Kai Marketing OS: Claude Code Skills For Growth Work

Kai turns a product repo into a marketing workspace. It gives Claude Code a marketing team, a source-aware brief, channel playbooks, policy references, quality gates, approval rules, and memory so the next run starts smarter.

Use it when you want an AI operator to create growth plans, landing pages, emails, ads, SEO/AEO work, audits, content calendars, SDR handoff, or repurposed assets from the same files your product team already uses.

Why People Star This Repo

• 42 public /kai commands for strategy, distribution, content, ads, SEO, CRO, lifecycle, SDR, launches, and analytics.
• 45 canonical skill docs with triggers, inputs, outputs, gates, provenance, and failure modes.
• A real knowledge base: 54 playbooks, 36 checklists, 27 frameworks, 26 channel guides, 8 personas, 18 references, and 30 skill contracts.
• Guardrails built in: Four U's scoring, banned-word checks, SEO lint, policy references, provenance lint, privacy scanning, and mutation-risk lint.
• Local-first by default: use it inside Claude Code from your repo before wiring live channels.
• Approval-led automation: dry-run first, review the artifact, then approve external actions.

30-Second Demo

See it work before you read anything else:

git clone https://github.com/cgallic/kai-cmo-harness.git
cd kai-cmo-harness
pip install google-genai requests beautifulsoup4
export GEMINI_API_KEY=your-free-key    # Get one at https://aistudio.google.com/apikey

python demo/demo.py --url "https://yoursite.com" --keyword "best crm for startups"

One command. One API key. Outputs a scored blog post in ~60 seconds: research -> brief -> write -> quality gate -> scorecard.

See pre-generated examples in demo/examples/.

Quick Start

Inside Claude Code, type two lines — no terminal, no clone, no config:

/plugin marketplace add cgallic/kai-cmo-harness
/plugin install kai@kai-marketing-os

That installs every skill plus the knowledge base they run on (frameworks, checklists, channel guides, policy references, quality gates — ~7 MB) and keeps them updated. Then open any product repo and run:

/kai-start
/kai-growth-plan

/kai-start reads your repo, plays back what your product is, and writes MARKETING.md — once, in about 2 minutes. /kai-growth-plan turns that context into a stage-specific plan, recommended workflows, metrics, budget notes, and anti-patterns.

Prefer a shell one-liner? Same result:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cgallic/kai-cmo-harness/main/install.sh | bash

Want the short setup guide? Read Quick Start.

5 Useful First Runs

What Makes Kai Different

Most AI marketing tools start from a blank chat box. Kai starts from the repo: product docs, code, routes, pricing, examples, claims, and marketing memory.

That means the system can:

• create a brief before it writes
• choose the right channel playbook
• trace claims to evidence
• block risky copy before it ships
• route live actions through approval
• remember what worked after results come back

Kai is built for founders, indie hackers, SaaS teams, agencies, and product engineers who want Claude Code to help with actual growth work instead of generic copy.

What This Is Not

Kai is not a prompt pack, a standalone chatbot, or a content spinner. It is a local operating surface for marketing work that needs source context, policy checks, quality gates, and repeatable workflows.

Autonomous campaign management is a guarded phase, not the starting promise. Kai ships the trusted operating layer first: product context, policy constraints, evidence, approvals, memory, and connector health.

Install Options

Plugin (recommended — Claude Code CLI or desktop): two lines inside Claude Code. Auto-updating, includes the knowledge base, nothing touches your shell.

/plugin marketplace add cgallic/kai-cmo-harness
/plugin install kai@kai-marketing-os

Plugin skills are namespaced: type /kai:kai-start, /kai:kai-growth-plan, and so on.

Shell one-liner: installs skills to ~/.claude/skills/ and the knowledge base to ~/.claude/kai/. Use this if you prefer un-namespaced commands (/kai-start) or want to read the script first.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cgallic/kai-cmo-harness/main/install.sh | bash

Repo copy (Cursor, Codex, claude.ai/code web, client repos): these surfaces don't persist ~/.claude/skills, so put Kai in the repo itself. Clone this repo and copy AGENTS.md, knowledge/, harness/, memory/, and scripts/quality_gates/ into your project root — the agent picks it up from AGENTS.md on the next session. Details in Quick Start.

Repository Structure

kai-cmo-harness/
├── CLAUDE.md                    # Standalone Claude Code entry point
├── config.yaml.example          # Central config template
├── setup.sh                     # Interactive setup wizard
├── render_templates.py          # Jinja2 renderer for workspace files
│
├── knowledge/                   # 100+ marketing frameworks (ships as-is)
│   ├── frameworks/              # Core frameworks (AEO, copywriting, Meta ads)
│   ├── channels/                # Channel guides (blog, email, TikTok, etc.)
│   ├── checklists/              # Validation checklists
│   ├── personas/                # 8 audience personas
│   ├── playbooks/               # Strategic playbooks
│   └── design/                  # UI/UX design patterns
│
├── harness/                     # Pipeline config + quality gates
│   ├── brief-schema.md          # Content brief format
│   ├── skill-contracts/         # Format-specific YAML contracts
│   └── references/              # Cold email rules, Google Ads rules
│
├── workspace/                   # OpenClaw workspace templates
│   ├── MARKETING.md             # Operating config (parsed by harness)
│   ├── SOUL.md                  # Voice profile + banned words
│   ├── HEARTBEAT.md             # Agent heartbeat protocol
│   ├── AGENTS.md                # Agent hierarchy + data tools
│   ├── TOOLS.md                 # Tool configuration
│   └── agents/                  # Domain agent templates (.j2)
│
├── demo/                        # Instant demo (one command, one API key)
│   ├── demo.py                  # Single-file demo script
│   └── examples/                # Pre-generated output examples
│
├── scripts/                     # Python pipeline + analytics
│   ├── harness_cli.py           # Main CLI (brief → write → gate → approve → publish)
│   ├── quality_gates/           # four_us_score, banned_word_check, seo_lint
│   ├── self_improvement/        # Pattern extraction + harness updates
│   ├── content/                 # Content generation helpers
│   ├── leads/                   # Lead pipeline + conversion
│   ├── ads/                     # Ad management (Meta, Google Ads API)
│   ├── analytics/               # GA4, GSC, Stripe, Supabase, Meta Ads
│   ├── publish/                 # CMS publishing (WordPress, Ghost, Webflow, static)
│   ├── social/                  # Social posting (LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Buffer)
│   ├── intel/                   # Competitor monitoring, SERP tracking, content gaps
│   ├── campaigns/               # Campaign planner + tracker
│   ├── reporting/               # Weekly reports, CEO deck, HTML dashboard
│   └── knowledge_cloner/        # Expert knowledge extraction pipeline (14 modules)
│
├── agent/                       # Autonomous loop (optional)
│   ├── loop.py, scheduler.py    # Task scheduling + execution
│   ├── channels/                # Discord, WhatsApp integrations
│   └── tasks/                   # Generic + example product handlers
│
├── gateway/                     # FastAPI webhook gateway (optional)
│
├── deploy/                      # VPS deployment templates
│   ├── cloud-config.yaml.j2    # Cloud-init template
│   ├── cmo-agent.service        # systemd service
│   └── deploy.sh                # Git pull → restart → health check
│
├── examples/                    # Config examples by business type
│   ├── config.yaml.saas
│   ├── config.yaml.ecommerce
│   └── config.yaml.agency
│
└── docs/                        # Documentation
    ├── QUICK_START.md
    ├── CONFIGURATION.md
    ├── ADDING_PRODUCTS.md
    ├── ANALYTICS_SETUP.md
    └── ARCHITECTURE.md

First run: open Claude Code in any product repo and type /kai-start. Or type /kai to see the 42 public router commands. The public skill manifest documents 45 canonical kai-* skill pages.

Current Status (v1.0.0, updated May 2026)

For the full assessment, see docs/superpowers/specs/2026-04-03-system-current-state-report.md.

Related Links

• MeetKai: the operator layer behind Kai Marketing OS workflows.
• KaiCalls: a Kai-owned AI voice agent product for small-business phone answering and lead capture when the business is phone-led.
• Connor Gallic: founder building Kai, KaiCalls, and AI automation systems.
• How Kai runs paid ads: plain-English explanation of the paid media workflow.
• System guide: architecture pages, Mermaid diagrams, and runtime schemas.
• Public skill manifest: versioned API-style docs for every canonical kai-* skill.

Optional Dashboard Deployment

Kai includes an interactive dashboard for active goals, tasks, and integrations.

Path A: Direct Browser Deploy

1. Start the local web server by double-clicking serve.bat on Windows or running ./serve.sh on macOS/Linux.
2. Open http://localhost:8000/workspace/dashboard.html.
3. Click One-Click Deploy.
4. Enter a Netlify Personal Access Token.
5. Deploy the dashboard. The URL and Site ID are cached in browser localStorage.

Path B: Desktop Launchers

• Windows: double-click deploy.bat.
• macOS/Linux: run ./deploy.sh.

Path C: Git-Backed Hosting

Push this repository to GitHub and link it to Vercel or Netlify. The repo includes vercel.json and netlify.toml.

Publishing

Publishing is truthful and double-opt-in. The content engine never invents URLs: a gate-approved piece either publishes for real — when publishing.enabled plus a publishing.sites.<site>.platform entry are set in config.yaml (env override KAI_PUBLISH_ENABLED) — and logs the URL the CMS returned, or it's logged as approved_unpublished until you publish manually and backfill with content_log.mark_published(entry_id, url). That backfill is also what arms the 30-day performance check. WordPress publishes are idempotent (slug lookup updates instead of duplicating) and default to status=draft.

The legacy CLI path publishes explicitly:

# Publish to WordPress
kai-harness run --task blog --site mysite --keyword "ai crm" --publish wordpress

# Publish to Ghost CMS
kai-harness run --task blog --site mysite --keyword "ai crm" --publish ghost

# Generate static site markdown (Hugo/Jekyll/Astro)
kai-harness run --task blog --site mysite --keyword "ai crm" --publish markdown

Social media posting:

python scripts/social/linkedin.py --content "Your LinkedIn post"
python scripts/social/twitter.py --content "Your tweet"
python scripts/social/buffer.py --content "Scheduled post" --platforms linkedin twitter

Competitive Intelligence

Monitor competitors automatically:

kai-harness intel --check               # RSS + sitemap scan
kai-harness intel --diff                # New pages since last check
kai-harness intel --gaps --site mysite  # Keywords they rank for, you don't
kai-harness intel --brief               # AI-synthesized weekly market brief

Campaign Management

Generate all assets for a multi-channel campaign:

kai-harness campaign --goal "product launch" --product myproduct --keyword "ai crm" --save campaigns/q1/

Generates: landing page, 5-email sequence, social variants (LinkedIn/Twitter/Instagram), ad variants (Meta + Google), content calendar. --save mints a campaign_id that threads through the tracker, runtime artifacts, the content log, and 30-day performance checks.

Goals & the Weekly CMO Review

Give the machine targets and it plans against them:

python scripts/harness_cli.py goals add --brand mysite --name "Q3 signups" --kpi signups --target 500 --deadline 2026-09-30
python scripts/harness_cli.py goals list   # shows pace vs deadline

Every Monday the agent loop's cmo_review task measures each goal's pace from graded 30-day results, decomposes behind-pace goals into task graphs, and executes them through the normal approval gates. It also runs the 30-day performance check (nightly), weekly pattern extraction, and an hourly editorial-calendar tick (data/calendar/editorial.jsonl) — dated content plans become pipeline runs automatically.

Reporting

kai-harness weekly-report                          # Full weekly report
kai-harness weekly-report --save reports/week.md   # Save to file
kai-harness dashboard                              # Open HTML dashboard in browser
python scripts/reporting/ceo_deck.py               # Generate 5-slide CEO deck

Google Ads Integration

python scripts/ads/google_ads.py campaigns         # Campaign performance
python scripts/ads/google_ads.py keywords           # Keyword data
python scripts/ads/google_ads.py search-terms       # Find negatives + opportunities
python scripts/ads/google_ads_optimize.py --analyze # AI-powered optimization

Knowledge Cloner

Extract expert knowledge from YouTube, podcasts, articles, and GitHub repos into structured frameworks:

python -m scripts.knowledge_cloner init "Alex Hormozi" --domain "Business"
python -m scripts.knowledge_cloner discover alex-hormozi --youtube https://www.youtube.com/@AlexHormozi/videos --limit 20
python -m scripts.knowledge_cloner pipeline alex-hormozi --max-cost 10.00

6-phase pipeline: Discover → Transcribe → Extract → Distill → Synthesize → Operationalize. Outputs 5 distilled docs + 4 operational tools + quality report. ~$3.50 for 40 sources via OpenRouter.

See scripts/knowledge_cloner/README.md for full docs.

Self-Improvement

Why this exists

Most AI marketing tools are either:

1. a blank chat box,
2. a narrow content generator, or
3. a dashboard that cannot understand your product repo.

Kai does the opposite. It runs where your product already lives — the terminal — and gives Claude Code a structured marketing operating system: command routing, strategy documents, platform policies, channel playbooks, QA gates, approval workflows, runtime models, and repeatable growth workflows.

That is why the current moat is the repo-native operating layer. Kai makes marketing behave more like engineering work: source-aware, inspectable, gated, and repeatable. Campaign automation becomes safer because the system already knows the product, the claims, the rules, and the approval path.

Product shape

Kai Runtime

The code-level workspace layer:

• workspace profile
• brand memory
• module activation
• run and artifact persistence
• approval state
• integrations and connector health

Kai Operator Surface

The interactive layer builders use today:

• /kai skills in Claude Code
• local CLI and gateway surfaces
• dashboard artifacts
• quality gates and approval workflows

Kai Marketing OS

The marketing-specific operating system:

• quality gates
• archetype-specific workflows
• campaign and content orchestration
• approvals
• approval-led learning loops

Quick examples

How it works

The first time you run a /kai command in a project, Kai:

1. Reads your codebase — CLAUDE.md, README.md, package files, routes, schemas, product docs, and existing marketing notes.
2. Builds a runtime profile — workspace, brand, archetype/module defaults, proof points, channels, and operating constraints.
3. Creates MARKETING.md as a readable export — ICP, personas, brand voice, positioning, value props, landscape, and operating defaults.
4. Runs the workflow — writes, audits, plans, scores, researches, routes approvals, and packages the requested marketing asset.

Every later command should run from the same workspace/brand/module model. MARKETING.md remains useful for humans, while the runtime contract lives in code.

Architecture

Kai Marketing OS
  -> outcome engine, quality gate, approvals, archetype modules

Kai Runtime
  -> skills, subagents, hooks, memory, plugins, local/remote runs

Implementation
  -> scripts/content, scripts/quality, gateway, agent, knowledge

The canonical runtime models live in kai/runtime/.

42 public router commands, 45 canonical skills

These commands work through Claude Code's skill system. They load knowledge files and framework instructions for the LLM. They do not invoke the kai/ Python runtime directly.

The table below reflects the /kai router surface. The complete canonical skill inventory lives in the public skill manifest, which includes 45 canonical kai-* pages.

Produce marketing assets

Audit and improve

Plan strategy

Research and analyze

What is included

Kai ships with a real marketing knowledge base, more than prompts:

• 54 marketing playbook docs — growth loops, growth hacker OS, CRO, pricing, competitive intel, content repurposing, lifecycle marketing, launches, retargeting, ABM, partnerships, and more
• 27 frameworks — SEO rules, AEO/GEO strategy, AI-search optimization, perception engineering, copywriting formulas, quality-rater guidance, query fan-out, and LLM citation tracking
• 36 checklists — technical SEO, ad launches, growth hacker OS, content quality, email, PR, website launches, social audits, creative production, privacy scanning, mutation-risk review, and paid acquisition
• 26 channel guides — SEO content, LinkedIn, Meta ads, TikTok, YouTube, X/Twitter, Instagram, newsletters, podcasts, community, affiliate/referral, and press
• 18 harness references — ad platform policies, API notes, compliance references, provenance rules, creator disclosure, and analytics query templates
• 30 skill contracts — output specs for content, ads, outreach, growth-hacker packages, meetings, experiments, clips, podcasts, lead dossiers, and other marketing assets
• 8 audience personas — pains, hooks, objections, emotional drivers, and voice guidance
• Quality gates — Four U's, banned-word checks, proof density, specificity, platform compliance, SEO linting, and AI-slop detection

Core use cases

For SaaS founders

Use Kai to go from "we need marketing" to a concrete plan: landing page, launch content, lifecycle emails, cold outreach, SEO roadmap, paid campaign angles, and AI-search visibility.

For agencies

Install Kai inside a client repo and create repeatable strategy, content, campaign, and audit workflows without rebuilding your operating system for every account.

For indie hackers

Use /kai-growth-plan, /kai-growth-hacker, /kai-landing-page, /kai-cold-outreach, and /kai-content-calendar to create a practical marketing system without hiring a team.

For local-service businesses

Use Kai's business profiling, audits, and proposal ranking to turn a service business website into a prioritized marketing action plan.

For AI-search visibility

Use /kai-surround-sound and the AEO/GEO knowledge base to target the questions people ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews when comparing products in your category.

Repository map

harness/skills/              Claude Code slash-command skills
knowledge/                   Marketing playbooks, frameworks, checklists, personas, policies
kai/runtime/                 Runtime models, state, profiles, goals registry, approvals, and lifecycle
agent/                       Subagent task scheduler and Task Graph Decomposer (goals-to-DAG planner)
kai/execution/               Task Orchestrator mapping nodes to task handlers
kai/analytics/               Attribution engine and closed-loop ActionRewards feedback loop
scripts/quality/             Content quality gate and scoring rules
scripts/content/             Briefing, writing, reporting, and content workflow scripts
scripts/analytics/           Search Console, GA4, Stripe, Meta, and competitive monitoring utilities
harness/references/          Ad policy and compliance references
harness/skill-contracts/     Output contracts for common marketing assets
workspace/                   Example CMO-agent operating workspace
tools/docker/                Modal and RunPod media-generation worker templates

Where to start

• New launch: /kai-growth-plan -> /kai-email-system -> /kai-landing-page
• Running ads: /kai-ad-campaign → /kai-cro → /kai-retarget
• Need AI-search mentions: /kai-surround-sound → /kai-competitors → /kai-seo-audit
• Want the full machine: /kai-launch

Requirements

• Claude Code
• A terminal
• Optional: analytics/ad-platform credentials if you want Kai to pull real performance data

No SaaS account is required. The core harness is local files and Claude Code skills.

Related search terms

AI marketing agent, AI CMO, Claude Code skills, Claude Code slash commands, Claude Code marketing skills, marketing automation agent, SaaS marketing agent, startup growth marketing AI, local service marketing OS, SEO content agent, answer engine optimization agent, generative engine optimization, GEO agent, AEO agent, LLM citation strategy, ChatGPT search optimization, Perplexity SEO, Claude search optimization, AI Overviews optimization, landing page copy agent, lifecycle email agent, paid ads agent, content calendar generator, marketing audit agent, product launch agent, AI growth marketing assistant.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.