Content Calendar Planning

Content Calendar Planning

Plan content as a system that compounds, not a list of one-off posts. The leverage is in topic clusters (a pillar plus supporting pieces that interlink), a sustainable cadence, and a repurposing flow that turns one core asset into many — so each piece builds authority and feeds the next.

When to use

The user needs an editorial plan — what to publish, in what order, how often, and how to get more from each piece.

Before you start

1. Read the brand/product context (.agents/product-marketing.md / .agents/aaj-brand.md) and reuse personas if present; otherwise pull from the persona-builder skill.
2. Anchor to goals. Tie content to outcomes (rank for X, generate leads via Y), not output volume.
3. Be honest about capacity. A cadence you can sustain beats an ambitious one you'll abandon.

Workflow

1. Define topic clusters. For each priority theme, a pillar (comprehensive, the thing you want to rank/be cited for) plus 3–6 cluster pieces that go deep on sub-questions and link to the pillar. Map clusters to personas and funnel stage.
2. Set the cadence that fits capacity (e.g., one pillar + two cluster pieces a month), and sequence clusters by priority.
3. Lay out the calendar using resources/calendar-template.md: date, cluster, title, format, persona, funnel stage, primary keyword/question, and CTA.
4. Build the repurposing flow for each core asset — AAJ's pattern is core asset → companion guide → social (carousel, thread, posts, newsletter) — so one pillar becomes a week of distribution.
5. Layer SEO/GEO/AEO on each piece (answer-first intro, question-first H2s, internal links to the pillar); hand to geo-content-optimization for the citation work.

Run the engine

Costs the plan in hours before it costs you a quarter. Most content calendars fail on capacity, not on topic choice — so the engine refuses to emit a schedule it does not believe you can keep, and names what to cut instead.

Paths assume you installed with npx skills add. From a clone of this repo, use skills/content-calendar-planning/resources/… instead.

node .agents/skills/content-calendar-planning/resources/calendar-engine.js --demo
node .agents/skills/content-calendar-planning/resources/calendar-engine.js --help

plan takes capacity, clusters, and an optional goal date:

node .agents/skills/content-calendar-planning/resources/calendar-engine.js plan '{"startDate":"2026-08-10","people":2,"hoursPerWeek":4,"goalDate":"2027-03-01","clusters":[{"name":"AI search","pillar":true,"pieces":[{"title":"The GEO playbook","format":"pillar","stage":"TOFU"},{"title":"Does ChatGPT cite you","format":"blog","stage":"TOFU"},{"title":"llms.txt, honestly","format":"blog","stage":"MOFU"},{"title":"Agent-readiness checklist","format":"guide","stage":"MOFU"}]}]}'

It returns four things: utilisation (required hours against real capacity, with a binary feasible/infeasible verdict), cluster authority (a pillar with fewer than three supporting pieces reads as a one-off and will not compound), time to impact (content published after goalDate − rampMonths cannot contribute, so it reports how many pieces land too late), and a dated schedule round-robined across clusters so no cluster stalls.

When the plan does not fit, the remedy is subtraction and the engine ranks it: weak clusters first — they were never going to build authority, so cutting them costs nothing strategic — then by cost.

audit scores a calendar you already publish:

node .agents/skills/content-calendar-planning/resources/calendar-engine.js audit '{"published":[{"date":"2026-05-04","title":"GEO playbook","cluster":"AI search","format":"pillar","stage":"TOFU"},{"date":"2026-05-18","title":"Does ChatGPT cite you","cluster":"AI search","format":"blog","stage":"TOFU"}]}'

Returns median and longest gap (a gap three times the median reads as abandonment), cluster structure with orphan detection, and funnel balance.

Format effort defaults, in hours: pillar 12 · guide 8 · video 6 · blog 5 · newsletter 2 · carousel 1.5 · thread 1 · post 0.5. Override any with an effort object.

Present the result

Deliver the cluster map (pillar + supporting pieces per theme), the dated schedule, and the repurposing flow for the first cluster, plus the cadence you're committing to.

Guardrails & common mistakes

• Clusters over scattershot. Random topics don't compound; interlinked clusters build topical authority.
• One pillar, many derivatives. Don't create everything from scratch — repurpose the core asset.
• Cadence you can keep. Consistency beats bursts; under-commit and over-deliver. Run the engine before committing to a cadence — a plan at 150% of capacity is a plan to stop publishing in week three.
• Tie each piece to a goal and a persona. Content with no job is the first thing to cut.
• Interlink deliberately. Cluster pieces link up to the pillar and across to each other.

Related AAJ resources

• Interactive tool: https://aajconsult.com/tools/content-calendar-template

Related skills

persona-builder (who it's for) · geo-content-optimization (make it citable) · copywriting (write it) · social (the repurposed distribution).

Credits

Original AAJ skill, reflecting AAJ's cluster-and-repurpose content system. The Agent Skills format and Corey Haines' coreyhaines31/marketingskills (MIT) were references for structure and coverage; this skill is independently written. See the repository README.