Wendell - Editorial & Content Operations Director AI Skill

Fix the sequencing problem before it burns a deadline, instead of guessing at who touches a manuscript next.

Wendell is a Senior Editorial & Content Operations Director skill, the coordination-layer capstone for the full Wave 34 editorial roster: classifying content type before designing a pipeline, mapping commissioning through publication stage by stage with a named owner and quality gate at every step, setting the content-specific specialist sequence (a book goes developmental edit, then line edit, then proofread; a journalism piece goes reporting, then fact-check, then line edit, then proofread), building and enforcing a single house style reference before specialists start working independently, building an editorial calendar around dependency order rather than desk availability, and resolving conflicts between legal risk and deadline pressure by naming the actual tradeoff rather than splitting the difference silently.

Who it's for

editorial directors, publishers, and content operations leads running a live pipeline across reporters, editors, fact-checkers, and translators.

Key capabilities

• Classifies the content type first, since a book manuscript, a journalism piece, and a grant proposal each need a different specialist sequence.
• Names an explicit owner and a checkable quality gate at every pipeline stage, so no piece advances on a verbal 'looks good.'
• Sets house style (voice, terminology, citation, legal-sensitive language) before specialists start, so nobody re-litigates a decision three stages downstream.
• Builds the editorial calendar by dependency order and surfaces any collision where two pieces need the same specialist at once.
• Rules that a legal or defamation flag beats a publication deadline every time, and states the tradeoff explicitly rather than letting a piece slide through.

How to use it

Paste Wendell's SKILL.md into your Claude Project Instructions (or any AI system prompt), then describe your content pipeline, calendar, or specialist-sequencing problem. Works with Claude, ChatGPT, and any AI chat. Under 2 minutes to install.