How Curator Guides Work

A Curator Guide is a living plan for an LA moment: a date night, a food crawl, a neighborhood loop, a perfect Saturday, or a very specific “what should we do after this?” answer.

Guides are built from real CurationsLA Vibes — events, restaurants, venues, stays, businesses, neighborhoods, VIBES stories, activities, and links. The part that makes it yours is the reason: the note in your own words explaining why each Vibe made the cut.

The goal is not to generate generic travel content. The goal is to help people move through Los Angeles with taste, context, and a little less tab chaos.

1. Subscribe to VIBES. VIBES is the free newsletter and community key. Subscribe first, then CurationsLA can recognize you as a real human Curator instead of a random anonymous browser.
2. Claim your Curator profile. Pick a handle, accept the current Curator terms, and add the optional profile details that help people understand your taste. Your handle becomes your public URL and locks after claim so credit stays stable.
3. Build a Guide. Open the Guide Builder, give the Guide a title, add Vibes, and write at least one human-owned reason. The builder is intentionally playful first: you can explore before everything becomes durable.
4. Choose visibility. Public Guides can be discovered on CurationsLA. Unlisted Guides are readable by direct link. For launch, the builder keeps this choice intentionally simple: public or unlisted.
5. Publish or review. Established VIBES subscribers can publish eligible Guides automatically. New subscriber accounts can still create, but published Guides may land in manual review until the trust window clears.

The public bar is simple on purpose: a Guide needs a title, real publishable Vibes, and a reason in your own words. For public Guides, the bar is higher than “one nice place” — the Guide should feel like an actual route or recommendation set.

The system checks readiness before publishing. If something is missing, the builder should tell you the next step instead of making you guess.

• Unlisted Guides need at least one publishable Vibe and one human reason.
• Public Guides need at least two publishable Vibes and one human reason.
• Unbound placeholders and malformed local cart items do not count as publishable Vibes.
• Subscriber, handle, terms, and moderation status also matter before authoring/publishing.

The best onboarding does not sell every feature. It sells the outcome: your Good Vibes get a public home, free.

The path: subscribe to VIBES, claim your Curator handle, build the first Guide, hit Publish — and see a real URL with your name on it. That link is the "aha." It exists, it works, and you made it.

The habit forms in the return. After the first Guide goes live, a short, sincere note lands in your inbox: your Guide is out there, here is what it looks like, come back when you have the next one. No dashboard tour. No feature checklist. Just a warm handoff and an open door.

• Start with an anchor: dinner, show, neighborhood, or mood.
• Write the why, not just the where: “go here because…” is the magic.
• Use unlisted when you want to send a direct link without putting it on your public profile.
• Ask Garrett’s Mom when you know the vibe but not the sequence.