Skip to content

AI Workforce & Assistance

Controlled content system: every piece briefed, checked and edited

AI makes drafts cheap, which makes checking the expensive part. A controlled content system runs content like production: briefs from search data and customer questions, drafts written only from approved sources, checks against your rules, an editor on every piece, and results that feed the next brief. It prepares. Editors decide what's published. We build it on your approved sources and rules, with an editor on every piece.
Talk through your contentFollow one piece from brief to results ↓
BriefDraftChecksEditorPublishedresults → next briefreaders ask: booking the inspectioneditor: costs need a sourceC-121 · articlePermit for anew heater?C-114 · pageWater heater,Eastside5/5C-116 · articleHeat pump orfurnace?C-118 · emailFurnace tune-up,NovemberC-124 · briefBooking theinspection

Faster drafts, slower trust

Pasting AI drafts into the website is fast until someone finds a service you don't offer, a guarantee you never made or five pages that say the same thing. Then every piece needs reading line by line, and the speed is gone.

A controlled content system moves the checking into the process. The model writes only from sources you approved, every draft is checked against your rules before an editor sees it, and the editor's returns go back to the stage that caused them.

Today, and with a controlled content system

Today

  1. 01Topics come from whoever has an idea that week.
  2. 02Drafts come from a chat window and are pasted into the website.
  3. 03Facts are checked by whoever has time, if anyone.
  4. 04Nobody looks at what each piece achieved.

More content, less trust, and no idea what's working.

With a controlled content system

  1. 01Briefs come from search data and customer questions, approved by a person.
  2. 02Drafts are written from approved sources, in checked stages.
  3. 03An editor approves, edits or returns every piece.
  4. 04Results feed the next round of briefs.

Content you can stand behind, and a record of what each piece did.

One piece, from brief to results

The permit article, C-121, step by step. Its record keeps every stage, and its results start the next brief.

Events · C-121

Content record · C-121

Brief
Do I need a permit for a new water heater? · homeowners · all three locations
Sources
—
Draft
—
Checks
—
Editor
—
Published
—
Results
—

Event 1 of 9: brief.created

Where editors stay in charge

  1. 01

    Briefs

    What gets made

    A person approves each brief before anything is drafted: the reader, the question and the sources allowed.

    briefs approved in bulk without being read.

  2. 02

    Facts

    Who owns the sources

    Approved sources have owners. The model writes from them and never adds facts of its own.

    sources nobody has checked this year.

  3. 03

    Every piece

    Before it's published

    An editor approves, edits or returns each piece, and a return goes back to the draft stage with the note.

    the same note returned again and again. That's a rule waiting to be written.

  4. 04

    Channels

    Each version on its own

    The email and social versions are approved separately. They're written for the channel, not cut down from the article.

    one approval covering every channel.

The rules it holds

Written down once, checked on every draft.
Style guideTone, reading level, and how you write numbers, dates and names
TermsService names, locations and product names, from your lists
Claims you never makeGuarantees, prices in articles, comparisons with named competitors
SourcesWhat counts as approved, and how old a source may be
ChannelsWhat each channel's version must include, and what it must leave out

The parts it's built from

Each part is built and tested on its own, so you can start with one and add the rest.

  1. Plan

    Content Operations

    Briefs from search data, customer questions and results.

  2. Generate

    Controlled Generation Pipelines · LLM Application Development

    • the approved brief
    • its sources
    • the rules

    a check fails → back to the draft stage with the reason

  3. Check

    AI Classification · AI Evaluation & Guardrails

    Topics and terms tagged; drafts checked against the rules.

  4. Review

    Human-in-the-Loop AI

    An editor on every piece.

Underneath every stepAPI IntegrationConnects to your website, email platform and analytics.

What changes from one business to the next

Content typesPages, articles, emails and social posts, and the stages each goes through
SourcesWhat's approved, and who owns it
ReviewWho approves what, and whether any low-risk type may publish after checks alone
ResultsWhich signals feed back: searches, reads, replies, enquiries

A common starting point is a hosted language model, n8n for the pipeline, Supabase or your existing CMS for content and its status, PostHog and Search Console for results, and Postiz for scheduling social posts. These are starting candidates, not requirements.

Is a controlled content system the right system?

Good fit

  • You publish regularly across pages, articles, email and social.
  • Facts have to come from your records: services, areas, policies.
  • Someone will own the rules and edit every piece, at least at first.

Avoid when

  • You publish a few pieces a year. Write them.
  • Nobody can edit. The system speeds up production, not judgement.
  • You want volume for its own sake. More pages saying the same thing do more harm than good.

How we'd approach it

Most of the early work is agreeing the content types, the approved sources, how review works and which results feed the next brief.

  1. 01

    Understand

    As much as the problem needs

    We map how the work runs today: who does what, which systems hold the records, and where it breaks.

  2. 02

    Design

    Decided before it's built

    Ownership, rules, integrations and exceptions, agreed with you and written down with acceptance criteria.

  3. 03

    Build

    Connected to what you use

    We build the scoped system, connect it to the tools you already run, and test it on the cases that matter.

Related systems

The capabilities underneath

Questions about controlled content systems

Will it sound like AI wrote it?

It sounds like your style guide, because the rules are written down and checked and an editor reads every piece. Most of the difference comes from the brief and the sources, not the model.

Can it publish without an editor?

Not at first. Once a content type has a record of passing checks with few edits, you can choose to let it publish after checks. Most businesses keep an editor on anything customer-facing.

Where do the topics come from?

Search data, the questions customers ask, and what earlier pieces achieved. A person approves every brief.

Does it make up statistics?

No. Numbers come from approved sources, and a check rejects any claim without one.

Make AI drafts worth publishing

Tell us what content you produce today and how it's checked. We'll show you how a controlled process would run.

Start a project