Write the article

When you lose a prompt, Picked can write the page that should have won it. Articles are on Growth and Scale, not Starter. The pricing page says how many you get a month.

Nothing goes live until you say yes. You approve the brief before any writing, you approve each rewrite, and you merge the pull request yourself.

The steps

The article page shows the steps down the side, and the status tells you whose turn it is. The ones waiting on you carry an amber dot:

Start an article

Two ways in:

• From Content Gaps. Each prompt you lose, and each keyword a competitor ranks for, has a "Write the page" button. The keyword's side panel has it too.
• From Articles. Type the prompt or keyword yourself. "Know what to write next" on the same page lists the prompts the AI models rarely or never name you for, with how much they're searched on Google.

A prompt has one article at a time. Starting it again opens the one already in progress, unless that one was closed or failed.

Before you start: your brand settings

The article can only say what Picked knows about you. Open Settings, then Brand, under Project settings, before your first article:

• About your brand. Your prices, your strengths and whom you're not for. The draft uses these as facts, and the fact-check accepts them as a source.
• Brand colour. Charts, diagrams and screenshot frames are drawn in it. Picked reads it from your site on the first article, and you can change it.
• Product screenshots. Up to 12, each with a line on what it shows. Use them for what sits behind your login, where Picked can't take a screenshot itself.

What the brief contains

The brief is the only thing you approve before Picked writes. It shows:

• The angle: what the article says that the pages the models cite do not.
• The outline: the headings, in order.
• The facts it will use: each one with the page it came from, on your site or public.
• The competitors it will name, so nothing surprises you in the draft.

Next to it, the SEO panel shows the numbers for the closest Google search: search volume, keyword difficulty, and Google's AI Overview for it today, with whether it cites you and the pages it links. If nobody searches for the prompt, you find out before you spend a credit.

Edit any part and save it without approving, or close the article. Picked writes only from what you approved.

Reviewing the draft

The rewrite pass and the fact-check don't change your draft behind your back. Each one is a suggested change in place, with the reason next to it:

• Accept it, and the line changes.
• Keep original, and the line stays as it was. A cut with a fix offers Use the fix or Cut it.
• Accept all or Keep all when you trust the batch. Hover an accepted rewrite to undo it.

Visuals: remove a chart, table, diagram or screenshot you don't want, or make them all again from the Visuals step, which takes about a minute.

See the answer before it's live

Once every change is reviewed, "Simulate the answer" shows what Google's AI Overview could say for the keyword with your article among its sources. A model writes it from the pages the AI Overview cites today plus your article, so it is a simulation, labelled as one, not Google. It takes about 20 seconds.

Checks before the pull request

Every draft is run against a fixed list, and the results sit next to the text:

• Every claim has a source.
• Every link resolves.
• The title is under 60 characters and the meta description is 130 to 155.
• The first sentence answers the prompt in 35 words or fewer.
• No banned words, em dashes or filler openers, the tells that make a page read as AI-written.

A check that fails is shown as a fail, not hidden. You decide whether to fix it or publish anyway.

Publishing

Connect GitHub

Open Settings, then Publishing, under Project settings:

1. Install the Picked app on the GitHub account that holds your site. It asks to write files and pull requests, nothing else, and only on the repositories you choose. On a GitHub organization, an owner of that organization has to approve the install.
2. Pick the repository your site is built from, and the branch pull requests merge into.
3. Set the articles folder, where each article becomes one file named by its slug, and the charts folder with the path your site serves it under.

One GitHub account connects to one company on Picked.

Open the pull request

When the article is ready, "Open a pull request" reads your newest post in the articles folder and copies its frontmatter fields, date format and file naming, so the article matches the rest of your site. Fields Picked can't fill itself, like authors and tags, are copied from that post and marked "from post". Folder, file name and every field can be edited first.

• Open as a draft is on by default, so nothing deploys by accident and nobody merges it before it's marked ready for review.
• Reviewers: pick from your repository's collaborators, or type GitHub usernames.

Picked remembers the folder, file name pattern and fields, so the next article starts from the same place. The article page links the deploy preview once your host builds one (Vercel, Netlify and Cloudflare Pages), or "Check for preview" asks GitHub for it.

Picked never merges for you. Review and merge happen in GitHub, and Picked learns that it merged from GitHub.

Not on GitHub

Export the article instead: Markdown with frontmatter, HTML, and every chart, diagram and screenshot under the file name the article uses. Publish it your usual way. WordPress is not connected yet.

Watching it work

Once the article is live, tell Picked where: it suggests the address from your folder and slug, and checks the page answers before saving it. The address has to be on your domain, over https.

From then on, the article page compares the prompt's answers before and after:

• Named you, before and since live: the share of answers that name you, from the 30 days before against every day since.
• Answers citing this page: how many answers link the new URL.
• Each AI model on its own row, and a strip of days: greener the more answers named you, ringed on days an answer cited the page.

An article started from a keyword has no prompt yet. "Watch it once it's live" adds its question as a prompt, and that uses one prompt from your plan.

It takes days of answers before the comparison means much, so a new article shows "Too early" at first. If the answers don't move, that is the signal to rewrite the page.

Credits

• An article counts when you approve its brief, against the month's allowance (calendar month, UTC). Research and the brief are free.
• A failed run gives the credit back. Running it again spends it again only if it was given back.
• Closing an article keeps a credit that was already spent.
• Briefs started: up to three a month for each article your plan includes, so you can try a few angles and approve the best.

One article can be redone many times, but not without end. If an article hits that limit, write to [email protected].

Next

Team, projects and plans.