Persist marketing-cycle state in .marketing/ (operator-curated)

[stempeck]

Investigation Notes

Before this change the repo had no durable marketing capability. Cycle state — the runbook, the announced-features ledger, the cycle records — existed only as git-ignored files on one workstation, and the marketing-cycle formula existed only in that workstation's local store. Factories run in disposable containers: anything uncommitted dies with the container, so the ledger (the cross-run memory that tells a cycle what has already been announced) could not survive between runs, and no other clone or container could run a marketing cycle at all. An earlier attempt to land this content reached main without review and was force-rewound; this issue and PR #90 are the properly gated re-land.

PR #90 introduces the complete capability: committed cycle state under .marketing/, the generic (repo-agnostic) marketing-cycle formula in both its runtime and embed locations, and the generated first-class agent.

Affected Layers & Files

Cycle state (.marketing/ — committed, following the .designs/ pattern)

• approach.md — the operator-signed runbook: operator identity, channels with homepage allowlist, voice profile, claim-verification map, Standing Assets declarations, explicit Privacy-Decision: COMMITTED, and the sign-off line
• announced-ledger.md — cross-run record of what has been announced, where, and when; also carries the untold-features backlog
• cycle-1-audit.md, cycle-1-log.md, cycle-1-story.md, cycle-1-report.md, cycle-1-publish-checklist.md — cycle-1 records (log and story are labeled RECONSTRUCTED: the checks ran live 2026-07-11/12; the files were assembled afterward in the formula's artifact format)
• cycle-1-linkedin.md, cycle-1-medium.md — the two published drafts (content already public)
• architecture-diagram.png, social-preview.png, social-preview.svg — declared standing assets

Formula (declarative workflow, 23 steps)

• .agentfactory/store/formulas/marketing-cycle.formula.toml — runtime copy
• internal/cmd/install_formulas/marketing-cycle.formula.toml — embed copy (ships in the af binary)

Structure: first-run bootstrap that generates the runbook by operator interview and holds for sign-off; four human gates (story approval, draft approval, Tier A merge, publish); five evidence-logged checklist gates that write VERDICT lines to the cycle log; an artifact-manifest gate in cleanup that fails any file tracing to no formula step and no Standing Assets declaration; operator communication via GitHub issues and PR comments (agent mail stays agent-to-agent); data-not-directive guards on untrusted input; homepage-URL validation against the runbook's allowlist.

Agent (first-class, generated by af formula agent-gen from formula v2)

• internal/templates/roles/marketing-cycle.md.tmpl — embedded role template, so the agent identity survives context compression
• .agentfactory/agents/marketing-cycle/CLAUDE.md — workspace persona
• .agentfactory/agents/marketing-cycle/.claude/settings.json — hook configuration
• .agentfactory/agents.json — registration

Additional Context

• The formula is generic by design: everything repo- or operator-specific (voice, channels, target phrases, verification paths, allowlists) lives in the runbook, which a first run generates by interview. This repo's runbook is the first instance; a different repo bootstraps its own.
• Privacy is an explicit operator decision recorded in the runbook, then enforced against git state — never inferred from ambient ignore rules. Gotcha for future readers: git check-ignore silently skips already-tracked files unless --no-index is used; the formula's enforcement accounts for this.
• The plan-era drafts that will never ship (Show HN, Reddit, awesome-list submission plans) are deliberately absent per operator decision — "didn't happen and aren't going to happen." The manifest gate flags any such unaccounted file in future cycles.
• The runbook instructs agents that only the operator merges PRs; the formula's delivery step opens the PR and holds.

Acceptance Criteria

• After merge, a fresh clone or newly built container contains the runbook, ledger, and cycle-1 records; a subsequent cycle can determine what has already been announced with no state from the original workstation.
• A factory built from this repo can discover and instantiate the marketing-cycle formula, and the generated agent's identity survives context compression.
• A cycle run against a repo with no runbook stops at bootstrap and waits for operator sign-off rather than proceeding.
• No content under the operator's name is ever published by the agent; every such artifact waits at a human gate, and post-merge history shows operator merges only.
• Every file in .marketing/ is accounted for: it traces to a formula artifact or a Standing Assets declaration.
• Template-regen CI passes with the committed role template (template and formula stay in sync).