How it works
- Gather candidatesCollect each restaurant, business or pet with a link to its own page.
- Run the candidate gatesCut anything without a photo, outside your towns, short on facts or in a paying-ad category.
- Rank who is leftPrefer fresh reasons to go now, browsable categories and the best photos.
- Write in the house formatTeaser titles, about 70 words, a neighbor's voice, and short pet fact lines.
- Check facts and lengthTrace every fact to a source and remove anything that cannot be traced.
Have this ready
- Which spotlight formats you need
- Candidates with links to their own pages
- Which candidates have photos
- Your covered towns
- Your current advertisers and categories
What you get back
- Restaurant Radar, Business Brief and Pet of the Week copy
- Photo instructions for each piece
- A cut list with reasons
- Source list and anything to confirm
A taste of the output
🍜 Somebody downtown is pulling noodles by hand You can watch it happen through the front window at Sundial Noodle House, which opened on Elm Street in Maple Grove two weeks ago. The cooks stretch and slap the dough until it turns into noodles that land in your bowl minutes later. Start with the spicy beef broth if you like heat, or the sesame cold noodles if you don't. The menu is only six bowls long, so deciding is the hard part. 🐾 Biscuit has one goal in life, and it is your couch... 🏷️ Name: Biscuit ⚧️ Sex: Male 🎂 Age: 3 years 📍 Location: Maple Grove Animal Shelter 💛 Temperament: Calm, cuddly (Town, restaurant, shelter and pet are made up for illustration.)
What's in the download
local-spotlight-writer/SKILL.mdThe playbook Claude readslocal-spotlight-writer/examples/worked-example.mdA full sample runlocal-spotlight-writer/references/quality-checks.mdPass or fail checkslocal-spotlight-writer/templates/operator-worksheet.mdFill-in worksheetNew to skills? Here is how to add one to Claude in about three minutes.
Rather have it done for you?
Turns a week of local news into one edited issue.
lightbreak pulls in local restaurants, businesses and shelter pets and writes these sections into your issue, in your voice, in under 15 minutes.
See lightbreakQuestions
Why won't it feature a dentist or a roofer?
Those categories are the ones that pay for newsletter ads. If you feature them for free, you teach them they do not need to buy. The skill routes them to a labeled sponsored column instead.
Why no star ratings or review counts?
The spotlight is a neighbor sharing a find, not a review site. Ratings belong to someone else, can change tomorrow, and turn a warm feature into a scorecard.
What if a great place has no photos?
It waits. The house rule is a real photo of the place or no feature, because stock photos break trust. The skill picks the next candidate and flags the first one to revisit.