Layer5 Blog Writer

Brand names are case-sensitive. MeshMates (not Meshmates or meshmates), Meshery, Kanvas, Layer5, mesheryctl (lowercase), KubeCon, GitOps, DevOps, OpenTelemetry. When in doubt, grep the codebase for the canonical spelling. Getting these wrong looks careless to the community.

Cut without mercy: buzzword soup ("holistic," "synergize," "leverage"), passive voice, filler transitions ("It is worth noting that," "In conclusion," "Simply put"), press-release prose, hedging language that adds length without adding information.

Open strong. The first paragraph is a hook. Give the reader the specific problem, why it's hard, and a hint that you have an answer. If you can't summarize the value in one paragraph, the post needs a sharper angle.

Audience

Platform engineers, DevOps engineers, SREs, Kubernetes operators, cloud native developers, open source contributors. They manage production clusters. They've been paged at 2am by a config error. They maintain internal developer platforms. They evaluate open source tools with a skeptical eye.

They are technical and impatient with fluff. Give them the insight or command they need in the first paragraph. They already know what Kubernetes is - don't define it. They already know why GitOps matters - don't evangelise. Get to the specific thing this post teaches them.

What they care about: reducing toil, shipping faster, keeping their cluster healthy, not getting paged. Frame the post around one of these. If you're writing about a Meshery feature, the angle is always "here's how this saves you time or prevents a failure" - not "here's this cool thing Meshery can do."

Workflow

Step 1 — Clarify intent (if needed)

Ask one focused question if the topic is unclear. If you can infer enough, proceed. Typical defaults: author = "Layer5 Team", date = today.

Step 2 — Research from authoritative docs

Both documentation sites are cloned locally. Before writing technical content, grep them to verify feature names, behavior, and CLI flags.

# Find pages relevant to your topic (adjust keywords)
grep -r "YOUR_TOPIC" ~/code/meshery/docs/content/en/ --include="*.md" -l | head -8
grep -r "YOUR_TOPIC" ~/code/docs/content/en/ --include="*.md" -l | head -8

See references/docs-sources.md for the full path-to-URL mapping and search patterns.

Key rule: If you can't find a claim in the docs, either qualify it ("as of this writing") or omit it. Blog posts extend the docs - they don't contradict them.

Verify every command sequence end-to-end. Read the commands you wrote as if you were executing them in order on a fresh cluster. If step 2 disables a component, step 5 cannot reference that component. If step 1 installs into namespace X, subsequent kubectl commands must target namespace X. Contradictory commands (e.g. --set query.enabled=false followed by kubectl port-forward svc/jaeger-query) are embarrassing and destroy reader trust instantly.

Pin versions in install commands. Never use releases/latest, :latest tags, or unversioned URLs in tutorials. Pin to a specific release (e.g. v0.104.0, v1.23.0). Unpinned commands break silently weeks later when upstream ships a breaking change, and the reader blames the blog post. If you don't know the current version, grep the docs or check the project's GitHub releases page and use the latest stable version explicitly.

Step 3 — Plan the post

Before writing:

• Title: 50–60 chars, keyword-forward, avoids clichés like "Ultimate Guide"
• Angle: What specific insight does this deliver that docs can't?
• Structure: 3–5 main sections, each building on the last
• Cross-links: Which Layer5 pages belong? (see docs-sources.md)
• CTA: What does the reader do immediately after?
• Resource flag: Worth adding resource: true?
• Design embed: Does this post walk through a specific infrastructure topology (Redis, Dapr, a Kubernetes Deployment, an AWS pattern)? If so, plan to embed the matching Kanvas design with <MesheryDesignEmbed>. The available designs and their IDs are in references/blog-structure.md.

Step 4 — Write the blog post

Read references/blog-structure.md for the full format spec.

File path:

src/collections/blog/YYYY/MM-DD-descriptive-slug/index.mdx

Work from the root of the Layer5 repo. To find it, run git rev-parse --show-toplevel from any directory inside the repo.

Step 5 — Generate the hero image

python3 "<skill_dir>/scripts/generate_hero_image.py" \
  --title "Your Blog Post Title" \
  --subtitle "Optional subtitle" \
  --category "Kubernetes" \
  --output "src/collections/blog/YYYY/MM-DD-slug/hero-image.svg" \
  --repo-root /path/to/layer5/repo

Produces a fully SVG-native 1200x630 image that:

• Generates a multi-stop gradient background matching Layer5's official illustration technique (extracted from Artboard 1.svg and chs-2-intro.svg reference files). Uses overlapping full-canvas rectangles with 10-16 stop linear/radial gradients and stop-opacity for compositing - NOT blurred ellipses.
• The signature Layer5 gradient ramp has 16 stops transitioning from Dark Jungle Green (#1E2117) through Charcoal (#3C494F), six intermediate blue-greens (#375154, #305D5D, #266E6A, #1A847B, #0B9E8F), Keppel (#00B39F), to Caribbean Green (#00D3A9). Equivalent ramps exist for Saffron and Steel Teal. These intermediate colors create the rich, deep transitions characteristic of Layer5 illustrations.
• Full brand palette: Eerie Black (#1E2117), Charcoal (#3C494F), Steel Teal (#477E96), Keppel (#00B39F), Caribbean Green (#00D3A9), Saffron (#EBC017), Banana Mania (#FFF3C5)
• White clearing uses the exact radial gradient from chs-2-intro.svg: white at center through #F7FCFC, #E2F6F4, #BFEBE7, #8FDDD4, #52CBBE, #12B8A6 to Keppel at edge
• Selects a composition preset by --category:
  • Corner Warmth (daytime): Saffron upper-left sun, Keppel/Caribbean Green at right edge and bottom, Dark Jungle Green base at lower-left, massive white clearing center-right. NO Steel Teal or Charcoal. Reference: "4000 members", "Recognition Program", "layer5-hero.webp"
  • Deep Space (night): Steel Teal dominates upper sky, Charcoal at lower corners with extra diagonal darkness, Saffron warm star upper-right, tighter white clearing. Reference: "Meet Five", "Adventures of Five Vol 2" cover
• Overlays a real Five mascot SVG at ~95% image height (large, prominent) from a curated set of 10 standalone poses
• Embeds Qanelas Soft font (from static/fonts/qanelas-soft/) for brand-accurate typography
• Adds an off-center white/off-white glow close behind Five so the black skeleton reads clearly - this is NOT a centered radial spotlight

Five mascot rules:

• Uses real SVG assets from src/assets/images/five/SVG/ - curated standalone poses only (no scenes with vehicles, furniture, or complex props)
• Five's colors are never modified: black skeleton, teal (#00B39F) shoes and hands
• Five appears large (occupying the right ~42% of the frame, nearly full height) - not a small decorative accent

Pass --repo-root as the absolute path to the Layer5 repo root (use git rev-parse --show-toplevel from inside the repo). Without it, the script still runs but omits the Five mascot and brand font.

See assets/sample-hero-images/ for visual reference across different category palettes.

Update frontmatter: