Scheduling and publication

How an approved post reaches a publication slot, what a slot is, and why publication is treated as irreversible.

Publication is the one action in the pipeline that reaches the public. It is handled as a separate stage from drafting, with its own gate.

Slots#

A Project's cadence, preferred days, preferred time and timezone describe a series of publication slots. An approved post takes the next free slot rather than publishing the moment it is approved, which is what keeps a blog publishing on a rhythm instead of in bursts.

Max scheduled posts ahead limits how deep that queue gets.

When each post writes and when it publishes#

The planned posts on the dashboard carry two separate times, because writing and publishing are two separate events and the gap between them is often days.

Writes froma not before, never an exact minute

When Autopilot may start writing that post. It is worded as a starting point on purpose: the dispatcher runs on a schedule and takes a limited number of due posts each pass, so several posts that come due together are written over the following passes rather than all at once. Once the draft exists the row says so instead.

Publishesonly in Full mode

The slot the post is aimed at. In Assisted mode there is no such time to show, and the row says the post publishes after your review, which is the honest answer rather than a date nobody has chosen yet. A post with no slot resolved yet says it is waiting for a free one.

The Autopilot page itself shows the same two facts at full length, including the month and the timezone. The dashboard is the short form of them, not a second opinion.

Scheduling a post yourself#

Putting a specific post into a future slot by hand is a separate action from Autopilot filling the queue, and the two are gated differently.

Why the queue matters#

A Project that drafts faster than it publishes builds a backlog. That is normal and usually desirable: it means a bad week of drafting does not create a gap on the blog. When the backlog reaches the configured depth, drafting pauses until the queue drains.

Publication is irreversible in the way that matters#

Publication of a post is recorded once and only once: a post cannot be published twice by two runs that both thought they were first.

Unpublishing#

A published post can be unpublished from the editor. It leaves your blog and its URL stops resolving as a post. If you expect people to arrive at that URL, set a redirect rather than leaving it to 404.