brandvm/webflow-launch

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name: webflow-launch description: Take a finished Webflow build live and through its first month: the SEO plan and schema, pre-launch QA (content, function, devices, accessibility, speed, SEO and tracking), launch day (publish, release, redirects, noindex off), handoff to the client and the 30-day follow-up. Use when a Webflow site built with wf-template is signed off and heading for launch, on launch day, when handing the site to the client, or for after-launch checks.

Webflow launch: signed-off build → live site → first 30 days

Starts where the webflow-build skill's Build handoff ends: every page complete on staging and signed off against the design. The standing rules of webflow-build still apply (no commit, push, publish to a custom domain, release or DNS change without an explicit OK; no credentials in chat).

Tags: [Claude] Claude does it · [Claude checks] Claude verifies and reports · [Person] a person does it; Claude may track it, never claim it. Commands are the webflow-build check scripts (pnpm wf:*, from the repo; add --live to check what visitors get). Where a list names another skill (webflow-performance-optimizer, asset-audit, safe-publish), use it if the session has it; otherwise do the check by hand and say so.

How to run it:

1. Record each item as it's done with pnpm progress tick "<checklist>" "<the start of the item>" (--by check when a pnpm wf:* script decided it), as in webflow-build › checklists.md › How to record progress. Bench's Tasks panel shows the same list; pnpm progress show prints it, with the person's own to-dos.
2. Work top to bottom; report each section's result before moving on.
3. Anything that fails goes into the known issues list as "fix before launch" or "fix after launch", with an owner.
4. The webflow-build check scripts still work against the live domain: pass --live, and point stagingUrl at the domain when checking it.

SEO plan (during review, before pre-launch QA)

SEO is planned and built, not only checked at the end. The plan lives in the repo's docs/handoff/SEO-PLAN.md (the template has the stub): what staging outputs today, the steps, the schema per page and what is needed from the client.

• [Claude] Inventory every page and template: title and description (with lengths), Open Graph fields and image, noindex, JSON-LD. Read the published HTML (pnpm wf:seo), not the page settings.
• [Claude] Draft the missing or weak titles and descriptions; [Person] approves them; [Claude] writes them in the page settings (templates bind a Meta Title and Meta Description field).
• [Claude] Open Graph "same as SEO" everywhere; [Person] approves a default 1200×630 share image; templates bind an image field.
• [Claude] Site-wide tags Webflow doesn't write (og:site_name, og:locale) go in the head snippet in loader.html: re-paste and publish, then pnpm wf:install.
• [Claude] Schema as JSON-LD files in the repo, one per page (docs/seo/schema/<page>.jsonld) and docs/seo/schema/templates.md for CMS templates with their {Field} bindings. Each item refers to one Organization by @id on the production domain. The file is the source of truth; the page's head code (or jsonLdSchema through the pages tool, where the connector has it) is a copy. Bind single-line fields only: a quote or line break breaks the JSON, and an apostrophe becomes '.
• [Claude] Heading plan: pnpm wf:outline on every page and template, checked against headings.md. Tag fixes go in the build; [Person] approves any change of H1 or H2 wording (it is copy).
• [Claude] Redirect map, when the site replaces an old one: pnpm wf:redirects map (the old site from liveUrl, or --from) writes docs/seo/redirects.csv in Webflow's import format; every row printed under "needs a look" is checked and edited in the file. [Person] approves the map, and exports the site's existing 301s if it has any (an import replaces them all; re-run with --existing).
• [Claude checks] Every page in the sitemap has its title, description, canonical and one H1 on staging (pnpm wf:seo).
• [Claude checks] No duplicate titles or descriptions and a real 404; long titles and short descriptions are fixed or accepted; pages with no schema are in seo.noSchemaOk. Then Google's Rich Results Test on one page of each type.
• [Person] Supplies the official name, address, phone, hours, social profiles and the production domain (www or apex).

Pre-launch QA

Content

• [Claude checks] No placeholder text or # links (pnpm wf:links, which also flags lorem ipsum); stand-in images checked against the known issues.
• [Person] Proofread every page.
• [Claude checks] No data-manual-todo marker left in the published HTML (every manual step done); docs/handoff/REVIEW.md › Before launch all ticked.
• [Claude checks] Contact data: phones as tel: links, addresses, emails, hours; [Person] confirms they're correct.
• [Claude checks] Legal pages present and linked in the footer; copyright year and social links.

Function

• [Person] Submit every form once: it arrives in the right inbox or CRM, the confirmation shows, the auto-reply sends. (Claude can't pass spam protection; headless browsers get blocked by it.)
• [Claude checks] All links and buttons work (pnpm wf:links --external; confirm external failures by hand, some sites block bots).
• [Claude checks] 404 page, loading, empty, success and error states.
• [Claude checks] Search, filters, sorting and pagination, if any.
• [Person] Payments: a test purchase and a refund, if any.

Devices, accessibility, speed

• [Person] Real devices: iPhone Safari, Android Chrome; desktop Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge.
• [Claude checks] pnpm wf:overflow on every page template: nothing runs off the right edge and no sideways scroll, at every width from 2560 to 360 (laptop widths between the breakpoints included).
• [Claude checks] No serious or critical accessibility failures on any page, at every width (pnpm wf:a11y --all-widths). Target: WCAG 2.2 AA.
• [Claude] Keyboard-only walkthrough of every page: focus visible, order, menus, dialogs, Escape.
• [Person] Screen reader spot check.
• [Claude checks] Performance on a phone profile: CLS < 0.1, INP < 200 ms, LCP < 2.5 s as targets (webflow-performance-optimizer); note what the design trades off.

SEO and tracking

• [Claude checks] Every page in the sitemap has its title, description, canonical and one H1 (pnpm wf:seo).
• [Claude checks] OG tags and JSON-LD that parses with no HTML entities on every page, and noindex only on the pages in seo.noindexOk: the rest of the SEO report. Alt text (asset-audit), favicon, schema where SEO-PLAN.md plans it.
• [Claude checks] Canonicals point to the live domain (after the domain is attached: liveUrl in the config, then pnpm wf:seo --live --canonical).
• [Claude checks] pnpm wf:tracking --live once the tags are on the domain (on staging first, if they load there): which tags load on which pages, no page view counted twice, nothing tracks before the cookie choice or after Reject, gclid and UTM survive the host redirects. Every request that sends data is blocked, so the check adds nothing to the client's reports. It can't tell whether an account received anything.
• [Person] GA4 and conversions arrive (Realtime report), after accepting cookies on the live site.

Launch day

• [Person] Content freeze agreed; go-live approval and date from the client.
• [Person] DNS: lower the TTL a day ahead; keep the email records (MX, SPF, DKIM). Claude doesn't change DNS or registrar settings.
• [Claude] With an explicit OK: publish to the live domain (safe-publish if available: show what changed, confirm, publish); cut the repo release and set RELEASE in the head snippet (README › Release).
• [Claude checks] pnpm wf:domain: the certificate is trusted and not near its end, http and the other www host redirect permanently to the liveUrl host, the domain doesn't expire within 45 days.
• [Claude checks] pnpm wf:install --live: the published snippets match loader.html (with the new RELEASE), one viewport meta, no request to localhost.
• [Claude checks] pnpm wf:seo --live --canonical: no noindex left outside seo.noindexOk, every canonical on the live domain.
• [Claude] Remove noindex and the staging password; robots.txt allows indexing.
• [Claude] Save the visual baselines of the live site (pnpm wf:baseline save --live, every page in pages) and commit them.
• [Claude] Apply the 301 redirects: [Person] imports docs/seo/redirects.csv (Site settings › Publishing › 301 redirects › Import) and publishes; [Claude checks] pnpm wf:redirects test --live: every row lands on its page in one permanent hop.
• [Claude checks] sitemap.xml exists (Site settings › SEO › Auto-generate sitemap) and does not list /design/style-guide or /design/media: exclude both through the sitemap tool once the site plan is on (it answers 403 before that).
• [Person] Submit sitemap.xml in Search Console.
• [Person] Submit a form on the live site and see the visit in analytics.

Handoff to client (go-live approved)

All [Person], Claude can prepare the documents:

• Live site; ownership transfer (Webflow site, hosting billing, domain, design files, font and image licences). [Claude] lists what to transfer: registrar, DNS host and renewal dates (pnpm wf:domain), the tags with their IDs and the third-party services the pages load (pnpm wf:tracking --live).
• CMS training (recorded) and training notes ([Claude] drafts them from the CMS notes).
• Analytics, Tag Manager and Search Console access.
• Credentials returned; agency access removed or kept under a support agreement.
• Support terms and the first improvements roadmap.

After launch (first 30 days)

• [Claude checks] Days 1 to 3: crawl for 404s and redirect chains (pnpm wf:links --live --external); [Person] checks Search Console coverage and exports its "Not found (404)" URLs; [Claude checks] pnpm wf:redirects test --live --file <export> and adds rows to the map for any that fail.
• [Person] Week 1: leads arriving, analytics numbers look right.
• [Person] Weeks 2 to 4: indexing and traffic against the baseline.
• [Claude] Fix the after-launch items from the known issues list.
• [Person] 30-day check-in, retro, testimonial or case study.
• [Claude checks] pnpm wf:domain at the check-in (and on any later support visit): renewals coming up go to whoever pays for them.
• [Claude] Before every later release: pnpm wf:baseline compare --live after publishing to staging; every change is expected or fixed.
• [Claude] Offer the project's new template-candidate GOTCHAS to the template (webflow-build › rules.md › Contributing); the template collects them with pnpm harvest.