Canva Creator

Scope

This skill handles a campaign in five sequential stages, each gated by owner approval:

brief → calendar → asset inventory → Canva designs → copy → HubSpot staging

Canva is not used for email rows under any circumstance — no templates, no autofill, no design copies, no asset uploads, no exports. The owner explicitly descoped Canva from the email path because email-template autofill produces placeholder graphics when image slots exceed available photos, and variation thumbnails fail to render in chat previews. If the owner asks for a Canva email design, see reference/gotchas.md for the redirect language.

Pre-flight

Before Stage 1, confirm:

1. Brief. The user has referenced or pasted an approved brief. If not: "I'll need the content brief before I can build the campaign. Do you have one from the content-strategy skill, or would you like to write one now?"

2. Canva tier. Pro/Teams require manual template selection from the user's library (no autofill API). Enterprise can autofill from brand templates.

3. HubSpot tier. Social staging requires Marketing Hub Professional. Starter or Free → skip Stage 5 and export a CSV instead (see reference/hubspot-staging.md).

4. Brand assets. Confirm the path to product photos on disk or that the brand kit is live in Canva.

5. Generation budget. Estimate the campaign's Canva volume and surface it before Stage 1 begins. Default is 3 candidates per Canva-bound row; each design costs ~5 API calls (autofill + export + polling).

   Generation budget for this campaign:
     Canva (social) rows: 8
     Candidates per row:  3   (default — say "single candidate" to use 1)
     Total designs:       24
     API calls (approx):  ~120  (autofill + export + polling)
   
   Canva limit: 100 requests/minute. This will take ~2-3 minutes of
   generation, well within your tier limits. Proceed?

   If the projected total designs exceeds 30, recommend single-candidate mode upfront — large campaigns run out of headroom fast. The owner can override the default to 1, 2, or 3 candidates per row before Stage 1 starts. Lock the chosen value for the entire session.

Workflow

Stage 1 — Posting calendar

Pull from the brief: content themes, channels, cadence, hard dates (launches, sales, holidays).

Build a calendar table with a Path column that routes every row to either Canva or text-only drafting:

Tag every email-channel row as Text-only before presenting. Cap at 30 days unless the brief specifies otherwise. Flag scheduling conflicts (two posts same day for the same product) up front.

Checkpoint 1. Present the calendar. Ask: "Does this match the plan? Any dates to shift, channels to add, or themes to swap?" Iterate until approved, then restate the split out loud — "N rows go through Canva, M rows go through text-only drafting" — before moving on. Catching a miscategorization here is free; catching it after generating designs isn't.

Stage 2 — Asset inventory (Canva rows only)

Email rows skip this stage entirely. For each Canva (social) row, build a manifest of what the template needs and what's already available.

1. Enumerate every image slot by name. Square Instagram posts usually have 1-2 image slots; carousels and product grids can have 5+. List them individually (Header_Image, Product1_Image, Product2_Image, …) — never roll them up as "product images."

   • Enterprise: read field names from dataset[].label on the brand template (GET /v1/brand-templates/{id}).
   • Pro/Teams: count every distinct image rectangle in the template.

2. Inventory available assets. Text content from the brief (product names, offer copy, taglines, pricing), product photos already uploaded to Canva (GET /v1/assets) or on the owner's disk, brand kit colors and fonts (Enterprise).

3. Build the slot-by-slot gap table. One row per slot per design — not per design.

   Date	Slot name	Slot kind	Available asset	Status
   Jun 2	Hero_Image	image	bloom_summer.jpg → asset_id pending	upload
   Jun 2	Headline	text	"Summer linen, finally"	ready
   Jun 9	Product1_Image	image	—	MISSING

4. Resolve slot/asset mismatches with the owner. If the template has more image slots than the brief provides photos, pause and ask:

   The "Summer Carousel" template has 5 image slots. The brief gave me 1
   photo (bloom_summer.jpg). How should I fill the other 4?
   
     1. Reuse the same photo across all 5 slots
     2. You send me 4 more photos (file paths)
     3. Pick a simpler template with fewer slots

   No generation calls until the owner picks. Generating with empty slots produces designs full of Canva's default landscape placeholders.

5. Upload missing photos and capture verified asset IDs. Upload via POST /v1/asset-uploads, then poll GET /v1/asset-uploads/{job_id} until status == "success". Record asset.id from the response — this is the only value that works in an autofill image field. Passing an empty string, a URL, a file path, or a stale ID silently renders Canva's stock landscape graphic instead of the photo.

6. Confirm the manifest. Show the owner the completed slot-by-slot table with every slot resolved and every image asset.id confirmed. This is the last stop before Canva API calls.

Stage 3 — Canva design generation

Before any Canva API call, re-read the calendar and drop any row whose Path is not Canva (social). Email rows do not pass through this stage.

Generate designs one calendar row at a time, with 3 candidates per row (or the value chosen at pre-flight). Each row follows the same loop: generate candidates → verify → export → visually check → retry failures → present → wait for owner pick → next row. Pause 30 seconds between rows. This caps the burst at 3 generations + 3 exports per ~30s — well under Canva's 100 req/min rate limit. Do not parallelize multiple rows; one row at a time is the protection that keeps the owner from hitting quota mid-campaign.

Polling cadence. Poll job status every 3-5 seconds, not faster. Tighter intervals burn quota without speeding up completion.

Preview URLs — only one type is safe to embed. Autofill responses return design.canva.ai thumbnails that expire within minutes; embedding them as markdown images produces broken "Show Image" placeholders. Permanent export URLs (export-download.canva.com or the export-design MCP tool) do not expire. Native Cowork carousels render the autofill result directly using the connector's authenticated session — let them render on their own, don't re-embed.

Row loop

1. Resolve template. (Once per session — same template across rows unless the calendar mixes asset types.)

   • Enterprise: GET /v1/brand-templates filtered by asset type.
   • Pro/Teams: GET /v1/designs?ownership=any&query={template name}, surface top 3 to the owner, confirm one before generating.

2. Generate the row's candidates in parallel. Fire the row's 3 candidates simultaneously (or N from pre-flight).

   • Enterprise: POST /v1/autofills per candidate with the template ID and field values. Poll all jobs concurrently.
   • Pro/Teams: POST /v1/designs to create copies. Describe the text and image edits the owner applies in Canva; collect design IDs back.

3. Verify job status. For each candidate, confirm GET /autofills/{job_id} returned status == "success" and result.design.id is present. Handle errors per-design:

   • JOB_FAILED → read job.error.message, fix the field values or asset IDs, retry once.

   • RATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED (first hit this session) → wait 60s, retry that one candidate once. This handles transient spikes.

   • RATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED (second hit this session) or any quota_exceeded / daily-cap error → stop generation immediately. Do not retry. Surface progress and ask:

     Canva is rate-limiting the campaign. Status so far:
       ✓ Generated:  Posts 1-4 (12 designs)
       ⏸ Remaining:  Posts 5-8 (12 designs not yet generated)
     
     How should I proceed?
       1. Switch to 1 candidate per remaining row (4 designs total) — finishes now
       2. Pause campaign — resume in 60 minutes when quota refills
       3. Stop generation — work with what we have, move to captions

     Wait for the owner's choice. Do not loop on retry.

4. Export each successful candidate to a permanent PNG. Fire the row's exports in parallel.

   • REST: POST /v1/exports with format.type: "png", poll GET /v1/exports/{job_id} until success, capture urls[0].
   • Canva MCP: export-design with the design ID.

   These permanent URLs are what get embedded in previews and attached to the HubSpot post later. The autofill response thumbnail is never used downstream.

5. Visually verify each export. Look at the image and reject any of these — they all indicate an unfilled slot or wrong asset:

   • Generic landscape with clouds and green hills (Canva's default placeholder)
   • Solid gray rectangles where a photo should be
   • Lorem-ipsum or template-default text
   • Subject that doesn't match the brief (wrong product, wrong brand)

   If a candidate fails verification: re-check the manifest for the affected slot, fix the asset.id, regenerate that single candidate, re-export, re-verify.

6. Retry per-candidate on partial failure. If 1 of N candidates in the row failed at Step 3 or 5, regenerate just that one — don't redo the whole row and don't present a partial broken carousel. If the second attempt also fails:

   The third candidate for the Jun 9 post keeps failing — Canva returned
   [error / rendered placeholder]. How should I proceed?
   
     1. Skip it — present the other 2 and move on
     2. Swap to a simpler template for just this candidate
     3. Try once more with a different photo

7. Present the row's candidates. Let the native Cowork carousel render the autofill tool result. Below it, add a text prompt:

   Jun 9 candidates are ready — scroll through the carousel above.
   Which one should I use for the Jun 9 post?

   If the carousel doesn't render or one position is broken, embed the permanent export PNG URLs from Step 4 instead. Final fallback: link to the design's Canva edit URL (https://www.canva.com/d/{design_id}). Never re-embed design.canva.ai URLs.

8. Pause 30 seconds, then move to the next row.

Checkpoint 2. Satisfied once the owner has picked one design per calendar row. If they want a regenerate, regenerate only that one candidate.

Stage 4 — Copy drafting

For each calendar row, draft the copy. Social rows get a caption; email rows get a full email.

Social captions — Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn:

• Length: channel-appropriate (Instagram ≤ 2,200 chars; Facebook ≤ 500 recommended; X ≤ 280).
• Structure: hook → one product benefit → CTA → 3-5 hashtags (not 30).
• Voice: match the brief's tone markers. If the brief says "casual and friendly," don't write corporate copy.
• No filler. No "Exciting news!" or "We're thrilled to announce." Open with the value.

Email content — Claude writes the entire email; no Canva:

• Subject: ≤ 50 chars, specific, no clickbait. "Spring projects are booking up" beats "Don't miss out!"
• Preheader: ≤ 90 chars, complements the subject without repeating it.
• Body: plain prose, 100-250 words. Opening line that earns the read → 1-2 paragraphs of substance → single clear CTA → sign-off.
• Voice: same tone markers as social. Owners want their emails to sound like them, not like a templated newsletter.
• No image references. Don't write "see image above." If the owner wants visuals, they add them in their email tool.
• One CTA per email. Pick the most important action and lead with it.

Present captions inline below each social row. Present full emails inline below each email row:

Subject: <subject line>
Preheader: <preheader text>

<body text>

For worked examples, see reference/examples/boutique-brief-campaign.md.

Checkpoint 3. "Any captions or emails to rewrite? Flag the date and what to change." Iterate until approved.

Stage 5 — HubSpot staging + email handoff

Stage social posts in HubSpot. Email content is not staged — it's surfaced inline for the owner to copy into their email tool. For API field reference, see reference/hubspot-staging.md.

1. Create the campaign. POST /marketing/v3/campaigns with the campaign name and start/end dates from the calendar.

2. Stage each social post. POST to the HubSpot Social API per Canva (social) row:

   • channel: map calendar channel to HubSpot account ID
   • scheduledAt: ISO 8601 datetime — confirm it's in the future before calling
   • content.body: approved caption
   • attachments: permanent Canva export PNG URL from Stage 3
   • status: SCHEDULED (never PUBLISHED)

3. Confirm the queue. Call GET /marketing/v3/social/posts?status=SCHEDULED, surface the list, provide a direct link to the HubSpot campaign view.

4. Surface email content for handoff. For each email row, present the approved subject + preheader + body inline, grouped by send date. The owner copies these into their email tool (HubSpot Marketing Email, Mailchimp, Gmail).

Final checkpoint.

Your social posts are scheduled in HubSpot: [link]
They'll go out as scheduled — you can cancel or edit any post in HubSpot.

Email content is drafted below — copy each into your email tool when
you're ready to send:

  Jun 5 — "Spring projects are booking up"
  Jul 15 — "Summer maintenance windows are filling"

Anything to change before we're done?

Approval gates

• No Canva calls for email rows. Re-check the Path column before every API call.
• No publishing. Every HubSpot post is staged as SCHEDULED; the owner controls go-live.
• Always surface the generation budget at pre-flight. Owner sees the total design count and approves before Stage 1 begins.
• One row at a time in Stage 3. Candidates within a row fire in parallel, but rows are sequential with a 30s gap — this is the quota protection.
• On the second quota error, pause and ask. Never loop on retry.
• Always export to a permanent PNG before presenting. Job success doesn't mean the design rendered correctly.
• Never embed design.canva.ai URLs in messages. They expire.
• Never regenerate the whole row when one candidate fails. Per-candidate retry only.
• Never auto-select a template for Pro/Teams users. Always confirm.
• Never skip slot-by-slot inventory. Multi-slot templates render placeholder landscapes when any slot is empty.
• Never skip Checkpoint 1. Generating before the calendar is approved is the largest source of wasted work in this skill.

Reference

• reference/canva-api.md — Canva Connect API endpoints, asset upload, export formats, MCP equivalents
• reference/hubspot-staging.md — HubSpot Social API and CSV fallback for non-Pro tiers
• reference/gotchas.md — Good / Bad patterns for every failure mode this skill has hit in production
• reference/examples/boutique-brief-campaign.md — full worked examples (single-slot social, multi-slot template)