A senior man with glasses appears thoughtful while working at his desk in a modern office environment.

Everything You Need To Take A Story From Idea To Published — In One Cookbook.

Reporting has a way of scattering across half-finished pieces: a trend you meant to chase here, a pitch sitting in your drafts there, facts you never quite pinned down. The Journalist Process Cookbook replaces that with a single, guided path — eighteen recipes and five specialist personas that take you from finding what’s worth covering, to shaping how it gets reported and written, to deciding whether it’s ready to publish — and reading how it lands once it is.

Each step hands its work to the next, so the pieces line up on their own. By the end you have a vetted story angle, a fact-checked draft, an editorial go-ahead, and a post-publication read on how it performed — all built in your own project, from one file you download and drop in.

CRAFT Cookbooks · Official

Journalist Process Cookbook

Take a story from idea to published and beyond. Eighteen recipes and five specialist personas walk a piece through the full editorial pipeline — research, pitch, draft, fact-check, review, publish, and follow-up — bundled in one file you drop into your project.

What this cookbook is

The Journalist Process Cookbook is an Official CRAFT cookbook — a downloadable, self-contained collection of recipes bundled with the specialist personas that run them. It lays out a newsroom-style pipeline: you start with a story idea, validate and research it, pitch it, draft it, fact-check it, run it through an editorial gate, publish it, and then read the response. Each stage hands its output to the next, and an orchestrator recipe keeps track of where you are and enforces the conditions for moving on — so a draft never skips fact-checking on its way to publication.

18 recipes across an 8-part pipeline. One orchestrator plus seven working stages: research, pitching, writing, editing & fact-checking, final review, publishing, and engagement.
Five specialist personas. Nellie (managing editor), René (research), Dominique (writing), Fernand (fact-checking & validation), and Auguste (publishing).
One download. The whole cookbook is a single file — drop it into your project and CRAFT integrates it.
Yours once downloaded. It lives in your own project files and keeps working even when CRAFT updates.

The pipeline, stage by stage

The cookbook is organized into eight sub-categories: an orchestrator that runs the workflow, plus the seven stages a story actually passes through. Each stage has its own specialist persona.

0 · Orchestrator — with Nellie

The master coordinator. It figures out where you are in the workflow, routes you to the right stage, enforces the entry and exit conditions between stages, and tracks your working title, target publication, deadline, and progress.

Journalist Workflow Orchestrator — master coordinator for the journalism workflow across its stages; assesses where you are, routes you to the correct stage, and holds the line on what has to be true before you advance.

1 · Research — with René

Turn a hunch into a validated, researched angle.

Trend Discovery Engine — a trend-to-angles ideation engine for journalists.
Story Viability Validator — an eight-point story-viability assessment with a go/no-go verdict.
Research Roadmap Builder — turns a validated angle into a phased, deadline-anchored investigation plan.

2 · Pitching & Assignment — with Nellie

Shape the angle into an editor-ready pitch.

Pitch Architect — an editor-ready story-pitch builder for journalists.
Pitch Audience Strategist — a multi-audience pitch-optimization and objection-prep engine.

3 · Writing & Drafting — with Dominique

Turn research and an approved pitch into a complete draft.

Article Blueprint Architect — turns raw research into a structured, drafting-ready article outline.
Draft Composer and Refiner — composes and iteratively refines a complete article draft.
Headline and Lead Generator — produces ranked headlines and leads with SEO and platform variations.

4 · Editing & Fact-Checking — with Fernand

Verify the draft claim by claim, against its own sources, before anyone signs off.

Claim Verification Engine — a systematic, claim-by-claim fact-checking engine for article drafts.
Source Alignment Auditor — source-grounded, audit-trail verification of a draft against the writer’s own sources.
Publication Risk Scanner — an adversarial legal, ethical, reputation, and clarity risk scan for pre-publication drafts.

5 · Final Review & Approval — with Nellie

Rate publication readiness and make the go/no-go call.

Editorial Quality Gate — a five-dimension editorial quality gate that rates publication readiness before approval.
Publication Approval Panel — a four-perspective publication approval panel that returns a go/no-go verdict with actions.

6 · Publishing & Distribution — with Auguste

Launch the approved piece across channels and plan its reach.

Publication Launch Coordinator — a multi-channel publication launch coordinator for approved journalism content.
Content Amplification Strategist — a tiered syndication, republishing, and PR amplification planner for published journalism.

7 · Engagement & Analytics — with Nellie

Read the response and turn it into the next move.

Engagement Pulse Analyzer — a post-publication sentiment, theme, and issue analyzer for editorial response.
Feedback Action Strategist — turns engagement insights into drafted responses, follow-up stories, and a content calendar.

The personas you’ll work with

Nellie — Managing Editor. Owns story judgment, the editorial gate, and the publish decision; leads the orchestrator, pitching, final review, and engagement stages.
René — Research Specialist. Leads the research stage; turns a trend into a validated, researched angle.
Dominique — Writing Specialist. Leads the writing stage; drafts the article and teaches the craft as she goes.
Fernand — Quality Validator. Leads editing and fact-checking; verifies the draft claim by claim against its own sources.
Auguste — Content Creator. Leads publishing and distribution; packages the approved piece for launch and plans amplification.

Good to know: these personas come inside the cookbook and are namespaced to it, so adding the cookbook never disturbs the personas already in your project.

Get the cookbook

Run this cookbook with your AI from a single attachment

Every recipe in this cookbook, packaged as one .txt file your AI can consume directly. Download and attach.

https://github.com/CRAFTFramework/craft-framework-cookbook-library/blob/main/CFT-FWK-COOKBK-JOURNALIST-PROCESS.txt

What is this link?

An Official Cookbook is one file. Download it (above), drop it into your project’s cookbooks/official/ folder, and tell CRAFT it’s there:

›I added the Journalist Process cookbook — please integrate it.

CRAFT reads the cookbook, registers its recipes and personas, and they’re ready to use. You can also just ask CRAFT to fetch it for you if you’d rather not download it by hand.

✓ You’ll know it worked when CRAFT confirms the Journalist Process cookbook is integrated and can list its recipes and personas.

How to use it

Start with the orchestrator — it asks where you are and routes you to the right stage, whether you have nothing but a hunch or a finished draft that needs checking:

›Start the Journalist Process cookbook with the Workflow Orchestrator.

From there, work through the stages in order — research, pitch, draft, fact-check, review, publish, then engagement. Each stage builds on the one before it, and the orchestrator checks the conditions before letting you advance. Want the full walkthrough? See the tutorial: Take a story from trend to published with the Journalist Process cookbook.

That’s the Journalist Process Cookbook: eighteen recipes and five specialists, idea to published and beyond, in one file you own. A good next step: download it and run the end-to-end tutorial.