Rewrite Workflow

Overview

Rewrite mode lets you take existing content — from a URL or pasted text — and rewrite it with AI. This is useful for updating old articles, repurposing competitor content in your own voice, translating content, or changing the tone and style of existing writing.

The rewrite workflow automatically scrapes content from URLs or accepts pasted text, then passes it through your AI workflow for rewriting. All standard workflow features (web search, style guides, humanizer, multiple steps) work with rewrite workflows.

Getting Started

  1. Select Rewrite Content from the Create page
  2. Choose your input method:
    • From URL: Enter the URL of the article you want to rewrite. Publish Owl scrapes the content automatically. Press Enter or click Fetch. The word count is displayed once the content is fetched.
    • Paste Content: Paste the article text directly into the textarea
  3. Optionally enter a Target Keyword to optimize the rewritten article for a specific keyword
  4. Click Continue to proceed to the workflow editor
Tip: When using "From URL", you can press Enter after typing the URL to fetch the content immediately, or click the Fetch button.

Editing Source Content

After proceeding to the workflow editor, you can go back to change the URL or pasted content at any time using the Keywords/Source Content toggle at the top of the workflow editor.

  • Preview the scraped content before running the workflow
  • Word count is shown for fetched URLs so you can verify the content was extracted correctly
  • Switch between URL and paste modes if you want to change your input method

Workflow Configuration

When you create a rewrite workflow, it comes pre-configured with sensible defaults:

Default Setup

  • The first workflow step is automatically configured as an LLM step
  • A default rewrite prompt is included that instructs the AI to rewrite the source content
  • The best available AI provider is auto-selected based on your configured API keys

Customization Options

  • Custom Prompt: Edit the default rewrite prompt to give specific instructions (e.g., "rewrite in a casual tone", "expand with more detail", "shorten to 500 words")
  • Web Search: Enable web search on the rewrite step to let the AI research and add fresh, up-to-date information to the rewritten article
  • Additional Steps: Add more workflow steps after the rewrite step for further processing (e.g., editing, formatting, SEO optimization)
  • Style Guides: Apply a style guide to ensure the rewritten content matches your brand voice and formatting standards
  • Humanizer: Add a humanizer step after the rewrite step to reduce AI detection scores. The back-translation method is recommended — it typically lowers scores but does not guarantee undetectable content
How it works: The source content (scraped from URL or pasted) is passed to the first workflow step as context. The AI rewrites the content according to your prompt instructions, and the output flows through any additional workflow steps you've configured.

Tips

  • Update outdated articles: Enable web search on the rewrite step so the AI can add fresh data, updated statistics, and current information to old content
  • SEO optimization: Add a target keyword to have the AI optimize the rewritten article for search — it will naturally weave in the keyword and related terms
  • Brand consistency: Combine with style guides to ensure rewritten content matches your brand voice, even when the source material has a different tone
  • AI detection: Add a humanizer step after the rewrite to reduce AI detection scores. Back-translation is more effective than AI rewrite, but neither method guarantees fully undetectable content
  • Multi-step refinement: Use multiple workflow steps — first rewrite, then a second step to edit for quality, add formatting, or inject specific sections

Troubleshooting

URL content not fetching

Some sites block automated scraping. Try pasting the content manually instead. For JavaScript-heavy sites, adding a ScrapingBee API key in Settings may help.

Rewritten content is too similar to the original

Customize the rewrite prompt with more specific instructions. Try adding direction like "completely restructure the article", "change the tone to conversational", or "rewrite from a different perspective". Adding a style guide also helps differentiate the output.

Word count shows 0 after fetching URL

The page may not have extractable text content (e.g., it's behind a paywall, requires login, or uses heavy JavaScript rendering). Try using the Paste Content method instead.

Was this helpful?