Autonomy & coverage

The autonomous newsroom

Brief a domain once - its topics, its places, its times - and the newsroom finds stories and writes them on schedule, through the same ten editorial desks. Review stays the default.

Most people use Mastheads on demand: you ask for an article, and the ten editorial desks write it. The autonomous newsroom is a feature you can switch on for any domain with a website. You set the direction once - the topics you cover, the places you care about, the times to write - and the newsroom finds stories worth covering and writes them on that schedule.

It is not a different product. Every article it writes goes through the same ten editorial desks, with the same research, the same checks and the same record on the article. The only difference is who started it.

On this page

On demand and autonomous, side by side

Switching the newsroom on does not change anything else. You can still ask for any article, in any way, at any time, for the same domain. The newsroom simply adds articles of its own at the times you set.

	On demand	Autonomous newsroom
Who picks the story	You	The newsroom, inside your topics
When it is written	When you press Write	At the times you schedule
Needs a website	No	Yes
Goes through the ten editorial desks	Yes	Yes
Publishes without you	Never	Only if you switch that on

Who can use it

Every account, including the free trial. It needs:

a domain created from a real website. The site is scanned when the domain is set up, and a valid scan is the only way a newsroom is created - the newsroom cannot serve a site it does not know. Writing without a website stays on demand.
the four switch-on checks, below.

The four checks before you can switch it on

Each domain's page shows a short checklist. The switch moves once all four are done:

Identity - the domain's name and details.
An editor of record - a named person accountable for the publication. This is required here because the newsroom is the one place an article can be written, and even published, without anyone asking for it. Add authors on the domain's Masthead page; see Voice and bylines.
Topics you cover - the subjects the newsroom looks for stories in. The scan proposes them from your site, and you correct them. They are searched exactly as written, so make them sections ("Local business", "Home energy"), not single stories.
At least one scheduled time - when the newsroom writes. See Schedule and delivery.

A connected CMS is not required. A newsroom that only writes drafts for you to review is a complete way to work.

Story ideas

Once switched on, the newsroom finds stories in your topics ahead of its first scheduled time and keeps them on the domain's Story ideas list. Press Find story ideas on that list whenever you want a fresh set. At each scheduled time it writes from those ideas.

How it finds them - your topics, your places, your trusted outlets - is on Topics and coverage area.

Review first, or publish on its own

Every newsroom starts on review: what it writes lands in your library as drafts, and nothing reaches your site until you press Publish. Only you can change that.

You can switch a domain to publish on its own, if it has a connected site. Even then, an article nobody has read is held back as a draft, with the reason, when:

it is marked Needs a look
the Editor-in-Chief did not approve it
it missed its minimum number of sources
the Fact Desk found a claim that could harm a real person if wrong

If any of that information is missing, the article is held, never assumed fine.

An article published this way carries a visible line - "This article was created with AI assistance." - in its own language, and a machine-readable marker, as the EU AI Act asks. An article you publish yourself by pressing Publish does not, because pressing Publish is your review.

Staying informed

You get a notice when the newsroom publishes an article or holds one, and an email unless you turn newsroom emails off. That switch is separate from the emails about work you start yourself.

What it costs

Every article the newsroom writes comes from the same allowance as the articles you ask for. There is no separate newsroom price.

Turning it off

Switch it off at any time - turning a schedule off is never refused. If the domain's editor of record is removed, the newsroom stops writing on its own and records why, until a new editor of record is named.