Generate your first article
From a trend or a brief to a fully-cited, published article — the complete end-to-end workflow.
Generate your first article
In this tutorial you take a topic from a fresh signal to a published, fully-cited article. You can start two ways — from a trend (a topic EarlyForge has already detected and gathered sources for) or from a brief (a reusable content plan you define). Either way, EarlyForge generates a complete draft in about 75 seconds, you polish it in the editor, and you publish.
Prerequisites: An EarlyForge account with onboarding completed (organization created, first site set up). Every plan includes a monthly AI word budget on us (5,000 words on Free), so you can follow this tutorial without connecting anything. See the note at the end about going beyond your budget.
Two ways to start
Best when you want to react to what is happening right now. EarlyForge continuously detects trends and gathers sources for them around the clock, so generation has rich, fresh context to draw from. Ideal for breaking stories and timely coverage.
Pick your starting point
Open Trends in the sidebar. You will see a live feed of detected topics. Each card shows a score (0-100), a lifecycle stage, an origin country and language, and a source count.
Look for a trend with strong momentum. The lifecycle stage tells you when to act:
| Stage | What it means | Article potential |
|---|---|---|
| Emerging | Just detected, few sources | Early — get ahead of it |
| Trending | Accelerating, sources multiplying | Strong — momentum building |
| Peaking | Maximum momentum and coverage | Best — richest source material |
| Saturating | Still active but slowing | Decent — angle matters more |
| Declining | Losing momentum | Low — unless you have a fresh angle |
Click a trend, then choose Write article from trend. The topic and context are pre-filled for you.
Set your article options
Before generating, confirm a few options:
- Tone — for example journalistic, neutral, analytical, casual, or formal.
- Length — short (~500 words), medium (~1,000), or long (~2,000).
- Language — choose any of EarlyForge's 28 output languages. The article language can differ from the source language of the trend.
If your site has a style guide configured, its tone and structure are applied as defaults. You can override them here for any individual article.
Click Generate to start.
Watch it generate
EarlyForge streams the article to your browser as it writes. You will see it move through a few phases:
- Retrieval — the most relevant gathered sources are selected for your topic.
- Writing — the article is written paragraph by paragraph, appearing in the editor in real time.
- Citations — inline references
[1],[2], and so on are inserted, linking each claim to a real source.
Generation typically completes in around 75 seconds.
Review in the editor
When generation finishes, you land in the AI editor. Take a moment to review:
Check the citations. Hover over a [3] badge to see the source title, publisher, date, and a snippet. Click it to open the original source in a new tab. Every factual claim is grounded in a verifiable source.
Sharpen the headline. The generated headline is solid but generic — rewrite it to add your editorial angle.
Add a hero image. Use the image inserter to search EarlyForge's library of royalty-free images and drop one in.
Use the AI sidebar. Select a thin paragraph and choose Expand, or select your conclusion and choose Adjust tone. The sidebar is context-aware: selecting a sentence offers sentence-level edits; selecting a paragraph unlocks structural ones.
For a deeper tour of the editor, see the AI editor guide and Understanding citations.
Publish
Click Publish in the top-right corner and choose where to send the article:
If your site has a destination connected — WordPress, Ghost, Medium, LinkedIn, a Next.js site, or a webhook — select it, confirm the details, and publish. The article appears at your destination within seconds, complete with its image and metadata. You can also cross-publish to multiple destinations at once. See Publishing.
Once published, the article's status changes to Published and you can track it from the Articles page.
Going beyond your word budget
Every plan includes a monthly AI word budget on us (Free 5,000 · Starter 10,000 · Pro 25,000 · Scale 50,000 words/month), generated on EarlyForge's managed AI and covering generation, the AI editor, and autocompletion. When you reach your word limit, paid plans unlock unlimited generation by connecting your own AI key (BYOK): you bring your own AI account, pay your provider directly for what you use, and generate without a monthly cap.
On a paid plan, when you spend your word budget without a key, generation shows a clear "connect your AI to continue" prompt — nothing breaks. Connecting takes about a minute (one-click sign-in or paste a key). See Connect your AI. The Free plan stops at its 5,000-word budget; upgrade to a paid plan to use BYOK.
What's next?
- Automate with briefs — schedule recurring article generation.
- Connect your AI — unlimited generation beyond your word budget.
- AI editor in depth — master the editor and AI sidebar.
- Understanding citations — how inline citations and source verification work.