What is in it for you?
This is the order of operations for becoming a Content Engineer: understand the shift, build your context layer, diagnose what matters, automate the work, and prove the system.
Week 0: Get ready
Week 1: Your New Superpower
01
The Loop: Why Content Engineering Wins
Understand the shift that makes content engineering a higher-leverage role, and the loop that powers it.
Complete
Topics Covered
- The channel shift (AI search) and the function shift (one person + systems).
- The vocabulary: workflows vs. agents vs. playbooks.
- The Create > Evaluate > Update > Compound loop, and the Content Engineer role.
What You'll Leave With
- A clear map of the system you'll build across the nine sessions.
- Your Brand Kit started, ready to build on in Session 2.
02
The Context Engine: Brand Kit, Knowledge Base & MCP
Build the context layer that makes every AI output repeatable, on-brand, and useful across your team.
Complete
Topics Covered
- Why context, not output, is the real bottleneck.
- Brand Kit architecture (the five layers) and how a Knowledge Base differs from it.
- MCP as the transport layer that carries your context everywhere.
What You'll Leave With
- A built Brand Kit across all five layers.
- A Knowledge Base loaded with your own content.
- An MCP setup connecting your AirOps Brand Kit to other AI systems (Claude, etc.).
03
The Signal: Diagnose with FACT & Build Your First Scout
Read your AI visibility data and build an agent that finds the right problems for you.
Complete
Topics Covered
- Getting found vs. getting cited, and the four AI-visibility metrics.
- The FACT framework (Findable, Agent-aligned, Citable, Trusted).
- What a Scout agent does and where it fits.
What You'll Leave With
- Your Insights set up (sitemap + prompts) with a live read on your own brand.
- Your first Scout playbook, built in Quill, that surfaces the pages to fix.
Week 2: Strategy into Action
04
Information Gain & Your First Action Agent
Learn what actually makes content get cited, then build the agent that produces it.
Complete
Topics Covered
- The information gain thesis: AI only cites content that teaches it something new.
- The 2x2 (value x citability structure) and the five proprietary sources.
- Citability mechanics: tables, question-style headings, front-loaded answers, entity density.
What You'll Leave With
- An Action agent (Key Takeaways + FAQ generator) built in Quill that makes a page more citable.
- One of your own pages audited against the 2x2, with a clear fix.
05
The Grid: Connect Scout + Action into One System
Wire your Scout and Action agents into a single operating system that runs without manual handoffs.
Live Wednesday, July 15
Topics Covered
- The Grid as a shared work queue, and the information loop (nothing leaves the Grid).
- Trigger types: scheduled, conditional, manual.
- The shift from doing the work to designing the system that does it.
What You'll Leave With
- A Grid that connects your Scout and Action playbooks.
- Both playbooks wired to read and write the same Grid, running on a schedule.
06
Competitor Compounding Loops
Build a loop that monitors competitors and surfaces strategic content opportunities on its own.
Live Thursday, July 16
Topics Covered
- Why competitor pages go stale, and why a two-agent (Scout + Action) split works.
- The Grid as a mini knowledge base of current facts and claims.
- Keeping your Brand Kit and Knowledge Base current as the upstream context.
What You'll Leave With
- A competitor-tracking loop that runs monthly, verifies claims, and flags what changed.
- An Action agent that updates your comparison pages from verified facts only.
Week 3: Scale, Prove, and Lead
07
The Operation: Audit, Refresh & Human-in-the-Loop
Turn your build into a system that runs on a schedule, stops for a human when it matters, and publishes to your CMS.
Live Tuesday, July 21
Topics Covered
- Staleness as a signal (citation gap, brand drift, structural decay), not an age.
- "Earn the right to automate," and the Andon Cord / quality-gate concept.
- Measurement: citation before vs. after, speed, and review-queue clearance.
What You'll Leave With
- A scheduled audit-and-refresh system with triggers, so it runs without you.
- A quality gate with a human review step (Slack ping) before anything publishes.
- A CMS-publish step gated on approval, plus measurement columns in your Grid for proof.
08
Tips, Tricks & Power-Ups
Expand the toolkit and polish the workflows that support certification.
Live Wednesday, July 22
Topics Covered
- The Inbox as mission control for agents running on triggers.
- Brand Kit as the foundation that breaks or fixes systems (the CSS-cascade model).
- Prompt coverage: Recommended Prompts vs. Explore Prompts.
What You'll Leave With
- A set of granular content types added to your Brand Kit.
- A living dashboard (e.g., in Claude) pulling your real AirOps data.
- Your best playbook prepped for Content Engineer certification.
09
Demo Day: Present & Ship
Present what you built, submit for certification, and leave with a path to apply it.
Live Thursday, July 23
Topics Covered
- What a Content Engineer is and what comes next.
- What the certification means going forward.
What You'll Leave With
- A 4-minute live demo of the system you built (no slides).
- Your playbook submitted for Content Engineer certification.
- A clear next-steps plan for applying the workflow after the cohort.