Nothing was published
The work was made but never went live. How to read the card, the three switches that decide whether anything goes out, and what each refusal means.
Almost always, the work exists. A post or an article that was written and never sent is sitting on your calendar, not gone. The card tells you which of two very different problems you have.
Read the status first
Article cards and post cards use nearly the same words. These are the ones that matter when something has not appeared.
The three switches that decide whether anything goes out
All three have to agree, and two of them start in the safe position on purpose.
- Autopilot starts Off on every agent. Off means the agent does not run at all, so nothing is written and nothing is sent.
- Only the Publish it mode publishes. On Draft it and Ask me, the work is made and left on your calendar — whatever a channel’s own switch says. The mode is the instruction that wins.
- On a post you saved yourself, the tick-box Send it on its own at this time is what puts it on the clock. Leave it unticked and the date only files the post on the calendar; nothing goes out until you publish it.
The two halves of the product start from different places, which catches people out. The Social Copywriter’s per-channel Publish on its own is off out of the box, so a finished draft waits for you. The Copywriter’s Auto-publish is on out of the box — but the autopilot mode still overrules it, so an article written on Draft it stays a draft.
Send it now
When the card says Failed
A post that fails to publish is marked failed with the reason on it. It is never left stuck, and the button becomes Retry publish.
You can plan and write a post for a channel before that channel is connected. The chip on the drawer says it cannot publish until you connect it, and the refusal comes at send time rather than the post being silently dropped.
When your plan is the reason
Publishing is a separate thing from generating, and it is gated separately. Publishing to social channels needs an active plan with social publishing — the trial covers generation only. Publishing an article to your website needs a plan with CMS publishing; writing the article does not include pushing it out.
There is one more case worth knowing: if auto-publish is on for articles but no publishing destination is connected at all, the article is saved as a draft and the run says exactly that. Nothing is lost, and you can connect a destination and publish it afterwards.