Autopilot

Turn on Autopilot and HERALD assembles next week's posts on its own, once a week, without you having to brief it each time. Nothing publishes without your approval: Autopilot fills your queue, you stay the editor.

What it reads

Before each run, HERALD pulls together a weekly brief so it plans against your real situation, not a blank page. A “What the next plan uses” panel shows exactly what the upcoming run will read.

Controls

• Planning day. Pick the day of the week Autopilot runs.
• Mode. Choose Plan only for topic cards you can flesh out, or Plan and draft for ready-to-review drafts.
• Add images to drafts. An optional toggle. When on, HERALD reuses images from your library first and only generates a new one when nothing fits.
• Platforms. The set of platforms Autopilot is allowed to use. Turn a platform off, or disconnect its account, and Autopilot stops planning posts for it.
• Run now and pause/resume. Trigger a run on demand, or pause Autopilot without losing your settings.

Per-campaign planning

Autopilot plans topics per active campaign, plus a Standalone brand posts row for content that does not belong to a campaign. Each campaign row has its own topic count and platform selection. By default a row inherits the campaign's own platforms, with an optional Customize override if you want to narrow it. Campaign posts only ever go to that campaign's own platforms. A live counter shows the total drafts per week and roughly how much of your monthly allowance that uses.

One campaign per week

By default every campaign is planned every week. Turn on Give each campaign its own week to rotate them instead: pick a cycle length, then give each row a week number. Week 1 might be your product campaign, week 2 your hiring campaign, week 3 your thought leadership. After the last week the cycle starts over, forever, with nothing to reconfigure. A row set to Every runs in all weeks regardless. The preview strip under the plan shows the next four runs by date, so you can see exactly which campaign lands when and where the cycle repeats. If a week ends up with nothing assigned, the card says so before you save.

One story a week

A campaign row with two or more topics can plan them as One story instead of Separate topics. In story mode every topic that week argues the same message from a different angle: a concrete example, the strongest objection, what it costs to wait. Each post still stands completely on its own, so a reader who sees only one of them gets the full value, and rejecting or rescheduling any card leaves the rest intact.

The message comes from that campaign's key messages, so there is nothing to write each week. Each turn moves to the next one: with five key messages on a three-week cycle, that is fifteen weeks before a message comes round again. The card shows which message is up next and when. Returning to a message later is deliberate, so HERALD judges the angle rather than the subject when it checks for repetition.

A campaign with only one key message never moves on: every turn argues that same message again from new angles. That is a real strategy, and the repetition check still forces each turn to find a way in that has not run yet, but angles on one claim do run out eventually. The card flags it so you can add more key messages if you would rather rotate through them.

Cross-posting, written natively

When a topic spans more than one platform, each platform variant is written for that platform, with its own hook, length, and formatting, rather than copy-pasted across them. Connected platforms can publish automatically once you approve. Platforms you select but have not connected are marked “manual”, so you publish those by hand.

Availability

Autopilot is part of the paid plans. On a trial you see a locked “Upgrade to unlock” teaser in its place. Autopilot has its own card on the Tasks page, separate from scheduled tasks, so it is easy to find once you are on a paid plan. The card shows how the last run went and the exact date and time of the next scheduled run, so you always know what to expect.