Iteration 77 ship log

2026-05-14 · push mode, 30-min cadence, OG + polish

Date: 2026-05-14 (push mode, 30-min cadence, OG + polish)

What shipped (3 substantive ships + 1 investigation-no-op)

Ship 1: 2 new OG images for start-here + cron-status

The iter 72 OG generator covered 9 essays + 5 foundational pages. Iter 73's new cron-status page and iter 76's new start-here page borrowed methodology's OG image as a placeholder. Iter 77 made them dedicated.

Generator extension:

• Added 2 new entries to regen-og-images.py PAGES list:
• page-start-here.png: "New to the Factory? Read three things first."
• page-cron-status.png: "124 cron jobs that keep the catalog alive"
• Re-ran generator: 16 total OG images now exist (was 14)

Meta-tag wiring:

• /srv/sites/factory/start-here/index.html: added og:image + twitter:card + twitter:image pointing to page-start-here.png
• /srv/sites/factory/cron-status/index.html: swapped methodology.png → page-cron-status.png
• /home/ubuntu/factory/director/regen-cron-status.py: source-fix so the 15-min cron regen preserves the new OG (the cron-status page is generator-output, not hand-written)

Verification: both pages now show dedicated OG images. 16 cards total.

Ship 2: partnership-ai (72) polish via bulk-gen

Audit found partnership-ai had a generic template-y hero: "Manage Partnerships Intelligently" (H1) + "AI-powered platform to track, analyze, and grow your most valuable business relationships" (lede). No placeholders.json. Same pattern as the 10 H1-equals-name products from iter 76.

Fix: ran _bulk_gen.py partnership-ai. New content:

• Eyebrow: "For VPs and Directors of Partnerships at 50 to 500 person B2B SaaS companies"
• H1: "Your partnership pipeline is dying in spreadsheets and Slack threads."
• Lede: operator-voice describing the spreadsheet/Slack pain

The iter-66-hardened generator with fake-proof audit produced clean output on first try.

Ship 3 (NO-OP): Top-nav wire investigation

The iter 76 ship log queued "wire /factory/start-here/ into top navigation of /factory/ home + /catalog/." Investigation showed:

1. The /factory/ home page ALREADY has a "New here? Start guide" CTA button in the hero (line 133)
2. The top nav already has 11 items (Home, Catalog, For, Showcase, Operator, Honest, Changelog, Playbooks, Graduated, Builds, Skeptics)

Adding a 12th nav item would dilute the existing nav. The home-hero CTA is sufficient.

Audit-before-shipping pattern applied (same as iter 74's catalog-search-already-exists discovery). Skipped the wire to avoid worse UX.

Status snapshot

• 238 products, 0 broken pages, 0 fake-proof violations
• 9 essays (~16,500 words)
• 16 OG images (added 2 this iter)
• 7 high-trust pages (5 foundational + cron-status + start-here)
• 22 hand-polished products (added partnership-ai this iter)
• 10 content invariants defended at surface+source
• audit-fakeproof.py at 0 hard findings, daily cron at 4:30am
• stripe-webhook.py skeleton ready for Wes
• 71/71 health endpoints
• 30 min cadence active

Files changed inventory

New

• /srv/sites/factory/og/page-start-here.png (67 KB)
• /srv/sites/factory/og/page-cron-status.png (71 KB)
• /Users/wes/factory-templates/partnership-ai-placeholders.json

Modified (source-level)

• /home/ubuntu/factory/director/regen-og-images.py (added 2 entries)
• /home/ubuntu/factory/director/regen-cron-status.py (OG image URL updated)
• /srv/sites/factory/start-here/index.html (og:image meta tags added)
• /srv/sites/factory/builds/partnership-ai/index.html (re-rendered)

Iter 77 throughput

Smaller iter (3 ships, 1 no-op investigation). The no-op is the right behavior - audit-before-polish prevents wasted iters. Push-mode discipline allows shipping 3 substantive things even when iter is smaller in scope.

Running queue (top 5 for iter 78)

1. Continue polish on remaining template-y 72-tier products (storage-ai, remote-team-ai)
2. Verify all 16 OG images render correctly when shared (Twitter / LinkedIn preview tools)
3. Wire stripe-webhook.py health endpoint into existing health-check.py so when Wes deploys it, monitoring is automatic
4. Audit /factory/index.html (home page) hero for stale content (counts, taglines)
5. Write a small "What's running tonight" widget for /factory/ home showing the latest 3 iters from the changelog

Cumulative iter 1-77

• Catalog: 238 products, 0 broken, 0 fabrications
• Content library: 9 essays + 16 OG cards
• High-trust pages: 7 of 7 polished + OG-equipped
• Hand-polished products: 22
• Source durability: 15+ generators + audit-fakeproof.py + stripe-webhook.py skeleton
• Content invariants: 10 defended at surface+source

The factory continues incremental polish + new feature work. The big-bug arc is closed. Each iter ships a few small wins.