Steering an article before it's written

Updated August 24, 2026

A model can assemble what is measurable about a topic. It cannot know what you found out the hard way, what your customers keep asking, or the one caveat that makes your advice different from everyone else's. That is what the two instruction dialogs are for, and the draft's evidence panel makes a point of nudging you towards them: "Adding your own experience is the single biggest thing that makes it unlike anyone else's article."

Both dialogs open from the hover controls on a day cell. Both are optional, and either can be closed without answering anything.

Interview questions

The lightbulb icon opens a dialog titled Make this article yours, with the keyword underneath it.

Rankbank writes a handful of short questions specifically about that topic. Generating them costs a model call, so it only happens when you open this dialog, which is why the panel first shows "Writing questions for this article…" while they arrive. When the questions were written for that specific article, the dialog says so: "These questions were written for this specific article. Your answers become the parts of it nobody else could write." Answer any of them, skip the rest, and press Save.

The questions are short and each has its own answer box. There is no requirement to fill any of them in.

Occasionally no questions can be prepared for a topic. The dialog says "No questions could be prepared for this one. You can still use the instructions box instead" rather than showing an empty form.

The Make this article yours dialog, showing three tailored questions about the article's topic with empty answer boxes — Interview questions are written for the specific article, not pulled from a fixed list. Answering two or three is usually enough to change the draft noticeably.

Freeform instructions

The question mark icon opens How should this be written?, a single large text box.

The prompt above it lists what belongs in there: "Anything the writer should know: points to cover, an angle to take, a structure to follow, things to leave out." The placeholder gives a worked example, something like leading with the pricing comparison and mentioning that the free plan has no page limit.

Whatever you type is stored with the entry. Reopening the dialog shows what you saved last time, so you can edit rather than retype. Press Save, or Cancel to leave it alone.

The How should this be written dialog with a freeform instruction typed into the text box — The freeform box takes anything the questions did not anticipate. It is the right place for structure, angle and exclusions.

Which one to use

Use the questions when the article needs something only you know. What went wrong the first time you did this. The number your own process actually produces. The objection you hear every week. Questions are good at pulling that out of you because they ask something specific rather than facing you with a blank box.

Use instructions when you want to shape the article rather than fill it. Lead with the comparison table. Do not mention competitors by name. Keep it under a thousand words even though the setting says fifteen hundred. Cover the migration path, ignore the pricing. Structure, angle, emphasis, exclusions.

There is nothing stopping you using both on the same entry. They are stored together and both travel to the writer.

Tip

Brief the articles you care about, not all thirty. The instruction count badge on a cell tells you at a glance which days you have already touched, so a weekly pass of "steer the two that matter this week" is a realistic habit. Everything else still gets written.

When to do it

Any time before the article is generated. The interview and instructions controls are available on future days as well as on days that are ready to write, which is the point of them being on the calendar cell rather than inside the editor. A day that will not open for two weeks can be briefed today.

This matters if you rely on the nightly top-up, which writes what is due without asking you first. Anything you want said in an article that will be written automatically has to be in place before its day arrives.

Changing your mind after generation

Instructions are tied to the entry, not to the draft, so editing them after an article has been written is possible and does not change the existing draft on its own. Generating again picks up whatever instructions are saved at that moment.

Regenerating replaces the draft, including any edits you made in the editor. If you have already reworked the draft by hand, edit it further rather than regenerating.

How you know your input was used

Open the drafted article and look at the Evidence panel on the right. If your input reached the writer, a green line reports it, along the lines of "Your own input was used: 3 answered questions and your instructions." If nothing was given, the panel says that instead and points out what you are missing.

That line is the check worth running once. If you answered questions and the evidence panel does not mention them, they were saved after the article was generated, and generating again will pick them up.

Where to go next

Reviewing and editing a draft covers the evidence panel in full.
Reading the calendar explains the hover controls these dialogs open from.
Style & settings is where you set the things that apply to every article rather than one.

Still stuck?

Open Rankbank and the page this article describes — most screens explain themselves as you go.