Publishing Workflow

Understanding how articles move from generation to publication helps you debug issues and understand system behavior.

Background job architecture

RankWriting uses Trigger.dev async job queues for article generation, preventing frontend request timeouts.

Frontend submits → API Route creates article record
               → Triggers background job → Returns article_id immediately
                                       ↓
                             generate-article job
                             (research + RAG + AI writing)
                                       ↓
                             enhance-article job
                             (images + video insertion)
                                       ↓
                             Article status → "ready"

Article status lifecycle

| Status | Meaning | |--------|---------| | generating | Background job is running | | pending | Text generated, awaiting media enhancement | | ready | Fully generated and ready to publish | | published | Successfully published to WordPress / Shopify | | failed | Generation failed — can be retried |

Publishing to WordPress

Clicking Publish sends a POST /wp-json/wp/v2/posts request via the WordPress REST API. SEO fields are written simultaneously (compatible with Yoast SEO and RankMath).

Publishing to Shopify

Articles are written via the Shopify Admin API (POST /admin/api/blogs/{id}/articles) to your selected Blog.

Retry logic

Failed generation jobs are automatically retried up to 2 times. If all retries fail, the article status becomes failed. You can manually trigger a re-generation from the Posts list.