WendAnswerToday

WendAnswerToday is a Next.js App Router site for publishing daily LinkedIn Wend answer pages, solver pages, archive pages, and SEO-friendly supporting pages.

Quick Start

npm install
npm run dev

Open http://127.0.0.1:3000.

Useful Commands

npm run generate:wend
npm run latest:wend
npm run publish:wend
npm run test:latest-date
npm run test:wend-archive-url
npm run test:wend-mvp
npm run test:wend-publish
npm run test:seo-metadata
npm run test:seo-routes
npm run typecheck
npm run build
npm run smoke:local

Documentation

• Daily Update Runbook: how to add daily puzzle data, update imports, and verify the local site.
• SEO Runbook: TDK rules, index strategy, OG image behavior, and sitemap priorities.
• Changelog: feature and operational changes that affect launch, SEO, data freshness, or troubleshooting.

Homepage Structure

The MVP homepage is intentionally Wend-first and answer-first:

• The desktop header includes Today, Solver, Archive, and a compact Play Game dropdown.
• The Play Game dropdown links to Official Wend and the internal /wend-unlimited practice page; /wend-unlimited stays noindex,follow until it becomes a true unlimited generator.
• Mobile bottom navigation stays limited to Today, Solver, and Archive.
• The footer stays limited to Contact, Press, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, and Terms.
• /press lists trusted external links, including Ko-fi updates, Linktree, and the public GitHub repository.
• FAQ remains available through page FAQ blocks and contextual links instead of the primary navigation.
• /wend-unlimited uses verified Wend puzzles as a practice set with Previous / Next navigation, current puzzle position, difficulty, and letter-count metadata.
• Centered hero with Get Today's Answer and Start with a Hint anchor CTAs.
• Full-width Today's LinkedIn Wend Answer card immediately after the hero.
• Left side of the answer card renders the Wend grid; right side handles Reveal all, Clear all, and row-level Get Word.
• Supporting sections follow the answer card: spoiler-safe hints, step-by-step explanation, FAQ, solving notes, and recent Wend answers.
• Do not add a separate right-side plan, snapshot, or fake preview card to the hero. If extra daily metadata is needed, keep it inside the real answer card.

Daily Publishing

Wend's target release time is treated as 8:00 UTC. The production goal is to publish verified daily data inside five minutes:

• npm run publish:wend reads WEND_DAILY_INPUT_FILE, WEND_DAILY_SOURCE_URL, or the public WEND_DAILY_FALLBACK_SOURCE_URL, validates the normalized Wend JSON or HTML cell-coordinate extraction, writes data/puzzles/wend/YYYY-MM-DD.json, regenerates the puzzle index, and optionally runs WEND_DEPLOY_COMMAND.
• .github/workflows/publish-wend-daily.yml retries during the launch window at 0,1,3,5 8 * * * UTC and also supports manual workflow_dispatch.
• The script refuses to publish isVerified: false data unless ALLOW_UNVERIFIED_WEND_PUBLISH=true is explicitly set for private dry runs.
• The script validates Wend geometry before publishing: coordinates must be in-grid, adjacent, and spell each answer word.
• In CI, WEND_PERSIST_TO_GIT=true commits generated daily JSON and the generated puzzle index back to the repository before deployment.
• WEND_ALERT_WEBHOOK_URL can point at one Discord-compatible webhook for publish failure alerts.
• /linkedin-wend-answer-today remains the permanent daily entry. Archive pages use /wend-answer-puzzle-{number}-{month-day-year}, for example /wend-answer-puzzle-17-june-25-2026.

The source URL can be a normalized, verified Wend JSON source, a page with a wend-puzzle-data JSON script tag, or an HTML page whose puzzle cells expose data-row, data-col, data-word-index, and data-letter-index attributes. Do not assume LinkedIn's official game page is crawlable without a logged-in session; test that separately before treating official scraping as the primary path.

Wend Board Model

Wend pages should mirror LinkedIn's real board, not placeholder examples:

• Use the actual LinkedIn grid dimensions for that day. Recent captured boards include June 25's 6x6 board and June 26's 7x7 board.
• Represent blocked gray wall cells as null in grid.
• Keep open letter cells as one-letter strings.
• Do not publish answer words or paths unless they are verified against the official puzzle.
• A verified solution must use every open cell exactly once, never pass through null cells, and connect letters orthogonally.

Documentation Rule

Any functional change should update Markdown documentation in the same pass when it affects one of these areas:

• Daily puzzle data, import paths, archive routes, or sitemap entries.
• Dependency version pins or package-lock changes.
• SEO metadata, canonical URLs, redirects, robots, sitemap, or social sharing previews.
• Analytics, event tracking, launch checks, smoke tests, or build scripts.
• User-facing game pages, solver behavior, archive behavior, or error pages.

For small code-only fixes, add one short entry to docs/CHANGELOG.md. For changes that alter the daily workflow, also update docs/DAILY_UPDATE_RUNBOOK.md.