The Generate Stage

How does News Manager draft an article? Learn what Generate produces, where it lands, the primary-locale to set first, and when to write by hand instead.

Generate takes an approved article and writes it into a draft post that lands in your Content for review — a strong first draft, never an auto-published one.

What you'll learn

  • What Generate produces and where it goes.
  • The locale behavior to set up front so drafts come out in the right language.
  • When to let Generate draft for you, and when to write by hand instead.

The concept: a first draft, reviewed by you

Once an article is approved by Evaluate, Generate is the step that rewrites it into a post for your brand. It runs per brand and uses AI, so it needs your own AI key configured (bring your own key).

What it produces lands in your Content as a news-post draft in a planning state. It is never published automatically — you open the draft, edit it, and decide whether and when to publish. The final read is always yours.

The draft isn't just a body of text. Generate produces a title, body, excerpt, SEO fields, and tags, so the piece arrives shaped like a real content draft rather than a raw block you have to format from scratch. It's a generative prompt, so your brand's Voice, Rules, and Glossary from the Brand AI Profile are injected to shape how it reads — and you can also customize the rewrite prompt (slug news-rewrite) if a brand needs a different structure.

Set your brand's primary locale first

This is the one thing to get right before you generate, so read it carefully.

Generate writes the draft in the brand's primary locale — the language set on the brand. If a brand has no primary locale set, the draft currently falls back to Arabic. This is not brand-hardcoded behavior; it's a fallback for an unset field. So:

  • Set each brand's primary locale before you generate. That's the reliable way to get drafts in the language you expect, and it flows from the same brand setting used across Content and SEO.
  • If you skip that step, expect Arabic until you set one.

If a draft comes out in a language you didn't want, the fix is the brand's primary locale setting (in Configuration ▸ Brands), not the prompt. Set it, then generate again.

How to run Generate

  1. In the Feed Items tab, an article must be approved by Evaluate first (a processing state).
  2. Tick the approved rows you want drafted and click Generate in the selection bar — or use the per-row Generate action on a single approved item.
  3. Generate creates the draft and links it back to the feed item; the row gets a "drafted" status and a link straight to the new draft.
  4. Open the draft in Content to review, edit, and publish on your own terms.

Like Evaluate, Generate runs only on the rows you select, so your token spend stays predictable. If a draft fails (for example, the model returns an unreadable response), the item is flagged as errored and you can Retry it.

When to write by hand instead

Generate is a strong first draft, not a finished article. For routine pieces, starting from its draft and editing saves real time. For some work, writing by hand is the better call:

  • Nuanced or sensitive pieces — anything where tone, accuracy, or judgement carries weight and a rewrite could miss the mark.
  • Pieces where you want full editorial control — when structure and voice need to be exactly yours from the first word.

In those cases, treat the source article as research and draft the post yourself. The rest of News Manager — scouting, dedup, and the relevance check — still does its work; you're only opting out of the AI rewrite at the last step.

FAQ

My drafts come out in Arabic and I didn't want that. Why? The brand has no primary locale set, so Generate falls back to Arabic. Set the brand's primary locale in Configuration ▸ Brands, then generate again. It's an unset-field fallback, not a hardcoded language.

Why is the Generate button disabled? It needs your own AI key for the brand, and the item must be approved by Evaluate first. Add a provider key (OpenAI, Google, or Anthropic) to the vault. See Why m18t uses BYOK.

Does Generate publish the draft? No. It creates a draft in your Content in a planning state. You review and publish it yourself.

How do I change the tone of generated drafts? Tune the brand's Voice, Rules, and Glossary — they're injected into this generative step. Only customize the rewrite prompt if you need a different structure.

A generation failed. What do I do? The item is flagged as errored; click Retry. One bad model response doesn't fail the rest of the batch.

What's next

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