search-console-readiness
Search engines tell you what they indexed. Nothing in the repository can. This skill prepares everything on your side and gives the owner a short, accurate checklist for the parts only they can do.
Activate when
- The production URL is decided and live, or launch is imminent, and the owner wants to be findable.
- is clean (or nearly), so submitting a broken sitemap is not the outcome.
- Not before the canonical host is final, and not on staging.
Working alone
This skill is self-contained. Its companions (declared in its metadata) are skills whose method it may need to do its own promised work. Use of a companion can be conditional: declaring one does not mean running it. When a companion's lane applies, use the skill if it is installed; if not, follow its short entry in references/companion-methods.md and say in your report which lanes ran inline at reduced depth. Never skip an applicable lane silently. Skills mentioned here only for escalation, referral, documentation, or optional deeper follow-up are not dependencies: report the hand-off and finish honestly.
Inspect
- Preconditions: results (no HIGH); the production origin is final; the canonical host, HTTPS, and /apex redirect policy are settled; the sitemap lists canonical live URLs and is declared in .
- Verification method available: DNS TXT (preferred, covers all subdomains), HTML file upload, meta tag, or existing analytics/tag-manager ownership. Check what the project already has (a leftover file or meta tag from a template/previous owner may belong to someone else).
- Bing / other engines (Webmaster Tools import, IndexNow) if relevant.
- What the owner must do themselves and cannot be done by the agent: sign in, claim the property, add DNS records, submit the sitemap, request indexing for key URLs.
- What only Search Console shows: indexed vs. not, coverage reasons, crawl errors, mobile usability, structured-data errors, manual actions.
Evidence that counts
Label each claim OBSERVED, SOURCE-INDICATED, DECLARED, INFERRED, UNKNOWN, or REVIEW REQUIRED. UNKNOWN is never a pass and never a failure.
- Everything about indexing status is UNKNOWN without console data supplied by the owner (DECLARED).
- A verification tag in the repo proves nothing about ownership.
May change
Add a verification meta tag or file
only when the owner provides the token (never invent tokens); ensure
declares the sitemap; add IndexNow key files if requested. Prepare a short written checklist in the reply. Do not sign in to accounts, add DNS records, or click submit on the owner's behalf.
Must not claim
"Indexed", "submitted", "verified", "will appear in Google within X days", or any ranking outcome.
Verify
Confirm the verification file or tag is reachable at the production URL and matches the owner's token; confirm the sitemap URL to submit returns 200 XML with the expected host. After the owner submits, ask them to paste coverage results and interpret those as DECLARED evidence.
Escalate
Domain ownership questions, migrations, penalties, or mass "Crawled, not indexed" statuses: technical SEO review beyond this pass.
No change is valid when
The site is intentionally private, still on staging, or already verified with a submitted sitemap. Say so and stop.