Your autopilots don't jump straight from a source to a post. First an item from a ticked source becomes an idea — a title and a short brief — and ideas wait in a queue until an autopilot writes from them. That queue is step 2 of Brand → Content sources, Ideas waiting to be written. Here is how it works and how to steer it.
What an idea is
An idea is a title plus a brief: what a post or campaign should say. It is offered to one or more autopilots, and each of them writes from it once. After an autopilot has written from it, that autopilot's column shows the date instead of a tick — click the date to open the post or campaign.
The From column shows where an idea came from:
- Yours — an idea you typed.
- An autopilot's name, such as Social Posting — an idea that autopilot made from one of its sources. The source's name sits next to it.
- Your post or Your campaign — recorded from something you wrote yourself. See below.
- Removed autopilot — made by an autopilot you have since removed.
Click an idea's title, or choose Show the idea in its menu, to see everything about it: the brief, where it came from and the pages behind it, which autopilots it is offered to, and who has written from it.
The order ideas are taken in
Pick one autopilot under Show the page for and its queue is numbered in the exact order it will write from it:
- Your own ideas first, oldest first.
- Then the ideas the autopilots made, newest first.
- Last, ideas whose page has disappeared. They are marked The page behind this idea is gone — it is skipped.
The All autopilots view lists every idea still waiting for at least one autopilot, simply newest first, with a tick column per autopilot. To see the true order, pick one autopilot.
Add your own idea
- In step 2, click Add idea.
- Fill in Title (up to 120 characters) and Brief (up to 500): what the piece should say, who it helps, which facts to include.
- Under Who may write from it, every autopilot starts ticked. Untick any that shouldn't use it.
- Click Add.
Your idea goes ahead of everything the autopilots made, behind any older ideas of yours. A brand can have up to 200 of your own ideas waiting at once — the dialog shows how many are open. Because an idea waits for the autopilot's next post or issue, write anything that has to go out at an exact time, such as a time-sensitive announcement, by hand.
Edit or delete an idea
- You can change the text of an idea you typed until an autopilot writes from it: open it, edit it and click Save. After that the text is locked.
- Ideas the autopilots made, and Your post or Your campaign ideas, can't be edited.
- Any idea can be deleted with Delete in its menu. Posts and campaigns already written from it are kept.
Offer an idea to an autopilot, or stop
In the All autopilots view, the tick in an autopilot's column decides whether that autopilot may write from the idea. Tick or untick it right in the table.
In one autopilot's view, an idea's menu has Don't offer to … with the autopilot's name. Ideas it isn't offered are folded into a box under the table (… more ideas not offered to …); open it and click Offer to … to put an idea into its queue.
Once an autopilot has written from an idea, its tick turns into a date and can no longer be removed.
When the queue is empty
When no idea is waiting for an autopilot, it makes a new one:
- It draws a fresh item from the sources ticked for it — newer items are more likely, though not strictly newest first.
- AI turns the item into an idea.
- The idea is offered to every autopilot that has the same source ticked, not only the one that made it.
Before an idea is kept, it is compared with the ideas already made in the current round. If it is nearly the same as one of them, the existing idea is used instead — or, if this autopilot already wrote from that one, the new idea is dropped and another item is drawn. That is how repeats are caught. When every item in the ticked sources is used up, a new round starts; see Choose what your autopilots write from.
Why "Your post" and "Your campaign" show up
When you write a social post with the AI in the composer, or send (or schedule) a newsletter campaign you wrote with the AI, Yaplet records it as an idea too, marked Your post or Your campaign. Hovering the badge explains why: it was recorded so the autopilots don't repeat it. These ideas are offered to no autopilot; they are there so that a new autopilot idea that is nearly the same gets caught. You see them in the All autopilots view of step 2, and in step 3 as By hand · post or By hand · campaign. A campaign is recorded on your default brand.
Step 3: what was written
Ideas already written lists every post and newsletter campaign written from an idea on this page, newest first. Its columns are Idea, Written by (the autopilot, or By hand · post / By hand · campaign), Type, Date and From (the source and the item). Click Campaign to open it in the campaign editor, or Post to open it on the Social Posting page — that link only works for teammates with access to Social Posting. In one autopilot's view you only see what that autopilot wrote; hand-made pieces only show under All autopilots.
What's next?
Choose which sources feed the queue: Choose what your autopilots write from. To set up an autopilot, see Turn on Autopilot for social posts, or Set up Newsletter Autopilot.