---
title: "Importing a draft"
description: "Bringing markdown you already wrote into Blogged, and the real difference between preserving it and rewriting it."
updated: "2026-08-18"
verifiedAgainst:
  - apps/web/lib/new-post-import.ts
  - workers/draft/new-post-import-worker.ts
  - workers/draft/new-post-generation-finalization.ts
---

Import takes writing you already have and turns it into a Post you can edit,
schedule and publish.

## What you can bring

Markdown, pasted or uploaded, up to 256 KB per import.

Text is checked on the way in. Invisible control characters, bidirectional
overrides and zero width marks are rejected rather than carried into a published
page, because they are how a document ends up saying something different from
what it displays.

## The two transform modes are genuinely different

This is the part worth reading before choosing.

<PropertyList>
  <Property name="polish_preserving" type="your words, untouched">
    Your markdown becomes the article body **exactly as written**. Nothing is
    rewritten, reordered, expanded or restructured, and the import is checked
    against your original to prove it. No model writes any part of the body.

    What is produced around it is the surface: title, SEO title, meta
    description, excerpt, slug, target keyword, category and tags, derived
    deterministically from what you submitted.

    The post arrives with author mode `Human`, because a person wrote it.
  </Property>
  <Property name="rewrite" type="your document as the brief">
    Your document is treated as the brief and the article is written through the
    normal generation pipeline, in the Content Direction's voice and length.

    The post arrives with author mode `Assisted`, because the pipeline wrote it.
  </Property>
</PropertyList>

<Callout variant="warning" title="Preserve means preserve">
  Choosing `polish_preserving` and expecting improved headings, added internal
  links, generated images or an inserted call to action is the one
  misunderstanding worth avoiding. It does none of those at import. That is the
  point of the mode: the words that come out are the words you put in.
</Callout>

## Getting the rest afterwards

A preserved import is a normal Post once it exists, so everything the editor
offers is available to it: [internal links](/content/internal-links),
[images](/assets/placement), [calls to action](/growth/ctas), taxonomy and the
content score. You add them deliberately rather than having them applied to your
text on the way in.

Rewrite mode arrives with those already applied, because it went through the
pipeline.

## Exporting

The reverse works too. Any post can be exported from the editor as a Markdown
download, copied as Markdown, or copied as a formatted article for pasting
somewhere that expects rich text.