Digital Guide Builder

Digital Guide Builder

Turns one person's real expertise into one finished, sellable digital guide. Think of the well-known case study of a creator with no design background who made tens of thousands of dollars in two weeks from a short, focused first ebook sold through a simple storefront — this skill is what actually builds their version of it.

Scope is deliberately narrow: ONE person, ONE guide, shipped fast. Not a ghostwriting service, not a multi-book series, not a general nonfiction-writing tool. If the user wants something broader (a course, a book series, ongoing content), point them elsewhere — this skill exists to get one sellable asset out the door in a single session.

Personalization

This skill writes in your voice, about your expertise. Before running, load the brand profile at ~/.claude/brand-profile.md.

• If it doesn't exist, run the personalize skill first (or just tell me your niche, audience, and the

transformation you help people get — I'll create it).

• Prefer a writing sample the user pastes; fall back to the profile's Tone and Words-to-avoid as the

voice baseline. Always use the user's own niche language and story.

• Never invent numbers, results, or claims the user did not give you.

Step 1 — Intake (from the user's first message)

Pull these three things out of whatever the user gives you (or the brand profile):

• Expertise/niche: what they actually know how to do
• Audience: who they help
• Transformation: the result people get from following their method

If the user's opening message is thin (e.g. "help me build a guide to sell") and the profile doesn't cover it, ask for these three directly before anything else. Don't guess at someone's expertise — a wrong guess here means the whole guide is off.

Step 2 — The Interview (2-4 questions, no more)

Once you have the Step 1 basics, ask ONLY what's still missing from this list. Skip anything already answered. Never turn this into a 10-question intake — the whole point of the format is speed.

1. The angle/story: What's the one thing that makes THEIR version of this different — a specific

moment, result, or mistake they can point to? (This becomes the hook of the guide and the reason someone buys from them instead of googling it for free.)

1. The pillars: 3-5 core lessons, steps, or principles they'd teach someone doing this from scratch.

These become the chapters. If the user can't articulate them, propose a draft set based on their niche and confirm before writing.

1. Length/page count: Rough target (most first digital products run short: 20-40 pages / 4,000-8,000

words total — a tight, high-signal guide, not a textbook). Default to short if the user has no preference; a guide that gets finished and read beats a long one that doesn't.

1. Price point: What they want to charge. If they don't know, recommend based on transformation

value and comparable digital products: $9-$27 for a focused single-topic guide, $27-$47 if it includes templates/swipe files/worksheets, $47-$97 if it replaces a service they'd otherwise charge hundreds for. State the recommendation with the one-line reason, don't present an open menu.

Also ask, in the same round: do you have any writing samples (a post, an email, a video transcript) I can match your voice to? If yes, read what they paste and write in that voice. If no, fall back to the Tone in ~/.claude/brand-profile.md (or a clean default: direct, confident, no fluff, short sentences, specific over vague) — but always substitute in the user's own niche language and story.

Step 3 — Structure the Guide

Build the chapter list from the pillars gathered in Step 2. Standard shape:

- Title page (title + subtitle + author name)
- Intro chapter: the hook/story (the angle from Step 2), what the reader will walk away able to do,
  who this is for
- One chapter per pillar (3-5 chapters) — see the unlock rule below
- Closing chapter: how to actually implement this, the single next action, light CTA to the reader's
  own next offer if they have one (optional, ask if unsure)

Every chapter must be built around ONE unlock, not a pile of information. An unlock is a specific, actionable insight the reader didn't have before, paired with exactly how to apply it to their own situation. Hormozi-style: plain words, no padding, no restating the same point three ways, no chapter that could be summarized as "here's some context." If a chapter doesn't end with the reader knowing exactly what to do differently, it's not done. Concrete over clever: never sacrifice clarity to hit a word or page target.

Confirm the chapter list with the user in one short message before writing the full guide — this is the one checkpoint where a wrong structure would waste the whole write. Keep it to a numbered list, not a lengthy pitch.

Step 4 — Write the Guide

Write the full guide once the structure is confirmed. Per chapter:

• Open with the concrete situation or question the reader is in, not a definition
• Teach the ONE unlock plainly, with a real example (from the user's angle/story where possible,

otherwise a plausible scenario in their niche)

• Give the exact action to take, not just the idea
• Keep paragraphs short. White space does work. No jargon without explaining it in plain words.

Reuse the voice-and-rules checklist in references/voice-and-rules.md before finalizing: 6th-8th grade reading level, no filler openers ("In today's world..."), no hedging language, specifics and numbers over vague claims, never invent a stat or result the user didn't tell you about.

Step 5 — Format for Export

Write the guide to a single Markdown file styled for clean PDF conversion — see references/guide-template.md for the exact heading/structure convention (H1 title page, H2 per chapter, no tables, no code blocks, no nested lists more than one level deep — all of these render badly in naive Markdown-to-PDF converters). Keep formatting print-safe: standard headings, bold for emphasis only, no HTML embeds. Save to a working folder named after the guide title, e.g. ~/guides/[Guide Title]/guide.md.

Tell the user directly: paste this Markdown into a converter like Notion, Google Docs, or a Markdown-to-PDF tool (many are free) and export as PDF — that's the file that gets uploaded to their storefront. Do not attempt to generate a binary PDF yourself; the deliverable is the clean, ready-to-export Markdown.

Step 6 — Storefront Listing Copy

Write this as a separate block, ready to paste directly into a storefront product page (Stan Store, Gumroad, Payhip, etc.), in this exact shape:

TITLE: [short, benefit-forward, matches the guide title]

PITCH (one paragraph, 3-5 sentences): who it's for, the transformation, why this person specifically is
credible to teach it (their real angle/story from Step 2), and what makes it different from free content
on the same topic.

SUGGESTED PRICE: $[X] — [one-line reason tied to the transformation value]

3 OUTCOME BULLETS:
- [Concrete thing the reader will be able to do]
- [Concrete thing the reader will be able to do]
- [Concrete thing the reader will be able to do]

Keep the pitch grounded in the real transformation from Step 1, never inflate it with numbers or claims the user didn't give you.

Step 7 — The Manual Steps Checklist (always end here)

This skill has no storefront or payment-processor access. Always close with this exact checklist so the user knows precisely what's left and that nothing else is automatable from here:

WHAT'S LEFT (manual, can't be automated from here):
[ ] Create a storefront account (Stan Store, Gumroad, Payhip — pick one)
[ ] Connect a payment processor (e.g. Stripe) so you can get paid
[ ] Convert guide.md to PDF (paste into Notion/Docs/a free Markdown-to-PDF tool, export)
[ ] Create a new Digital Product in your storefront and upload the PDF
[ ] Paste in the title, pitch, and outcome bullets from above
[ ] Set the price
[ ] Publish and share your storefront link

Output Format (final message to the user)

GUIDE STRUCTURE
[confirmed chapter list]

FILE: [path to guide.md]

----- STOREFRONT LISTING COPY -----
[title / pitch / price / 3 bullets]

----- MANUAL STEPS CHECKLIST -----
[the checklist from Step 7]

Key Principles

• One person, one guide, shipped fast — not a general ebook-writing tool.
• The interview is short (2-4 questions) on purpose. Speed is the point.
• Every chapter is one unlock plus the exact action to take, never just information.
• Voice comes from the user's own samples first, the brand profile only as a fallback frame (niche and

language always the user's own).

• Output is a clean, print-safe Markdown file, not a fragile HTML/PDF the skill can't verify.
• Never invent numbers, results, or claims the user didn't provide.
• Always end with the manual-steps checklist — this skill cannot touch a storefront or payment processor.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: duncan-buildroom
• Source: duncan-buildroom/profit-room-skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.