Documentation / Publishing

Authors & SEO Warnings

This page is the source-of-truth for how Power Author handles author bylines and the soft SEO checks raised at publish time. It is also kept in knowledge/editorial-guidelines.md so it can be consumed by the AI assistant.

Authors model

Where authors live

• Workspace-scoped roster. Authors belong to a workspace, not a project. Manage in Workspace Settings → Authors.
• Optional per-project subset. Each project can restrict the eligible roster via the Eligible authors multiselect. Empty selection = full workspace roster is eligible.
• Per-article override. Articles store author_id for the byline. Nullable.

When the author block is sent

Power Author only sends an author block in the publish payload when the project’s publish_include_author setting is on. When the setting is off:

• Power Author publishes without an author_name field.
• The destination falls back to its own configured brand byline (e.g. "Specific Resume Editorial" on Specific Resume).

Resolution order (when the toggle is on)

1. articles.author_id — the per-article selection.
2. default_author_id — the project’s fallback when the article has no author selected.
3. None resolved → publish without a byline AND emit a soft warning so the editor sees the gap on the run detail page.

Soft SEO checks (warnings)

Power Author runs the following per-article checks at publish time. They never block the publish — they’re persisted on publish_run_items.warnings and surfaced on the publish-run detail sheet so editors can fix them on the next pass.

• missing metaDescription / missing excerpt — the default-locale field is empty.
• body has no H1 / body has N H1s (expected 1) — heading hierarchy issues in the article body.
• N images with empty alt text — markdown image syntax ![](url) with no alt text.
• Author resolver soft warning — toggle on but no author selected and no project default.

Lifecycle rules at a glance