Marketing & Business · Blog Post
Aaron Marketing Skills: a marketing operating system with SHIP / FIX / BLOCK quality gates
A marketing skill that drafts good copy is common now. One that refuses to let a paid-ads plan ship until it clears a named, scoring framework — and tells you exactly which criterion failed — is a different, more disciplined idea. That's the entire premise of Aaron He Zhu's 120-skill pack.
By Mehadi Hasan 8 min read
What it is
aaron-marketing-skills is a 120-skill "marketing operating system" for Claude Code, spanning seven disciplines — narrative, SEO/GEO, social, email, paid ads, influencer, and launch — at 16 skills each, plus 8 protocol-layer skills that hold the whole thing together. It's Apache 2.0-licensed, sits at roughly 2,466 stars, and had commits land the same day this was written, which is unusually fast iteration for a solo-maintained repo.
What sets it apart from a broader pack like Marketing Skills isn't more disciplines — it's fewer, covered more strictly, with an enforcement layer on top of every one of them.
Seven disciplines, one contract
| Discipline | Framework | Primary gate |
|---|---|---|
| Narrative | TALE | narrative-quality-auditor |
| SEO/GEO | CORE-EEAT + CITE | content-quality-auditor, domain-authority-auditor |
| Social | ECHO | social-quality-auditor |
| SEND | email-quality-auditor | |
| Paid Ads | ROAS | ad-account-auditor |
| Influencer | STAR | creator-content-auditor |
| Launch | RAMP | launch-readiness-auditor |
How a SHIP / FIX / BLOCK verdict works
Each of the 8 auditor skills runs a deterministic scoring pass against its discipline's named framework — for instance the ad-account-auditor checks a paid campaign against ROAS's return/offer/audience/spend-efficiency criteria. A hard failure returns BLOCK, a salvageable issue returns FIX with what to change, and only a plan that clears every criterion returns SHIP.
Repository structure
narrative, seo-geo, influencer, ad, email, launch, social/ # 7 disciplines protocol/ # 8 auditor + protocol skills commands/ # 8 slash commands references/ # shared contracts & frameworks scripts/ # deterministic stdlib-only runtimes memory/ # HOT / WARM / COLD state management
"Keyless by default" is the same design principle as claude-seo: every skill works from data you paste in, with paid connectors as optional enhancements rather than requirements — so the quality-gate discipline doesn't come with a mandatory subscription attached.
Installation
Claude Code plugin marketplace
/plugin marketplace add aaron-he-zhu/aaron-marketing-skills /plugin install aaron-marketing@aaron
Other platforms / generic clone
npx skills add aaron-he-zhu/aaron-marketing-skills # or git clone https://github.com/aaron-he-zhu/aaron-marketing-skills
My take
The auditor-gate design is the right instinct for marketing specifically, because marketing output is unusually easy to ship on vibes — copy that "reads well" isn't the same as copy that clears an actual send-integrity or ad-efficiency bar. Making that check a typed, named skill instead of a mental habit is a genuine improvement over most marketing-skill packs, including the broader ones on this list.
The tradeoff is coverage and maturity: 120 skills across 7 disciplines is narrower than Marketing Skills' 9 categories, and as a newer, smaller, single-maintainer project it hasn't had the same volume of real-world use to shake out edge cases. Reach for it specifically when you want the discipline of a hard quality gate; reach for Marketing Skills when breadth matters more.
Frequently asked questions
What does a SHIP / FIX / BLOCK verdict actually check?
Each of the 8 auditors runs a deterministic scoring pass against its discipline's framework — for example the ad-account-auditor checks a paid campaign against the ROAS framework's return/offer/audience/spend criteria — and returns BLOCK if a hard requirement fails, FIX if it is salvageable, SHIP only if it clears the bar.
Why "keyless by default"?
Every skill is built to work from data you paste in or free sources, with paid API connectors (for live ad or email platform data) as optional add-ons rather than requirements — so you can trial the whole system before wiring up any credentials.
What is the "shared contract" across 120 skills?
All of them follow the same activation sequence and input/output shape, so switching from, say, an email skill to a paid-ads skill mid-project doesn't mean learning a new interaction pattern.
Is this a one-person project?
Yes, built and maintained by Aaron He Zhu, Apache 2.0-licensed. It is newer and smaller than Corey Haines' marketingskills repo, and worth reaching for specifically when you want the quality-gate discipline rather than the broadest possible skill count.