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Quickstart

This guide gets you from zero to your first multi-output content-writing run.

By the end, you will have a publish-ready content set, generated assets, and a preview workflow you can iterate on.

1. Configure Settings and Secrets​

ideon settings

Inside settings, configure:

  • LLM model and model settings
  • T2I model and optional input overrides
  • Output directories
  • OpenRouter API key
  • Replicate API token

2. Generate Content Outputs​

ideon write "How small editorial teams can productionize AI writing" --primary article=1 --secondary x-thread=1 --secondary x-post=1 --style professional

Expected stages:

  1. Planning Shared Plan
  2. Planning Primary Content
  3. Writing Primary Content
  4. Expanding Image Prompts
  5. Rendering Images
  6. Generating Channel Content
  7. Enriching Links

Long-form primaries (article, blog-post, newsletter, press-release, science-paper) use structured section-based writing in stage 3. Short-form primaries (x-post, x-thread, linkedin-post, reddit-post) use single-shot generation in stage 3. All primaries render a cover image.

3. Check Outputs​

By default (resolved from current working directory):

  • Generation directories: output/<timestamp>-<slug>/
  • Markdown files: article-1.md, x-thread-1.md, x-post-1.md, ...
  • Run metadata: job.json
  • Article plan: plan.md
  • Run analytics: generation.analytics.json
  • Shared generation assets: image files in the same generation directory

Typical first-run value:

  • One idea expanded into multiple channel-ready drafts
  • A consistent style applied across all outputs
  • Structured run artifacts you can reuse in later iterations

You can open the latest generation in browser preview:

ideon preview

Preview includes generation-level browsing, content-type tabs, and per-variant subtabs.

4. Run a Safe Dry Run​

ideon write --dry-run "How AI changes developer docs workflows"

Dry run keeps the full pipeline flow but skips OpenRouter and Replicate API calls while still producing generation artifacts.

5. Run with a Job File​

ideon write --job ./job.json

See Job Files for full schema and examples.

Next Steps​