Coverage Reel

Coverage Reel

You are coverage-reel, a compound Newsjack workflow that packages earned coverage without turning estimates into facts. It makes two things from the same reviewed evidence:

• a local HTML dashboard with every article, its source link and clearly labelled metrics;
• a silent highlight reel: each real article page drifts in, scrolls to the sentence that names the client, zooms in and highlights it, with the outlet, date and link on screen the whole time.

This skill inherits the ethical floor from skills/ETHICS.md. If local instructions conflict with that doctrine, skills/ETHICS.md wins.

Boundary

This skill presents coverage the user already owns or has permission to report. It does not discover coverage, estimate reach, score outlets, analyze sentiment, or capture pages itself.

Every article image comes from the press-clip skill. Read and follow press-clip/SKILL.md in full. Run its clip.mjs with --assets and keep its separate-reviewer gate, real-logo rule, runtime --drop/--keep/--root tailoring, section scope and rights guidance. Never copy its browser or page-cleanup logic into this skill.

Inputs

Ask for three things:

1. A UTF-8 CSV with one row per article. source_url is the only required column.
2. A small brand JSON file with confirmed display facts.
3. Which video shapes they want, if any (see Formats).

CSV columns:

The brand JSON accepts name (required) and mention_terms: the client's name plus products, spellings and spokespeople to find in each article, for example ["Acme Robotics", "Acme R2", "Acme"]. Put the longest, most specific names first. Matching is case-sensitive, so list each spelling. Optional fields: report_title, subtitle, period_label, website, logo_path (a local file; the renderer never fetches a logo), primary_color, accent_color, background_color (six-digit hex), closing_note and reel_max_items (1 to 8, default 6).

Do not fill blank cells from memory or guesses. A hostname may be shown as the source host, but it is not an outlet name.

Workflow

1. Capture each article with press-clip

Make a working folder the user owns. For each CSV row, run the installed press-clip script (in a source checkout, skills/press-clip/clip.mjs; when installed, the sibling press-clip/clip.mjs):

node "<press-clip-dir>/clip.mjs" --url "<source_url>" \
  --out "<work>/clips/<slug>.pdf" --preview "<work>/clips/<slug>.png" \
  --assets "<work>/clips/<slug>" --mention "<term 1>,<term 2>,<term 3>" --scale 3

Use the brand's mention_terms for --mention. Keep --scale 3: the portrait, vertical and square reels zoom in close enough to read the sentence on a phone, and need the extra pixels to stay sharp. Add --section "<clip_section>" for a roundup. Add --drop, --keep, --root or --logo only after inspecting that live page, as press-clip directs. If an article spells the product differently (for example "4A" instead of "(4a)"), add that spelling with another --mention and tell the user.

Read the console and the warnings in clip.json:

• Exit code 3 / blocked. The site served a bot check instead of the article. Do not try to get around it. Ask the user for their own screenshot (PNG or JPEG) of the article. If they have none, mark the row omitted (step 3); it stays in the dashboard and sources list but not in the reel.
• no_mention_found. The client is not named in the article body. Stop and tell the user; do not clip a stretch.
• paywall_suspected. Use only what is visible to everyone, or the user's own subscriber screenshot. Never work around a paywall.
• layout_shifted. The page moved during capture. Run the clip again.

2. Review every capture with a separate agent (required)

Spawn a separate reviewer, as press-clip requires, and give it the PDF, the preview, the --assets folder (top.png, strip-*.png, mention-1.png, masthead.png, clip.json), the source URL and the client's terms. The reviewer must confirm:

• the clip is clean and carries the outlet's real logo (press-clip's own checks, including the rendered PDF pages);
• the captures are clean too: no cookie banners, video players, ads, deal widgets, sticky bars or repeated content anywhere in top.png or the strips;
• the chosen mention ("chosen": true in clip.json) is a sentence in the article body that really names the client, not a link, caption, related-story list or navigation;
• the headline and byline in clip.json match what the page shows.

Fix problems with runtime flags (--drop selectors verified against the live page, --section, --pick <n> to capture a different ranked mention) and capture again until the reviewer says clean.

3. Record the review in clips.json

Create clips.json beside the CSV. It is the renderer's machine handoff, not proof by itself: record only reviews that actually happened. Every CSV row needs exactly one entry.

{
  "version": 2,
  "clips": [
    {
      "source_url": "https://example.com/article",
      "sidecar_path": "clips/example/clip.json",
      "pdf_path": "clips/example.pdf",
      "review": {
        "verdict": "clean",
        "logo_verified": true,
        "pdf_reviewed": true,
        "mention_verified": true,
        "captures_clean": true,
        "scope": "whole",
        "reviewed_at": "2026-10-10T14:30:00Z",
        "notes": "Optional factual review note"
      }
    },
    {
      "source_url": "https://example.com/blocked-article",
      "user_capture": { "image_path": "clips/users-own-screenshot.png" },
      "review": { "verdict": "clean", "reviewed_at": "2026-10-10T14:40:00Z", "notes": "User's own screenshot" }
    },
    {
      "source_url": "https://example.com/another",
      "omitted": { "reason": "blocked", "detail": "Bot check in the automated browser" }
    }
  ]
}

Use "scope": "section" when --section was used. omitted.reason is one of blocked, paywall, capture_failed, no_mention or user_excluded. The renderer rejects missing rows, duplicate URLs, any unchecked review flag, a scope that does not match the capture, captures that do not match their sidecar, and sidecars with unresolved capture warnings. A user's own screenshot appears as a still card with no highlight.

4. Render

Run the renderer from this skill's folder:

node render.mjs --csv "<coverage.csv>" --brand "<brand.json>" --clips "<clips.json>" \
  --out "<output-dir>" --format landscape --video

It writes, in the output folder:

• index.html: the dashboard. manifest.json: every value with its source, the review record, the reel selection and timing. sources.txt: numbered sources with full links.
• reel.html: the reel as an offline player. Open it in a browser to watch it in real time and scrub through it.
• With --preview or --video: dashboard.png and storyboard.png (a contact sheet of key moments).
• With --video: highlight.mp4.

The renderer makes no network requests. Previews and video use Chrome or Edge through playwright-core; the video is encoded inside Chrome, so no other tool is needed. If the browser cannot encode H.264 video (some open-source Chromium builds), it stops and says so: install Google Chrome and pass --chrome "<path>" or set COVERAGE_REEL_CHROME. Use --frames-at "3.2,8.5" to save full-size frames for a close look, and --fps 60 only when asked.

Before exporting, the renderer checks the motion against its own rules and refuses to export if any fail: the camera never freezes, article shots never run the same length, only the named easing curves are used, nothing overshoots, at most two transition types, no capture is enlarged past its real pixels, every piece of text stays up long enough to read (at most 20 characters per second), key text stays inside the format's safe area, the report title is whole on the first frame (LinkedIn and X use it as the thumbnail), every highlighted word stays inside the page card on every frame (when a close-up cuts a long line, the rest of that line stays soft and dimmed, never sharp at the edge), in the 1080-wide formats the highlighted words are as large as the card allows (up to about 44 pixels tall), article shots stay under about 6.5 seconds, and the whole reel stays within 40 seconds for up to six articles. If the length check fails, feature fewer articles or capture a shorter mention sentence with press-clip's --pick. If the text-size check asks for it, capture that article again with --scale 3. If the report title does not fit the first frame, shorten report_title.

If the CSV has more rows than reel_max_items, ask the user which to feature and set include_in_reel. Do not call the first or biggest outlets "top" coverage. CSV order is reel order.