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Quickstart: Launch a Blog

This guide takes a blog from an empty account to a deployed site on your own domain, and then hands it to an Agent that keeps working on it. Every screen, button and route named below is the one you will actually see.

Routes are written without the locale prefix — the address bar shows /en/works, this guide says /works.

Read What is early about the blog kind at the end before you plan a content calendar around it. The short version: the platform half of a Blog Work ships in full, the content half still runs on the shared items pipeline, and there is no dedicated post-writer yet.

Before you begin​

You needWhy
An account and a signed-in tabSee Creating an Account.
A connected Git providerA Work provisions repositories in your own account — see Creating a Work.
At least one AI providerThe generation pipeline refuses to start without one; the Worker tab says "{providers} not configured. Visit Settings → Plugins…".
A deploy target (for step 5)Either the managed *.ever.works address (Managed Hosting) or a deploy plugin such as Vercel.

Step 1 — Create the Blog Work​

  1. Click + New in the sidebar (/new). The chip row reads Mission · Idea · Agent · Task · Website · Landing Page · Blog · Directory · Awesome Repo · Company, followed by a Store chip, which on the hosted service is marked Soon (its works-store flag is off) and is inert either way — the chips row never emits store.

  2. Click the Blog chip. Two things happen at once. Its one-line description appears under the row — "A blog with categories, RSS, code highlighting, and SEO-ready content." — and the chip's first example is written into the composer as real, editable text: "Personal blog about indie game development with postmortems and tooling tags". Focus returns to the box with the caret at the end, so you can send it as-is or rewrite it.

    The chip will not overwrite your own words. A seed lands in an empty box, or replaces a seed the page put there itself when you flip to a different chip; anything you typed, pasted or dictated is left alone (apps/web/src/components/common/composer/use-prompt-seed.ts). The chip's four other examples never enter the box — they cycle as grey placeholder hints while the composer is empty and unfocused, and they are worth reading as a menu of what this kind is for: "Engineering blog with RSS, code-highlighting, author pages, and OG previews", "AI research summaries blog — daily 200-word paper rundowns with citations", "Founder journal — weekly progress logs tagged for revenue, hiring, product", "Recipe blog with structured data, ingredient scaler, and category filters".

  3. Replace the seeded example with your own brief. Say what the blog is about, who reads it, and what a typical post looks like — this text becomes the Work's initial_prompt and is the single biggest lever you have on the first run.

  4. Submit. You land on /works/new?mode=ai&kind=blog with the AI creator open and the Blog kind chip already selected. /works/new?kind=blog&prompt=… is a valid deep link if you want to skip /new entirely.

  5. Name the Work, check the Git provider and repository owner, and create it. Leave the Website Template selector on its default unless you have a reason not to — see below.

The Blog chip can be turned off, and it fails open

Every kind chip is gated by a works-<kind> feature flag — works-blog here — evaluated server-side through PostHog so no analytics token reaches the browser (apps/web/src/lib/feature-flags/work-kinds.ts). The gate fails open: no PostHog key, a missing flag, an error or a 1.5-second timeout all leave the chip enabled, which is why self-hosted and OSS installs get every kind. Only a flag that resolves strictly to false turns the chip into "Soon", and in that state ?kind=blog cannot be deep-linked either.

Which template a Blog Work gets​

A Blog Work defaults to the web website template — ever-works/web-template, a general-purpose Next.js site (App Router, React 19, Tailwind CSS v4) that ships a full landing page, About / Pricing / Contact pages and a Markdown blog. It is not the directory template, and it has no item lists or faceted filters.

SituationTemplate used
You leave the selector aloneweb — the kind default for blog, website and landing-page
You have saved a default website template in your preferencesYour saved preference wins over the kind default
You pick one explicitly on the create formExactly what you picked — classic, minimal, web or web-minimal
You want the static Astro variantweb-minimal — always opt-in, the same way minimal is opt-in for directories

The default is resolved late: creating a Blog Work leaves websiteTemplateId as null in the create response and on every later GET, and web is applied only when the website repository is first generated. That is deliberate, so a preference you save after creation still wins. Full catalogue in Website Templates.

The same thing over the API​

curl -X POST "https://api.ever.works/api/works" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $EVER_WORKS_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "Indie Game Dev Journal",
    "slug": "indie-game-dev-journal",
    "description": "Postmortems and tooling notes from a solo studio",
    "organization": false,
    "kind": "blog"
  }'

The kind is create-only: UpdateWorkDto has no kind field, so you cannot convert a Directory into a Blog later with PUT /api/works/:id. The CLI's interactive ever-works work create does not ask for a kind, so Works created there are default (directory-shaped) — use the dashboard or this endpoint when you want a blog.

Step 2 — Meet the Posts tab, and learn where a post lives​

Open the Work. Its tab strip is drawn from the per-kind capability registry (packages/contracts/src/domain/work-capabilities.ts), so a Blog Work shows:

Overview · Activity · Posts · Tasks · Pull requests · Memory · Worker · Plugins · Deploy · Settings

The third tab is the same Items workbench every Work has — the registry simply renames its label from Items to Posts for blog (items: { enabled: true, labelKey: 'posts' }). The route is unchanged: /works/:id/items.

What the blog capability set turns on and off:

CapabilityBlogNote
Posts surface (tab + /items routes)YesLabelled Posts
Categories, tags and collectionsYesThe taxonomy sub-views inside the Posts tab
Knowledge base (the Memory tab)YesStep 3
Deploy tab and deployment endpointsYesStep 5
Comparisons generatorNoDirectory-only affordance
Community pull-request intakeNoOff for blog
CSV / Excel import and export of postsNoOff for blog — you cannot bulk-load a back catalogue through the Posts tab
Source-URL validationNoOff for blog

The Overview tiles follow the same registry: Posts · Page Views* · Registered Users · Deploy Status · Days Active. Starred tiles are provider-backed and read "Connect analytics to see this" until an analytics provider is connected — an unmeasured blog has unknown page views, not zero.

Where a post actually lives​

A post is a row in the dashboard and a folder in your data repository (<slug>-data). The writer is DataRepository in packages/agent/src/generators/data-generator/data-repository.ts:

.works/works.yml          Work configuration (schema v2: version, kind, spec)
categories.yml            Categories
tags.yml                  Tags
collections.yml           Collections
data/
  first-post/
    first-post.yml        Post metadata (name, description, source_url, category, tags, …)
    first-post.md         Long-form markdown body (optional; the site prefers this file)

Three properties of that writer are worth knowing before you hand-edit anything:

  • The slug is the folder and file name, and it is deliberately never written inside the YAML.
  • Every write stamps updated_at, and a write whose content is otherwise unchanged is skipped entirely, so re-running generation does not churn your Git history with empty diffs.
  • Slugs are confined: only [A-Za-z0-9_-] is accepted as a folder name, and anything that would resolve outside data/ is rejected outright.

How to add a post by hand​

You need the editor role or higher on the Work.

  1. Open the Posts tab (/works/:id/items) and stay on Browse Items.
  2. Click Add Item. The Add New Item modal opens.
  3. Fill in Source URL, Name, Description and at least one Category — all four are required by the form. Optionally paste the source URL and click Retrieve to have the platform fetch the page and pre-fill the rest.
  4. Write the body in Content (Markdown, optional) — up to 100,000 characters, with a Preview button that renders GitHub-Flavoured Markdown. Leave it empty and a stub body is generated from the name, description and source URL.
  5. Leave Create Pull Request off to commit straight to the data repository, or switch it on to propose the post as a PR instead.
  6. Click Add Item.

The Source URL is mandatory, which is the sharpest edge of using the items workbench as a blog editor today: a post written from scratch still needs a URL to point at. To rewrite a body later, use the ⋮ row menu → Edit content; it writes data/<slug>/<slug>.md and mirrors the text onto the item's YAML markdown field. Full reference in Items (Posts, Pages).

Step 3 — Seed the Memory tab before you generate​

This is the step people skip and then regret. The Knowledge Base is what makes the difference between a run that produces generic copy and a run that sounds like you — and it is read on every run, including every scheduled one. Seed it before the first generation, not after.

  1. Open the Memory tab — /works/:id/kb.
  2. Write the document as a .md file in your editor, then drag it anywhere onto the workbench — or use Browse files. The Classify upload dialog asks for the Document class, an optional description and tags before anything is written. Markdown is passed through verbatim; HTML, PDF, DOCX, XLSX, CSV/TSV and PPTX are extracted automatically. The original is stored in the Work's storage plugin; Agents read the clean extract, never the binary.
  3. Prefer to dictate it? Ask the chat rail on any page of that Work: "create a KB document at brand/voice in the brand class titled Brand voice" — it calls create_kb_document. Include the word "knowledge" or "document" so the KB tools are gated into that turn. Either way, open the document from the tree to edit it and let it autosave — the editor status line moves through Unsaved changes… → Saving… → Saved.
  4. Repeat for each class you care about. For a blog, four documents are usually enough to change the output noticeably.
  5. Lock anything that must not drift. The Lock control offers full (nothing may change it) or additions-only (appending is fine; edits and deletions to existing lines are rejected by the server) — this protects a document from scheduled regeneration and from Agent runs.

The classes that matter most for a blog, and how the runtime treats each:

ClassWhat to put in it for a blogHow Agents treat it
brandVoice and tone — what you sound like, and what you never sound likeSoft guidance — "follow these brand guidelines"
styleEditorial rules: post length, headline shape, banned words, tense, code-block policyGrammar and voice constraints
personasWho reads this blog, what they already know, what they came forAudience definitions — write for these readers
seoTarget keywords, title and description patterns, internal-linking conventions per page typeConstraints, matched per page type
glossaryProduct and domain terms, with the spelling you insist onTerm substitution — never invent synonyms
legalDisclaimers, licence text, required attributionsVerbatim-or-omitted — copied exactly, never paraphrased

brand, legal, glossary, style, personas and page-matched seo documents are deterministically injected into every relevant run under a token budget with class-precedence truncation; research, freeform and output documents are retrieved by similarity, and every use is recorded as a citation you can audit afterwards.

There is no "new document" button in the workbench today. Uploading and the chat rail are the two browser paths; from a script, MCP kb.create and POST /api/works/:id/kb/documents do the same job — see How to: create a document without uploading a file.

Everything you write here is committed to .content/kb/ in the Work's data repository as a <slug>.md + <slug>.yml pair, so it is diffable and portable, and nothing is locked in. If you run an Organization, publish legal, style and seo once at the org level and every Work inherits them, with per-Work override.

Step 4 — Generate, then set a refresh cadence​

Run the first generation​

  1. Open the Worker tab — /works/:id/generator. Its sub-tabs are Work · Schedule · History · Comparisons. The two conditional ones are gated on your role, not on the kind: Schedule appears once the Work has configuration and you can manage schedules, and Comparisons appears for editors on every Work kind (GeneratorSubTabs.tsx checks permissions.canEdit). On a Blog Work that Comparisons tab is an unused affordance — comparisons are off for blog in the capability registry, as the table above says.
  2. Check the Worker Prompt. It is pre-filled from the brief you typed on /new; this is where you refine it. Be specific about what a post should cover — the helper text says so plainly: "Be specific about the type of content you want to generate."
  3. Under Show Advanced Options, optionally set an AI Model Override (for example openai/gpt-4.1) and Company Information for branded content. Leave the model empty to use the account default.
  4. Click Start Work. Progress streams on the same screen, and runs are cancellable — see Generation Cancellation.
  5. When it finishes, open the Posts tab to see what landed, and History for the run record.

Later runs offer Run Generation (create-update — merges taxonomy, rewrites any post whose slug matches, leaves everything else alone) and Recreate Work (recreate — clears the generated files first). Recreate is destructive to hand-written entries, and the UI warns you: "This Work has already been generated. Starting a new generation will replace existing items." Give a hand-written post a slug the generator is unlikely to reproduce if you want it left alone.

From a terminal the same pipeline is ever-works work generate — see CLI Generation Commands.

Set the cadence​

Scheduled Updates re-run that pipeline on a recurring basis, with retries, failure tracking and billing handled for you.

  1. Go to Worker → Schedule (/works/:id/generator/schedule).
  2. Turn Automation on and pick a Cadence: Every hour, Every 3 hours, Every 8 hours, Every 12 hours, Every day, Every week, Every month. Which cadences are included depends on your plan; the rest are available on pay-per-use.
  3. Set the Failure limit — after this many consecutive failures the schedule auto-pauses and you are notified. Default 3, range 1–10.
  4. Turn on Create Pull Requests if you want every scheduled run proposed as a PR instead of committed directly. For a blog with a human editor in the loop, this is usually the right setting.
  5. Optionally override the pipeline, or the AI / search / screenshot / content-extractor plugins, for scheduled runs only — independent of your manual settings.

Two prerequisites: the Work must have completed at least one generation, and at least one AI provider plugin must be active. Failed runs retry after 15 minutes, and a run stuck in "generating" for over an hour is marked failed automatically.

The API equivalent:

curl -X PUT http://localhost:3100/api/works/<work-id>/schedule \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "enable": true,
    "cadence": "weekly",
    "billingMode": "subscription",
    "alwaysCreatePullRequest": true
  }'
What the cadence actually does

A cadence re-runs the same content pipeline the Worker tab runs — it refreshes the Work's generated content on a schedule. It is not a publishing calendar, and it does not commission one post per interval. See What is early about the blog kind.

Step 5 — Deploy, and put it on your domain​

  1. Open the Deploy tab — /works/:id/deploy.
  2. If no provider is set yet, the No Deployment Provider card offers Select & Continue. If the provider needs a token, the card walks you through it: create a token with deployment permissions, save it in Plugin Settings, come back.
  3. Click Deploy to {provider}. Deployment typically takes 1–3 minutes and you get a URL when it completes; Open website appears on the progress card.
  4. Site URL / Subdomain shows your default managed address on ever.works — "Your default, managed address on ever.works. Custom domains can be added below." You can change the subdomain here; it is allocated on the next deploy if the Work has never been deployed. See Managed Hosting.
  5. Custom Domains — type your domain (for example blog.example.com) and click Add. The toast reads "Domain added. Configure DNS to verify it."
  6. Click Show DNS instructions and copy the records. A subdomain gets a CNAME pointing at the provider; an apex domain gets an A record pointing at the provider's IP. The exact values come from your deploy provider.
  7. Once DNS propagates, click Verify DNS. The badge flips from Pending to Verified, and if the Work's current URL is still a provider-assigned subdomain it is automatically promoted to your custom domain.

Domain records are stored in the Ever Works database as the source of truth, so they survive a provider switch and can be re-synced. Full API in Custom Domains.

The website repository is managed output

Template updates and branch syncs force-push main, stage and develop of <slug>-website. Make your edits in <slug>-data (posts, configuration) or on a fork of the template that the Work points at — see The Generated Site.

Step 6 — Put a Work-scoped Agent on it​

A deployed blog that nobody tends goes stale. A Work-scoped Agent is a named worker that only ever acts on this one Work — a "Blog Editor" that files tasks, drafts, comments and improves things between your visits.

  1. From the Work header, open the Agents dropdown and choose New Agent. It opens /works/:id/agents/new with the scope pinned to this Work, so you cannot accidentally create a tenant-wide Agent from here.

  2. Give it a name and title ("Blog Editor") and describe its capabilities — what it is for, in plain language.

  3. Pick a provider and model, or keep the account default.

  4. Create it. The Agent starts in draft; open its Dashboard tab and click Start.

  5. Write its brain in the Instructions tab — five markdown files with autosave, stored in the Work's data repository so you own and version them:

    FileWhat to put in it for a blog editor
    SOUL.mdVoice and principles — the editor's judgement, not the blog's brand voice
    AGENTS.mdHouse rules: what it may publish directly, what must become a pull request
    HEARTBEAT.mdWhat to do on a scheduled tick — review the newest posts, propose the next three
    TOOLS.mdWhich tools it leans on
    agent.ymlProvider, avatar, and idleBehavior (propose, observe or noop)

  6. Set a heartbeat cadence (a cron expression) so it wakes on schedule. On an idle tick it is asked "What's the next action you should take? Choose ONE." and may create a task, comment on an open one, edit one of its own files to capture a learning, or observe and do nothing.

  7. Set a budget — hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or unlimited. It is checked before every AI call, and repeated failures auto-pause the Agent so a misbehaving worker cannot run away with your spend.

  8. Grant permissions deliberately. Every flag (canAssignTasks, canEditAgentFiles, canCommitToRepo, canCreateAgents, canCallExternalTools, …) defaults to false.

Already have a roster? Use Assign existing in the same dropdown instead — an Agent from elsewhere can be put on this Work without creating another one, and taken back off from its hover action. Agents pinned to the Work cannot be unassigned, because their placement is their scope.

Because the knowledge base is per Work, a Work-scoped Agent reads the brand voice you seeded in step 3 automatically, on every run.

What is early about the blog kind​

Read this before you plan a content calendar

The blog kind is partial. Here is the exact line between what ships and what does not.

What ships, completely:

  • The Blog chip on /new and /works/new, its works-blog feature flag and its example prompts.
  • The persisted kind: "blog" and its entry in the capability registry — the Posts label, taxonomy, deploy, knowledge base, and the metric tiles.
  • The web website template as the kind default, resolved at first website generation.
  • The .works/works.yml schema-v2 spec block for blog, validated strictly.
  • Everything generic: the items workbench, the Memory tab, tasks, pull requests, deploys, custom domains, schedules, budgets and Agents.

What does not exist yet:

  • There is no dedicated blog-post writer. The pipeline a Blog Work runs is the same items pipeline every Work runs, and its writer (DataRepository) produces items, categories, tags, collections, references and comparisons. The Posts tab is that items surface with a different label.
  • The web template's marketing copy comes from the template, not from your prompt. No generator writes into the template's site.config.ts.
  • The blog spec fields are stored, not yet consumed. spec.generation.topics_prompt, spec.generation.posts_per_run, spec.generation.cadence, spec.feed.enabled and spec.content_dir are validated by packages/agent/src/works-config/schema/works-config.schema.ts and round-trip intact in your repository — posts_per_run: "three" is rejected as an error — but no runtime reads them to commission posts today.
  • The blog blueprint is a placeholder. In the Work Templates catalog the blog entry is non-selectable and hidden by the picker; Blog Works use the web Website Template instead. See Work Blueprints.
  • A scheduled cadence refreshes content; it does not publish on a calendar. It re-runs the pipeline described above.
  • Adding a post by hand requires a Source URL, because the Add Item form is the directory form.
  • No CSV/Excel import or export of posts, no community-PR intake, no source validation, no comparisons — all four are off for blog in the capability registry. The Comparisons sub-tab under Worker still renders for editors, because that sub-tab is gated on your role rather than on the kind; on a Blog Work it has nothing to generate.

What to do about it, today:

You wantDo this now
Posts that sound like youSeed brand, style, personas and glossary in the Memory tab (step 3) — they are injected into every run.
A specific post, written wellCreate a Task on the Work and assign it to your Work-scoped Agent, or write it yourself in the Posts tab and let the Agent edit it.
Editorial review before it goes liveTurn on Create Pull Requests on the schedule and per post, then review in the Pull requests tab.
A fully supported build todayA Directory or Awesome Repo Work is the mature path — the items pipeline was built for them. See Quickstart: Build a Directory.