Automated Generation (Cron)

When you put Content SEO on autopilot, you don't have to click anything to get a blog. theStacc runs a quiet background job that checks your calendar, picks up the posts that are due, and writes them for you - then, if you've asked it to, publishes them too. This page explains exactly what that automation does, the guardrails that keep it safe, and what you'll see while it works.

Turning automation on#

Automated generation only runs when you've opted in. You choose how hands-off you want to be under Content SEO > Settings > Publishing, where three presets fold everything into one choice:

• Full autopilot - theStacc writes a new post on its scheduled date and publishes it automatically to your connected destination. No review step.
• Draft for me - theStacc writes a new post on its scheduled date, then it lands in your review queue as Pending Review. Nothing goes live until you approve it.
• Manual - Nothing runs on a schedule. You create and publish posts yourself.

Both Full autopilot and Draft for me turn on automatic generation. Full autopilot additionally turns on auto-publish. Both require an active publishing integration so theStacc has somewhere to send the finished post - see Publishing Modes & Autopilot.

You can switch presets at any time from the same setting, and the change takes effect on the next run.

What runs automatically#

Once automation is on, a background task wakes up on a schedule and looks for posts that are due. A post is due when:

• Its scheduled date is today, and
• Its status is still To be generated (it hasn't already been written), and
• Its project has automatic generation switched on, and
• The project has an active publishing integration connected.

For every due post it finds, the task hands the work off to a writer that runs the full AI pipeline - research, writing, images, and SEO scoring (see Blog Generation). You don't have to keep a browser tab open; this all happens on theStacc's servers.

The due-post check runs regularly throughout the day (roughly every half hour during daytime hours), so a post scheduled for today gets picked up soon after its day begins - you don't have to wait until midnight or babysit the calendar.

Per-run safety caps#

The automation is deliberately bounded so a large calendar can never trigger a runaway burst of generation. Two hard caps apply to every run:

• Up to about 50 blogs total per run. This is a global ceiling across all projects in a single pass. It protects against a backlog ever flooding the queue.
• Up to 3 blogs per project per run. This keeps things fair: one project with a huge calendar can't crowd out everyone else, and your own account spreads its work over multiple runs instead of all at once.

If you have more than three posts due for the same project on the same day, that's fine - the extras simply get picked up on the following runs throughout the day rather than all in one go.

Quota safety net#

Your plan includes a set number of posts per billing period (see Quota & Limits). The automation respects that limit as a hard safety net:

• Before each post is written, theStacc checks how many posts the project has already used in its current period.
• If the project is at or over its quota, nothing generates. The automation skips it rather than writing a post you're not entitled to.
• This check is a backstop that sits behind the normal limit checks, so even in an unusual edge case the system fails safe - it would rather skip a post than over-generate.

This means you'll never be surprised by extra posts beyond your plan. When your next billing period begins and your quota resets, the automation resumes on schedule.

Missed posts#

The automation only picks up posts scheduled for today. So what happens to a post that was scheduled for an earlier day but never got generated - for example, because automation was off, your quota was used up, or no integration was connected at the time?

Once a day, theStacc sweeps the calendar and marks any still-ungenerated posts whose scheduled date has already passed as Missed. A missed post leaves the active queue and will not be generated automatically. Reviving it is a deliberate, manual action: open the post and use the Generate button on your dashboard whenever you want it written.

This is the boundary between "the autopilot will handle it" and "this one needs your attention." It keeps stale posts from quietly piling up and surprising you later.

The auto-publish path#

If you've chosen Full autopilot, publishing is automated too - but it's handled as a separate, paced step rather than fired off the instant a post finishes.

Here's what happens after a post is written:

1. The post finishes generation and passes its SEO scoring.
2. Instead of publishing immediately, theStacc schedules it to go live a short, random moment from now - a small jitter of up to about fifteen minutes.
3. A separate publish task runs every few minutes, finds posts whose scheduled publish time has arrived, and pushes them to your connected destination (WordPress, Webflow, Ghost, a custom webhook, and so on).

The jitter is intentional. If a batch of posts all finish writing within the same minute, sending them to your CMS at the exact same instant could overwhelm it or hit its rate limits. Spreading the publishes across a short window lets them trickle out smoothly. You won't notice the delay in practice - posts still go live within minutes of being written.

If a publish attempt fails for a transient reason (your CMS is briefly unreachable, say), theStacc retries automatically with a backoff before giving up and flagging the post for you. See Publishing for how each integration behaves and what a failed publish looks like.

In Draft for me mode there is no auto-publish step at all: the written post simply waits in Pending Review until you approve it.

Why generation is paced#

You might expect the automation to write everything the moment it can. It deliberately doesn't. Within a single run, theStacc spaces the posts out - starting each one a short interval after the last rather than launching them all simultaneously.

Pacing matters for a few reasons:

• Quality stays consistent. The AI engines that write your posts and create your images work best at a steady pace, not in a sudden flood.
• No bursts. Smoothing the work avoids spikes that could slow things down or trip external limits.
• Fairness. Combined with the per-project cap, pacing means every project gets a turn instead of one account monopolizing the run.

The net effect: your posts arrive reliably and in good shape, even on a busy publishing day.

What you'll see in the dashboard#

Automation runs in the background, but it's not invisible. As a run progresses, your Content SEO dashboard reflects it in real time:

• A post that's currently being written shows as Generating (blue) on the calendar and in the blog list.
• When a post finishes, it moves to its next state depending on your preset - Pending Review (amber) in Draft for me mode, or straight toward Published (green) in Full autopilot.
• The content generation panel shows live progress while a post is being written, including rotating status messages and a preview of recently completed posts.
• A post that was skipped because its scheduled day has passed appears as Missed after the daily sweep.

Because posts are paced rather than generated all at once, you'll typically see them tick from Generating to done a few at a time across the day - exactly as designed. If you leave and come back, the dashboard simply reflects wherever the automation has gotten to.

A note for regulated businesses#

If your project uses theStacc's compliance layer (for regulated professions such as healthcare or legal), the auto-publish path is stricter on purpose. A post that doesn't clearly pass the compliance check won't be pushed live automatically - it's held for a human to review instead, since the autopilot has no one in the loop to approve an exception. See Quality & safety for more.

Related#

• Publishing Modes & Autopilot - choosing Full autopilot, Draft for me, or Manual
• Quota & Limits - how many posts your plan generates per period
• Time-Based Scheduling - how scheduled dates are set across your calendar
• Publishing - connecting a destination and how each integration publishes