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Beacon

Posting automatically when something changes

An automation watches one source and posts when its top item changes — the headline on this project’s news site, or the newest result from an agentic workflow. It runs around the clock, posts into a campaign so Echo can report on it, and never posts the same item twice.

Set one up

  1. Open Beacon → Automations → New automation.
  2. Give it a Name and choose What it watches: the top story on this project’s news site (The front page headline, or one section’s), or a workflow’s newest result.
  3. Choose the Campaign it posts into, and Where it posts — X, or X and LinkedIn.
  4. Edit What it says. Use {{title}}, {{summary}}, {{link}}, {{article_link}} and {{source}}; the default is the headline, a blank line, and the link. {{link}} is the story on your news site, so it needs the site's public address and a site that serves it. {{article_link}} is the original article on its publisher's site, and works without one.
  5. Set Minutes between posts and Most posts a day.
  6. Tick Post automatically, around the clock to start it, or leave it off to save it paused.

The wording is posted as written — nothing is paraphrased. A headline too long for the network is shortened on a word; the link never is.

How often it posts

Minutes between posts and Most posts a day keep a busy source from turning the account into a ticker. The project’s own quiet hours and caps apply on top, judged in UTC, and Pause sending in the Queue stops automations too: they keep watching and post nothing.

Reading what it did

Each automation shows what it last posted, when it last checked, and why it did not post when it did not — the source has not changed, inside the minimum gap, the daily limit reached, the queue paused. After 5 failed attempts in a row it pauses itself and says so.

When a post's send fails, fix the cause (for example the template, or a link that does not open) and press Post now: it goes at once, because Post now does not count a failed send against the minimum gap or the daily limit. The failed post is archived and the new one replaces it. Left to run by itself, the automation still waits out the minimum gap before trying that story again, so a send that keeps failing is not retried every minute.

What would it post? shows the exact copy for the current item without sending anything, so you can read it before starting the automation. Post now sends the current item straight away, if it has not been posted already.

It cannot post the same thing twice. Each item is recorded against the post that carried it, so even two checks landing at the same moment produce one post.

Driving it from a workflow

An agentic workflow can end with a Post through Beacon step that names an automation — useful when the right moment to check is straight after the workflow has done its work, such as a crawl that fetches new articles. It is the same automation with the same campaign, wording and limits: running the step more often checks more often; it does not post more often.

Creating, editing, starting, pausing, running and deleting an automation needs an account owner or admin. Anyone who can reach the project can see what it has done and use What would it post? Deleting an automation keeps the posts it made.

Signed in to VeraGen? Press Guide me on any screen for a walkthrough, or ask Odin.