Editorial methodology

This page exists because honesty about how content gets made matters more than pretending it doesn't. Kegnotes uses AI as a drafting tool, the same way a journalist uses a researcher or a transcription service. The thinking, fact-checking, voice, and final say live with the editor (Daniel Stevens). Here's the full process.

How an article is made

1. Topic selection

Every article targets a specific long-tail keyword from a curated queue. The queue is built from three inputs: search query data via Google Search Console (where available), aggregated patterns from DrinkCountr customer support conversations, and forum questions on r/kegerators, r/homebrewing, and The Home Brew Forum. We don't write about whatever's trending; we write about questions actual home draught enthusiasts are asking.

2. Research

Before drafting begins, we identify the top 10 ranking results for the target keyword and read each one carefully. Two questions: what do they all say (the "table stakes" any good article must cover), and what do they all miss (the "information gain" we'll contribute). Every Kegnotes article must add at least one unique data point, framework, or perspective to the existing public knowledge on its topic.

3. Drafting

First drafts are produced with assistance from Anthropic Claude (currently Claude Opus 4.7 via Claude Code), with a tightly constrained prompt that bans hedging language, forbidden phrases (delve, tapestry, navigate the landscape, etc.), and forces specific numbers over vague ranges. The prompt is versioned at github.com/daniel-stevens/kegnotes (private at time of writing; will be made public when useful) so the methodology is auditable.

4. Voice and humanisation

Drafts are passed through a voice-matching step against a corpus of Daniel's own writing samples (kept in .claude/voice-samples.md). The goal is editorial coherence, not anti-detection: every article should read like the same person wrote it because the same editor approved it.

5. Fact-checking

Specific claims (numbers, prices, frequencies, product specs) are checked against the cited sources at the bottom of each article. Where customer anecdotes are used, the customer is identified by first name (with permission) or anonymised as "a US/UK customer". We don't fabricate quotes. If a customer detail can't be verified, the claim is rephrased to "many owners report" or removed.

6. Editorial review

Every article passes through an 8-point quality checklist before publishing. The checklist is at .claude/prompts/01-quality-checklist.md and covers: information gain, specificity vs hedging, real-world anchor, internal links, schema, voice integrity, guardrails, and SEO basics. Articles failing any criterion land in src/content/drafts/, not posts/.

7. Publish + index

Approved articles are committed to git, pushed to GitHub, deployed via Cloudflare Pages, and submitted to IndexNow for fast Bing/Yandex indexing. Sitemap submission to Google Search Console happens at site launch and on demand thereafter.

AI usage disclosure

Most Kegnotes articles are drafted with Claude. They are then reviewed, edited, and approved by Daniel before publishing. The articles are not "written by an AI"; they are written through a process that uses AI as part of the toolchain. The editorial responsibility is human.

Articles with significant AI drafting carry a small "AI-assisted drafting" notice in the footer. Articles that were written from scratch by Daniel (or future guest contributors) carry no such notice. Either way, the byline is the same: Daniel Stevens.

We make this distinction visible because the alternative — claiming everything is hand-written by a human when it isn't — is the kind of small dishonesty that erodes the editorial trust we're trying to build.

What we don't do

• We don't publish content we haven't read end-to-end.
• We don't fabricate customer quotes or anecdotes.
• We don't accept payment for product mentions. Some product references are affiliate links (disclosed at /disclosure/) but the inclusion is editorial.
• We don't publish on a fixed daily quota at the expense of quality. Some days zero articles ship. The publish cadence is one article per UTC day maximum.
• We don't optimise content for AI detectors. We optimise for actual readers.

Corrections policy

If a Kegnotes article contains a factual error, we correct it and note the correction. Email editor@kegnotes.com with the URL and the issue. Corrections happen within 48 hours of acknowledgment. Significant corrections are noted at the bottom of the article with the date and what changed.

Why this matters

The web is filling with AI-generated content that pretends to be hand-written by experts. Google's 2026 Helpful Content System and its Scaled Content Abuse Policy exist specifically to penalise sites that do this badly. We're trying to do it well: AI as a tool, transparent disclosure, real editorial standards, and a slow drip of high-quality work rather than a flood of slop.

The test isn't whether AI helped draft the article. The test is whether the published article is useful, accurate, and adds something the existing top-ranking pages don't. That's the standard we hold ourselves to.

Last updated 2026-05-17. Questions about how a specific article was made: editor@kegnotes.com.