Another update from @heynews (the AI tool we're building to help newsletter operators draft issues in their voice).

This release was mostly about trust in generated output, plus a less cramped Compose screen. The part I'd flag for other builders is the link validation loop, because "the model added a link that doesn't exist" is the generative-app failure mode nobody notices until a user ships it to 10,000 inboxes.

What changed:

Generated drafts get a link audit before saving. Every link in a draft has to come from a story the user selected or a reusable link they approved in their AI Writer settings, and the check also catches unfinished placeholders. If validation fails, we rewrite once. If the rewrite still fails, we save nothing and let the user retry. We decided a failed generation is cheaper than a plausible-looking draft with an invented URL in it.
Drafts keep the user's closing lines. Sign-offs, "hit reply" invitations, plugs for their other newsletters. These kept getting dropped or paraphrased because they look like boilerplate to a model, even though they're the most personal part of an issue. Now they survive, and their calls to action only get linked under the same rule as above.
Paste a link list straight into Compose. A lot of issues start life as a pile of links in a spreadsheet or Slack thread. Users can now paste the whole list; we extract the links, dedupe, preview what will be added, then fetch them as one-off stories in paste order. Large lists are processed in the background and persist after the user leaves the page, with per-link retries on failure.
Long-running AI refinements are resumable. Users can refresh or navigate away while a saved draft is being refined. The draft locks during the run, so a manual edit can't race the result, and on return, we restore the in-progress state or apply the finished copy as unsaved changes for review. On failure, the previous copy is untouched.
Scheduled drafts use the reader's issue date. If an automation prepares a Friday issue on Thursday, the AI Writer now writes with Friday in mind, respecting the saved lead time and timezone, including seasonal clock changes. This killed a class of "happy Thursday" bugs in weekday-specific copy.

Plus a Compose layout rework (more space for story selection, the AI Writer picker moved ahead of the story workspace, the auto-select action demoted to a shortcut with an Undo) and navigation regrouped by publication.

If you're building anything that generates user-facing content with links, curious how you handle validation. Rewrite-once-then-fail felt right for us, but I can see the argument for more retries.

Cagri Sarigoz

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