Content Planning in Hammer: An Experimental Feature
After building multiple content sites with Hammer, I’ve been exploring ways to bring content planning, campaign management, and content generation workflows closer to the tool itself. This post shares an experimental feature I’ve been working on: Content Plan Mode.
The Problem
When building content sites, I found myself managing a lot of context outside of Hammer:
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Campaign planning documents
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Research notes from AI tools
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Draft content files
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The relationship between planned posts and published content
All of this lived in separate files and tools, making it hard to see the full picture of where content was in its lifecycle, from initial planning through to publication.
The Experiment
I’ve been prototyping a Content Plan feature that integrates campaign planning directly into Hammer. The idea is simple: treat content planning as a first-class workflow within the tool, not something that happens elsewhere.
What It Does
Campaign Management
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Create and manage content campaigns at the site level
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Each campaign has its own directory structure (kept out of builds via
.hammer-ignore)
Plan Dashboard
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Visual overview of campaign progress
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Track posts through their lifecycle: Planned → Scheduled → Drafted → Published
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See what’s next and what needs attention
Research Management
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Import research from AI tools (like OpenAI Deep Research)
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Convert raw text to markdown
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Keep research accessible alongside your plan
Draft Generation
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Generate draft files from planned posts
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Pre-populate frontmatter from plan data
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Create structured skeletons based on your post templates
Draft-to-Content Workflow
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Publish drafts to your content collections
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Update existing content files
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Track what’s been published vs. what’s still in planning
The Workflow
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Plan → Structure your campaign with phases and posts
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Research → Import and organize research materials
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Draft → Generate drafts from planned posts
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Publish → Move drafts to content collections when ready
Everything stays in sync. The dashboard shows you progress across the entire lifecycle, so you always know where things stand.
Why This Matters
For content-heavy sites, planning and execution often feel disconnected. You plan in one place, draft in another, and publish somewhere else. This feature brings it all together - not as a separate tool, but as part of how you work with Hammer.
It’s experimental because I’m still figuring out what works. The mental model is: planning feeds into content, and content feeds back into planning. The UI reflects that relationship.
What’s Next
This is very much a work-in-progress. I’m iterating based on actual use, and there’s still a lot to explore:
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Better draft editing workflows - while respecting the role of the IDE/code editor and particularly AI editors.
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AI-assisted content generation (still deterministic for now) - what’s for Hammer and what stays in Cursor / Copilot/ Antigravity
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More sophisticated progress tracking
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Integration with scheduling and publishing
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Bulk workflow operations
If you’re thinking about building content sites with Hammer and have thoughts on how content planning could work better, I’d love to hear them. This is exploratory work, and real use cases will shape where it goes.