The Outline stage

What this is: The second stage, where you set the piece's structure (its sections, headings, and length) plus the core SEO fields, before the draft is written.

The Outline turns your Brief into a skeleton. Get the sections and length right here and the draft will match your intent.

Outline fields

• Content title: the title as it will appear.
• URL slug: the piece's URL path.
• Meta description: a search-result summary, around 160 characters.
• Target content length: Short, Medium, or Long. This affects the number of sections and the word targets.
• Sections: the body structure. Each section has a section title, a heading level (h2 to h6), guidance, a word-count target, and an image suggestion with an image type. Drag to reorder; add or remove sections as needed.

Tip: Set Target content length deliberately: it drives how many sections you get and how long each one aims to be. Short for quick reads, Long for in-depth pieces.

The research phase toggle

The Outline has a checkbox, Enable research phase, that controls whether the Research stage runs before the draft.

• Leave it checked for data-heavy, competitive, or authority pieces.
• Uncheck it for quick or opinion pieces where research just adds time.

See Research & deep research for how to decide.

Approve to move on

Click Approve Outline to lock it and generate the next stage:

• If Enable research phase is checked, the Research stage runs first.
• If it's unchecked, the Written draft is generated directly.

Gotcha: The Outline locks on approval. To change it later, Unlock, which deletes and regenerates every stage after it.

Where to go next

• Decide on research: Research & deep research.
• Or skip straight to The Written stage.