version: "1.0.0" name: featured-snippet-optimizer description: RETIRED v3.35 (2026-07-04) — merged into the wired citation-capsule-builder stage. Featured snippets fell 18%→8% of SERPs in 2025 (83% replaced by AI Overviews) and both select the same 40-60w extractive answer shape; a separate FS step would duplicate the capsule stage. disable-model-invocation: true user-invocable: false

Featured Snippet Optimizer — RETIRED (merged)

Status: retired 2026-07-04 (v3.35). Do not dispatch. Kept as a pointer.

Why retired

• Ahrefs (Jun 2025): FS prevalence 18% → 8% Jan–Jun 2025; 0.9 correlation with AIO

growth; ~83% replacement in 8 months; FS and AIO rarely co-occur.

• The tactic this SKILL documented (40-60 word declarative answer block after a

question H2, specific number, no hedging) is EXACTLY what the wired citation-capsule-builder stage produces and scripts/lint/citation_capsule_lint validates. Two stages writing the same block = duplicate/conflicting edits.

• Rule-6 history: this SKILL had pseudo-code and no executor since v5.0 — it never

ran in production anyway.

Where the behavior lives now

• Executor: citation-capsule-builder stage (scripts/pipeline/orchestrator.py),

whose dispatch prompt PRIORITIZES sections outline.json marks is_featured_snippet_target: true (outline-architect still sets that flag from research.serp_features; since v3.35 it finally has a consumer).

• Validation: python -m scripts.lint.citation_capsule_lint {ws}/draft.md --json
• outline.sections[].snippet_format is deprecated orphan data — do not emit.

Evidence base

references/seo/serp-feature-value-2026.md §1.