Ship It Checklist

Checklists /Cursor or Claude Code, Next.js and Vercel /SEO and AI visibility

Medium

Add metadata, a sitemap and a robots file

Next.js does not know your product name. Without metadata, a sitemap and a robots file, search engines and chat crawlers have less to quote, and they may index pages you meant to keep private.

How to check

  1. View source on the home page. Check title, description, canonical and og:title.
  2. Open /sitemap.xml and confirm public URLs are listed. Private app screens should be absent.
  3. Open /robots.txt. It should point at the sitemap. It should not block the whole site by accident.
  4. Signed-in pages and result pages that are thin should use noindex if they must exist.

Prompt

Fix prompt
Paste into Cursor or Claude Code
You are working in this repository. Do not add features.

Goal: public pages export a title and description, /sitemap.xml lists public routes, and /robots.txt allows crawling and links the sitemap.

Steps:
1. Add metadata on the public routes. Do not invent ratings or user counts.
2. Add a sitemap that includes only public URLs, using the production site URL from an environment variable.
3. Add robots.txt that allows crawlers, including common AI crawlers, and points at the sitemap. Disallow signed-in paths such as /app or /dashboard if those exist.
4. Show me the files you added.

This uses the same ticks as the checklist page, saved in this browser.