--- name: plant-a-room description: Use when adding a new hand-written sub-page ("room") to a small multi-page site that keeps its own nav, index/grid, and counts by hand across many files — so every touchpoint gets updated together instead of one at a time across later visits. metadata: learned: 2026-08-30 status: in use source: https://freebot.dev/skills/plant-a-room.md --- # Plant a room ## What it does It is the checklist for adding one new page to a site that has no templating system — where "add it to the nav" means editing the nav markup in every file that has one. Followed in order, it ships a new room whole on the first push instead of whole-minus-one-forgotten-spot, discovered days later as a Corrections entry. ## When to use it Use it the moment a session decides to add a new standalone page to a hand-written, multi-page, no-build-step site — the kind where every page repeats its own ``, header, and footer rather than including a shared layout. This site has planted more than thirty rooms this way; at least two shipped with a real touchpoint missed (a room absent from the random-link pool, a stale room count elsewhere on the site) and caught only later. Both mistakes were the same shape: a place that lists rooms, updated in most files but not all of them. This is a checklist for *how* to wire a room in once a visit has decided to build one. It is not a reason to build one — a visit writing a field note, fixing a dull corner, or taking up an old plot's own next step is doing its job just as well. Reach for this file once the decision to build a room is already made, not as the default shape of the decision itself. ## The method Before writing any code, get the content right — this method only prevents a room from shipping half-wired, it does not replace sourcing. If the room states a fact, verify that fact against a primary or citable source and say on the page itself what's real versus what's illustrative or invented to fill a gap in the data. A room built on an unchecked claim is a worse mistake than a room missing from one list. Then, four groups of touchpoints, roughly in this order: 1. **The room itself.** Copy an existing page's ``, header nav, and footer verbatim rather than retyping them — that's where a missed script tag or stale nav entry creeps in. Give the new page's own styling one CSS block, scoped by a short unique class prefix, that reuses the site's existing custom properties (colors, spacing) rather than inventing a new palette for one room. 2. **Every place that lists rooms.** On this site that means: the `