Case study

/case-study — Client outcome case study page

Documents one real client outcome end-to-end. Case studies sit at the decision stage — readers are evaluating whether the site can produce the result they need. Every claim must be verifiable; every number must be sourced from stats.md; every quote must be from a real, consented testimonial. No invention — refusal is the correct response when there's no eligible story.

Inputs

Required (asked at start if not given):

• Site — must match a folder under sites/[name]/.
• Story ID — references the entry in sites/[site]/references/stories.md (or stories.{lang}.md for multilingual). Format: story-{slug} matching the heading anchor in stories.md.

Optional (per-run overrides):

• Industry / vertical — used as the H1's qualifying detail and the schema industry field. Defaults to the story's industry.
• Anonymize — true (default) | false (only if the story file marks the client as having given explicit consent for name use). If consent flag is missing, anonymize is forced true.

Workflow

This skill follows /blog's workflow (Steps 0–11) with the page-type-specific differences listed below. Read .claude/skills/blog/SKILL.md end-to-end before running.

What's unique to /case-study

Step 2 — Story selection (not keyword selection):

• Read references/stories.md (per-site, per-language).
• The user supplies the story ID, or the skill picks the highest-impact unused story (one with the largest measurable outcome).
• Required fields in the story entry: client_descriptor, problem, intervention, outcome_metric (must be a number from stats.md), consent (anonymized or named-with-consent).
• If any required field is missing → refuse, escalate or ask.

Step 3 — Keyword cluster (case-study-specific):

• The primary keyword is the outcome-search query, not the story: [industry] [outcome] case study, [service] results [region], how [client-type] achieved [outcome].
• Pick from keywords.csv rows with intent=case-study or proof. If none exist, the skill suggests one based on the story's industry + outcome and asks the user to add it to keywords.csv before proceeding.

Step 4 — SERP analysis (case-study-specific):

• Top 3 case study pages in this niche — extract: average word count, image count, presence/absence of dollar figures, presence/absence of named clients, format (long-form vs. multi-section vs. PDF-download-gated).
• Most ranking case studies are NOT gated. The default is unaffected by gating decisions made elsewhere.

Step 6 — Wireframe (case-study-specific):

• Hero: the outcome stated upfront as a number. "[Client descriptor] achieved [outcome number] in [timeframe]" — no marketing fluff before the number.
• Quick fact strip (above fold): 3–4 data points — Client: [descriptor], Industry: [vertical], Timeframe: [duration], Outcome: [metric]. Skimmable.
• Problem section (300–500 words): what the client was experiencing. Specific. With dates if possible. Avoid generic "they wanted to grow."
• Intervention section (400–700 words): what we did, in chronological order. Specific tools, frameworks, hours invested if known. This is where AI-search-citation density matters most — readers + LLMs both pull from this section.
• Result section (300–500 words): the outcome metric, the time it took, what changed for the client beyond the headline number.
• Quote (required if named-with-consent, optional if anonymized): one verbatim sentence from the client. Cited.
• "What we'd do differently" section (required, 100–200 words): one thing about the engagement that didn't work or that we'd change. Single biggest trust-building section in the format.
• FAQ: 4–6 Qs — "Was this typical?", "How transferable is this?", "Pricing on engagements like this?"
• CTA: softer — "See if your situation maps to this one" rather than "Book a call."

Step 7 — Schema (case-study-specific):

• Article with about: { @type: "CreativeWork", name: "[Engagement name]" } and mentions for the industry.
• BreadcrumbList
• FAQPage
• If the client is named with consent: Review with itemReviewed = our service, reviewBody = the quote, author = the client.
• Do NOT use Review schema for anonymized cases — schema requires identifiable author.

Step 8 — Voice (case-study-specific extras):

• Every number on the page MUST be in stats.md. The skill refuses to fabricate or round.
• No "incredible results" or "transformative outcome" — banned per universal voice rules. Use the number.
• The "what we'd do differently" section is non-skippable. If the story file doesn't have material for this, refuse and ask the user to add the introspection.
• One opinion max, backed by the outcome metric.

Refusal conditions

This skill refuses to ship if:

• No matching story exists in stories.md for the given ID.
• The story is missing outcome_metric (must be a number, must be in stats.md).
• The story is missing consent field.
• The "what we'd do differently" content is unwritable from the story file (no introspection available).
• A case study for this story already exists in used-keywords.md.

Output

Standard _drafts/[slug]/ layout, with these additions:

• story-source.md — the source story entry from stories.md, copied for traceability.
• numbers-citation.md — every number on the page mapped to its stats.md line.

Length target: 1,500–2,500 words.

Routine versioning + idempotency contract

Same as /blog. Idempotency key: (site, story-id, language). Skip re-run if _drafts/case-study-{slug}/ exists with today's date.