An intern hit generate and publish. The page went live with a leftover placeholder. My fault for the workflow.
An intern hit generate and publish
The page went live with a leftover placeholder. My fault for the workflow, not theirs. We gave Sidekick without a hold. Fast. Also dumb. The model wrote a fine paragraph and left TODO product name in the next one. Fine plus TODO is not fine.
Let Sidekick fill a field. A person still owns the item. That's the rule that saved us after. Split generate and publish. If you can't split, Sidekick stays off that template. Harsh. Clear. I'd rather be harsh on a Tuesday than sorry on a homepage.
What Sidekick is good at
Alt text from a clear image. First pass on a bland field. Not legal lines. Not prices. I still catch myself sending prices through it. Stop. Count the digits out loud. If you feel silly, good. Silly is cheaper than a wrong price.
It's also okay at shortening. Authors pick the longest variant because longest looks like work. Longest isn't best. I sat with an author who generated three and picked the essay. Our pages aren't essays. They're service pages with hours and a phone.
Prompts that don't wander
Tell it the field limit. Tell it the audience. If you don't, you get a brochure. Brochures belong in a drawer. Field limit is a number. Audience is 'homeowner who already called,' not 'seekers of excellence.'
Keep a prompt card on the desk. Not a wiki. Nobody reads the wiki. You knew that. Twenty minutes at the desk beat our wiki. I timed it because I was tired of the wiki speech.
- Generate into draft.
- Diff against last published.
- Named publish role.
- No prices in generate.
Diff or don't use it
If you can't diff, you're flying. I flew. Hit a placeholder. Never again if I can help it. Diff against last published version. If the CMS doesn't make that easy, that's a CMS problem you solve before you roll Sidekick out to twenty authors.
Review is not a vibe. It's a screen with two columns. If you don't have two columns, print both and hold them up. I've done that. It looks old. It works.
Roles
Role that can generate. Role that can publish. Not the same person on launch week if you can help it. I couldn't. We paid for it. Launch week is when people are brave and tired. That's the worst mix for generate-and-publish.
Train the people who write, not only the people who build. Builders will make a beautiful prompt. Writers will paste a PDF into the box. Plan for the PDF. Ban it if you must. Bans need a reason on the desk card.
A template I keep Sidekick off
Legal. Pricing tables. Anything with a phone number that changes by location. The model will invent a digit. Invented digits become ads. Ads become calls to nobody. I've seen a one-digit miss. One digit is enough.
If a stakeholder says 'but it's AI, it should do legal,' they can own publish on legal. They won't. Then the template stays off. Good.
Checklist
Generate. Diff. Publish. If any step is missing, Sidekick stays off that template. Read the diff. Shorten the prompt. Split publish. That's the desk version, not the keynote version.
Monday
Pick one template. Split the buttons. Sit with one author for twenty minutes. Watch them try to publish without diff. Stop them. Do it kindly. Then do it again with the next author. That's the rollout. Not an email. An email is how placeholders go live.
The Miss
An intern hit generate on a live news template because the button sat next to save. We spent a morning unscrewing SEO titles. I still wince. Wincing is the training plan.
The Hold
Sidekick stays off live. Diff is required. Generate is not publish. I wrote that on the machine, not in a wiki nobody opens.
How We Roll It
One template. Split the buttons. Twenty minutes with one author. Watch their hand. If the hand goes to publish after generate, the layout is still wrong. Move the button. Don't send an email. Emails don't move buttons.
What Broke Anyway
Someone asked for a 'smart default.' I said no. Defaults are how generate becomes publish in people's heads. Heads are the real CMS.
Checklist
Off live. Diff on. Buttons split. One author watched. That's four. If you need a fifth, you're decorating.
If You Only Do One Thing
Move generate away from publish on the template that ships news. Do it before lunch. Lunch can wait. The intern can't unwind a homepage.
I keep a screenshot of the old layout in a folder named 'don't.' The folder is mean. It works.
What I Won't Do
I won't demo Sidekick on production. Demos on production are how keynotes happen. I don't want a keynote. I want fewer TODOs on the live site.
The Button Distance
I moved generate down sixteen pixels. Sixteen. The intern's hand still drifted. I moved it again. Then I changed the label from Generate to Draft only. Labels are cheaper than pixels. Both mattered.
Someone asked for a keyboard shortcut. I said no. Shortcuts are how generate becomes publish in muscle memory. Muscle memory is the real CMS.
Twenty Minutes With One Author
She reached for publish after draft. I didn't scold. I asked her to say out loud what she was about to do. She said 'put it live.' That's the tell. The layout still looked like one action. We split the pane. Split panes beat training decks.
I still have the recording muted on my disk. I don't watch it. I keep it in case someone wants a town hall. The recording is the town hall. It's twenty minutes and a flinch.
The Folder Named Don't
Old layout screenshot. SEO titles with TODOs. A homepage H1 that said 'lorem' for eleven minutes. Eleven minutes is a long time on a homepage. The folder is mean on purpose. Mean folders get opened.
Further reading
Actionable checklist
- Set clear goals for AI-assisted writing.
- Train content authors on best practices for Sidekick.
- Create guidelines for using prompts.
- Build and keep field maps updated.
- Add human review steps in content processes.
- Regularly monitor content quality and compliance.
- Gather feedback from content authors on AI suggestions.
- Track performance metrics for content effectiveness.