notification: sent | skipped

Log always — even on partial failure (e.g. IMAGE_SKIPPED, REPO_ARTICLE_SKIPPED, aborted lens).

Sandbox note

The sandbox may block outbound curl. Use WebFetch as a fallback for any URL fetch. For auth-required APIs, use the pre-fetch/post-process pattern (see CLAUDE.md). gh api handles GitHub auth internally — prefer it over raw curl for repo metadata.

For the Replicate call (auth-required via env var), if the inline curl fails, write the request payload to .pending-replicate/explainer-${today}.json and rely on the post-process pattern documented in CLAUDE.md (scripts/postprocess-replicate.sh runs after Claude finishes with full env access). Continue down the no-image path so the article still ships. The deferred JSON uses the flat shape scripts/postprocess-replicate.sh reads: { "prompt": "...", "aspect_ratio": "16:9", "output_path": "output/images/${IMG_BASENAME}.jpg", "model": "google/nano-banana-pro" }.

Environment Variables

• REPLICATE_API_TOKEN — Replicate API key, used only by the --visual add-on. Optional: article text ships without it via the no-image path.

Write complete, publication-ready content. No placeholders.