Finish this page

A draft can't know everything. Ghostwriter never invents a price, a date, a duration or a name. It leaves a mark where only you know the answer. Finish this page finds everything still unfinished on a record, highlights it in the form, and takes you through it one field at a time. A record can't be published until the gaps that matter are finished.

It works on any record of a resource Ghostwriter writes for, whoever wrote it. Finding gaps never asks a model and costs nothing.

What it finds#

"Counts" is what the pill counts. Suggestions are listed after the steps, numbered on their own, and never block anything.

The markers are visible on purpose: someone who never opens the guide still sees [[ask: …]] in the text. The keywords ask and gw-link are never translated.

The guide#

• The pill, beside Write with Ghostwriter in the page header, says how many things are left ("5 things to finish"), then "Ready to publish". On a new or finished record with nothing that blocks publishing, it doesn't appear.
• Highlighted fields: amber for what's left, the guide's colour for the current step, and green once finished in this view. A tag beside the field's name says which step it is and what kind ("2 · Swap me"), or, for a field with several, the range ("2–4 · 3 to do"). Click a tag to go to that step.
• Inside a RichEditor, the marker's own words get a dashed underline: the fact to add, the link's words, the template token.
• The guide, bottom right, has the message, the fixes, and Back · Skip for now · Next. It opens the field's tab, section, or collapsed Builder or Repeater item, and scrolls it into view clear of the guide.
• The flying mark goes to each field with a short label ("Fill this in", "Needs a link", "Swap me", "License me").
• Minimise (the —, or Esc inside the guide) folds it into the corner dock with a count badge. Whether it was open or minimised is remembered for you, on every record. It starts minimised, and opens by itself after you use a draft (ghostwriter.finish.open_after_draft).

Moving between steps, minimising and restoring all happen in the browser: they never send the form to the server, so file uploads and editors are left alone. Only a fix that changes a field writes into the form.

Fixes#

Nothing is saved until you press Save. Skip for now is remembered for this record until you close the browser tab; a skipped step still counts and still blocks.

Only the two fixes marked uses Ghostwriter call a model, one small request per click. Ghostwriter refuses to write a fact, and an answer with a figure the page doesn't have is thrown away.

Keyboard and screen readers#

• Alt+Shift+N next, Alt+Shift+P back, Alt+Shift+G open or minimise. These work anywhere on the page except while typing in a field.
• The guide is a labelled region, not a dialog: the form stays usable. Focus moves to the step's message when it opens or moves on, and to the dock when it's minimised. A polite live region says each step and each fix.
• Tags are buttons ("Gap 2 of 5: Needs a link"), and each highlighted field says what it needs.
• Under reduce motion there is no flight, bobbing, peeking or wisps; minimising is an instant swap.
• Dark mode follows Filament's. Below 640px wide the guide is a bottom sheet, and the flying mark is hidden.

Publishing#

Filament has no "published" of its own, so the plugin's ->publishedWhen() says what live is:

GhostwriterPlugin::make()
    ->publishedWhen(fn (Model $record): bool => $record->status === 'published');

• With it, saving a record that will be live while something that blocks is left is refused. Each message is under its own field ("Add the adult ticket price before publishing."), Builder and Repeater items included. Drafts save freely. Required fields are left to Filament's own validation.
• Set to Warn, the record saves, with one warning that lists everything left.
• Without publishedWhen, nothing is ever refused: each save with something unfinished gets one warning.

The rule is Settings → Publishing → When a page is published with something unfinished: Block (the default) or Warn. GHOSTWRITER_PUBLISH_ON_UNFINISHED=block|warn in .env wins over the page. Until the new setting is saved, the older stock photos setting (and GHOSTWRITER_STOCK_ON_PUBLISH) is still read.

The same guard covers unlicensed stock previews, so a preview and a marker give one refusal with both.

In Warn mode, [[ask: …]] text goes live as it is. That's the price of warning instead of blocking.

What Filament can't do (yet)#

• Link fields. Filament forms have no link fields Ghostwriter knows, so link gaps exist only inside RichEditor and Markdown text. A required URL TextInput shows as an empty required field. There are no "Link to …" suggestions and no broken-link check: there are no entries to link to.
• An asset browser. Images come from Find a photo or the field's own upload.

For developers#

• The pill and the guide appear on the Create and Edit pages of the resources Ghostwriter writes for (pages using WritesWithGhostwriter), for people who may use Ghostwriter.
• Every field's wrapper gets data-gw-path="<state path>" (added to its own attributes with Field::configureUsing()). Where an app replaces the wrapper attributes, the guide finds the field by its input's ID.
• Every RichEditor gets Ghostwriter's RichContentPlugin, whose TipTap extension draws the underlines with ProseMirror decorations. It doesn't change the content.
• Gaps are found in the form as it is, through the stored form map. After changing a resource's form, run php artisan ghostwriter:scan.
• The guide's own state (open or minimised) is saved with a plain POST to ghostwriter/finish-guide on the panel.
• A draft's gap list is kept on its session (the gaps column, one of the migrations ghostwriter:install publishes), so the guide can say why something was left.