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Basics

Getting Started

Welcome to Publish Owl

Publish Owl is an AI-powered content automation platform that generates and publishes articles directly to your CMS. Whether you need a single article or hundreds of pages for programmatic SEO, Publish Owl handles the entire workflow from research to publishing.

This guide will walk you through the essential setup steps to get your first article published.

Important: Publish Owl does NOT provide AI credits. You must supply your own API keys for all AI providers. Every API call costs money, and costs can add up quickly. Always test with a single keyword before running batches.

What You'll Need

  • An AI provider API key - OpenAI, Anthropic (Claude), Google Gemini, Perplexity, xAI (Grok), OpenRouter, or Replicate
  • (Optional) A CMS or website - WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Ghost, Webflow, Strapi, GitHub, Zapier, n8n, Make, or a custom webhook. You can also generate articles locally and copy/paste them manually.
  • (Optional) Image provider - GPT Image, Gemini, Flux, Stable Diffusion, Ideogram, xAI, Replicate, or stock photo APIs (Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash)
  • (Optional) For browser automation - Anchor Browser (b0) API key

Step 1: Add Your API Keys

First, configure at least one AI provider for content generation.

  1. Go to Settings
  2. Find your preferred AI provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.)
  3. Click on the provider to expand it
  4. Enter your API key and click Save Key

Where to get API keys:

Content Generation

Image Generation

Browser Automation

YouTube Video Mode

  • Supadata: supadata.ai (required for transcript extraction - free tier available)
  • YouTube Data API: Google Cloud Console (optional, for video metadata and comments)

SEO Research

  • DataForSEO: app.dataforseo.com/api-access (keyword research, competitive analysis & live SERP data as a workflow step - uses login + password)
  • Google Search Console: Connect via OAuth in Settings → API Keys → Integrations (pulls your real search queries, clicks, impressions, CTR, and positions into research tools and workflow steps)

Step 2: Connect Your Site (Optional)

This step is optional. By default, workflows are "local-only" - they generate articles that you can view, edit, and manually copy/paste wherever you need them. If you want automatic publishing to a CMS, connect a site first.

Skip this step if you just want to generate articles and copy/paste them manually. You can always connect a site later and update your workflows to publish to it.

To connect a site for automatic publishing:

  1. Go to Sites
  2. Enter a name for your site (e.g., "My WordPress Blog")
  3. Select your CMS type from the dropdown
  4. Enter the required credentials for your CMS
  5. Click Add Site

Supported CMS platforms:

  • WordPress - Site URL, username, and application password (see WordPress Setup Guide)
  • Ghost - Admin URL and Admin API key
  • Webflow - Site ID, collection ID, and API token
  • Shopify - Store domain and Admin API access token
  • Wix - Account ID, Site ID, and API key
  • Strapi - Base URL, API token, and content type
  • GitHub - Owner, repo, branch, and personal access token (for static site generators like Hugo, Jekyll, Astro)
  • Zapier - Webhook URL from your Zap (see Zapier Setup Guide)
  • n8n - Webhook URL from your n8n workflow (see n8n Setup Guide)
  • Make - Webhook URL from your Make scenario (see Make Setup Guide)
  • Custom Webhook - Your endpoint URL for custom integrations (see Webhook Setup Guide)

Step 3: Create Your First Workflow

Workflows are the core of Publish Owl. A workflow defines how your articles are generated - which AI models to use, the prompts, and what features are enabled.

  1. Go to the Create page
  2. Select a content type:
    • Single Article — One article from a keyword or title
    • Batch — Multiple articles from a keyword list
    • Programmatic (pSEO) — Data-driven pages from CSV at scale
    • News — Auto-discover and write trending stories (Standard+ plan)
    • YouTube to Article — Convert videos into written articles
    • Rewrite — Rewrite existing content from a URL
  3. Enter your keywords, URLs, or data source in the Input step
  4. Click Continue to enter the workflow editor

You can also scroll down on the Create page to browse pre-built templates with recommended settings.

Step 4: Configure Your Workflow

Workflows have many configuration options. Here are the key sections:

Title & Publishing Settings

These are configured in the Title and Publishing drawers in the Settings sidebar.

  • Title Prompt: Instructions for generating article titles
  • Title Generation Provider/Model: Optionally use a different model for titles than for content
  • Status: Whether to publish as Draft or Publish immediately
  • Schedule Publishing: Set intervals between publishing (minutes, hours, days, weeks apart)
  • URL Slug Format: Generate from title, use keyword, or keyword without stop words

Workflow Steps (The AI Pipeline)

Switch to the Workflow view using the toggle at the top of the editor. This is where you define the AI models and prompts that generate your content. Each workflow step runs in sequence, and output from previous steps is automatically included in the context.

  • Provider: OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Grok (xAI), OpenRouter, Perplexity, Replicate
  • Model: The specific model to use (e.g., gpt-5-mini, claude-sonnet-4-5, gemini-2.5-flash, grok-4-1-fast-reasoning)
  • Web Search: Enable web search on OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Grok (xAI), or Perplexity models to access current information. Grok also supports X/Twitter search.
  • Prompt: The instructions for this step. Use {'{{keyword}}'}, {'{{notes}}'}, and any custom CSV column variables like {'{{slug}}'} or {'{{product_name}}'} as placeholders
  • Enabled: Toggle steps on/off without deleting them
  • Output Mode (Advanced): Set to Append to combine output from multiple LLM steps into one article

Special step types: Web Scraper (extract data from URLs), Anchor Browser (b0) (run browser tasks), and DataForSEO SERP (fetch live Google search results, People Also Ask, and featured snippets for a keyword).

Keywords

This is where you add the topics/keywords for your articles, visible in the Keywords view at the top of the editor. Each row becomes one job.

  • Keyword: The main topic (available as {'{{keyword}}'} in prompts)
  • Notes: Optional additional context for the corresponding keyword (available as {'{{notes}}'} in prompts)
  • You can import from CSV for bulk keywords. CSVs can include additional columns beyond keyword and notes - every extra column automatically becomes a template variable usable in your prompts as {'{{column_name}}'}
  • Supports multi-select for batch delete, and undo/redo

Custom CSV Columns

When you import a CSV with columns like keyword, notes, slug, categories, product_name, affiliate_url, the extra columns (slug, categories, product_name, affiliate_url) become template variables you can use anywhere in your workflow prompts, title templates, image prompts, and meta descriptions.

Reserved column names with special behavior:

  • slug - Overrides the auto-generated URL slug when publishing. Non-ASCII characters (e.g. Cyrillic) are preserved.
  • categories - Sets per-article WordPress categories (comma-separated names or numeric IDs). Missing categories are created automatically.
  • featured_image - URL of a featured image to use for the article.
  • reference_images - Comma-separated image URLs fed to AI image generators as visual references (for both featured and in-article images).
  • featured_reference_images / in_article_reference_images - More specific variants that target only featured or in-article image generation.
  • group - Controls product roundup grouping (see below).

Product Roundups

When multiple CSV rows share the same keyword, they are automatically grouped into a single job. All rows' column data is collected into a product list, available in your prompts as:

  • {'{{products}}'} - A formatted text block listing all grouped products and their fields
  • {'{{product_1_name}}'}, {'{{product_2_price}}'}, etc. - Indexed access to individual product fields (1-based)

Add a group column to control grouping explicitly when the same keyword should produce separate articles.

Keyword Input Modes

Use the toggle at the top of the input to switch between Keyword and Title mode. For Single Article and Batch workflows, you can also switch between:

  • Keywords: SEO-focused specific search terms (default)
  • Topics: Broad themes for social-first content (e.g., "heartwarming dog stories")
  • URL to Scrape: URLs to scrape as the data source (requires a Web Scraper step in your workflow)
  • YouTube Video: YouTube URLs to convert into articles, including YouTube Shorts (see below)

In URL to Scrape mode, the keyword field contains the URL and the notes field contains notes, including the target keyword if you specify it, for your writing step.

YouTube Video Mode

Convert YouTube videos into articles by extracting transcripts, metadata, comments, and screenshots. Both standard YouTube URLs and Shorts URLs (youtube.com/shorts/ID) are supported. You can also use the video thumbnail as your featured image.

  • Required: Supadata API key for transcript extraction (supadata.ai - free tier available)
  • Optional: YouTube Data API key for video metadata and comments (Google Cloud Console)

YouTube Video settings (when enabled):

  • Include Comments: Fetch top comments for added perspective
  • Include Screenshots: Capture frames from the video to embed in your article
  • AI-Selected Screenshots: Let AI pick the most relevant moments based on the transcript
  • Screenshot Interval: For fixed-interval mode, specify seconds between captures
  • Embed Video: Add the YouTube video embed at the end of the article
Tip: The transcript, video title, description, and comments are all available in your workflow steps' context. Write prompts that reference this data to create comprehensive video summaries or transformations.

Step 5: Optional Features

Workflows support many optional features. Configure them in the Settings sidebar on the right side of the editor. Click any setting to open its configuration drawer:

Style Guides

Attach reusable writing guidelines to your workflow. Style guides contain examples of your brand voice, tone preferences, words to avoid, and formatting rules. Create them on the Style Guides page.

Product Integration

Add real product data to your articles using AI discovery, manual entry, or Amazon PA API. Products are available as {'{{products}}'} in your prompts. See the Product Integration guide for details.

Image Generation

Generate featured images and in-article images automatically:

  • AI Generated: GPT Image 1, GPT Image 1.5, Gemini, Flux, Stable Diffusion, Ideogram, xAI, Replicate
  • Stock Photos: Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash (free APIs)
  • Image Templates: Use custom templates with dynamic variables (see Image Templates guide)
  • Configure style presets, reference images, sizes, and placement rules

Internal Linking

Automatically add internal links to related articles on your site. Requires an OpenAI API key for embeddings. Provide a sitemap URL or manual URL list, and configure linking behavior (max links, relevance threshold, anchor text style).

Index limits: Standard plan supports up to 500 pages, Pro supports up to 10,000 pages.

External Linking

Automatically add outbound links to authoritative external sources. An AI-powered search finds relevant pages to cite, then inserts links naturally within the article. Configure the search provider and model, link limits, blocked domains, rel attributes (follow/nofollow/sponsored), link placement strategy, and whether to open links in a new tab.

Table of Contents

Automatically generate a navigable table of contents with anchor links from your article headings.

  • Position: Insert before content, after paragraph 1, or after paragraph 2
  • Heading Text: Customize the TOC title (default: "Table of Contents")
  • Include H3s: Optionally include H3 subheadings as nested items
  • Collapsible: Wrap in an expandable details/summary element

The TOC automatically extracts H2 (and optionally H3) headings, generates anchor IDs, and inserts clickable jump links at your chosen position in the article.

News Discovery

Automatically discover and generate articles about news and topics in your niche. News Discovery monitors web searches and RSS feeds, then creates articles based on what it finds - all without manual keyword entry.

Discovery Methods (can be combined):

  • Scheduled Web Searches: Search the web for your topic on a schedule (e.g., every 24 hours). Uses AI-powered search (Perplexity, OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, or xAI) to find the latest news.
  • RSS Feed Triggers: Monitor RSS feeds and optionally trigger comprehensive web searches when new items appear, gathering more coverage of each story.

Output Modes:

  • Individual Articles: Generate one article per discovered story immediately. Set a daily limit to control costs.
  • Digest/Roundup: Accumulate stories and publish a weekly or daily roundup article. Configure minimum stories required and what to do when below the threshold.

Additional Options:

  • Keyword Filters: Include or exclude stories containing specific keywords (checked against title and description).
  • Fetch Full Article Content: Scrape the full text from discovered URLs instead of just using search summaries. Supports ScrapingBee or free scraper providers.
  • Rate Limiting: Set maximum articles per day to control costs.
Tip: Start with scheduled web searches on a 24-hour interval to monitor your topic. Enable "Fetch full article content" to give your writing steps more context. Set a low daily article limit (1-3) while testing.

Automation & Refresh

These settings are available as separate items in the Settings sidebar of the workflow editor:

Auto-Run Schedule (Keywords and pSEO modes)

Run jobs automatically on a schedule without keeping the browser open. Two scheduling modes are available:

  • Interval-based: Set a start date/time and interval (e.g., every 24 hours). Jobs process one by one until all keywords are completed.
  • Weekly schedule: Specify exact days and times (e.g., Monday at 9:00 AM, Wednesday at 2:00 PM). Perfect for consistent publishing routines.

Content Refresh

Configure how articles can be refreshed after publishing:

  • Default Refresh Prompt: Instructions for AI when updating content
  • Refresh Title: Also update article titles (useful for year updates)
  • Auto-Refresh Schedule: Automatically refresh articles - supports both interval-based (every X days/weeks) and weekly schedules (specific days and times)
  • Re-run Research Steps: Fetch fresh data during refresh
  • Preserve Structure: Keep the same H2/H3 headings
  • Version History: Track and restore previous versions

Job Completion Webhook

Trigger external services when jobs complete. Configure a webhook URL to receive notifications on success and/or failure. Supports HMAC-SHA256 signing for security. Great for integrating with Slack, Discord, Zapier, or custom dashboards.

Step 6: Generate Your First Article

Now you're ready to generate content!

  1. Make sure you've added at least one keyword in the Keywords view of your workflow
  2. Click Save to save your configuration
  3. Go to the Jobs page
  4. Click Run to create and run jobs for the keywords
Tip: Start with just one keyword to test your workflow configuration. Watch the job logs in real-time on the Jobs page to catch any issues early. You can edit the generated content before publishing.

Job Status Meanings

  • Queued: Waiting to be processed
  • Running: Currently generating content
  • Succeeded: Article generated (and published if site connected)
  • Failed: An error occurred - click the job to see error details
  • Cancelled: Job was manually cancelled

Managing Jobs

The Jobs page is your control center for all article generation:

  • View modes: Switch between List and Calendar views
  • Filter: By workflow, status, publishing state, keyword, or date range
  • Edit content: Click a job to open the article editor
  • Publish/Reschedule: Manually publish drafts or change scheduled dates
  • Refresh: Update existing articles with new content
  • Version history: View and restore previous versions
  • Bulk actions: Select multiple jobs for batch operations

Next Steps

Now that you've published your first article, explore these features:

  • Programmatic SEO: Generate hundreds of articles from spreadsheet data
  • Product Integration: Add product data from AI discovery, manual entry, or Amazon PA API
  • Image Templates: Design custom featured images and in-article images with dynamic variables
  • Style Guides: Create reusable writing voice and tone instructions
  • News Discovery: Automatically monitor topics and generate articles from web searches and RSS feeds
  • Content Refresh: Automatically update articles to keep them current
  • Auto-Run Scheduling: Set up hands-off content generation on a schedule

Common Issues

"No API key" warnings

Go to Settings and add an API key for the provider you want to use. Keys are required for each provider.

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