Creating a Publication

A publication is your blog or content channel in Hot Metal. It’s the foundation for everything else — topics, ideas, writing sessions, and published posts all live under a publication. You can create one in about a minute using the guided wizard.

Opening the wizard

From the Publications page, click the New Publication button. If you don’t have any publications yet, you’ll see a welcome screen with a prompt to create your first one.

The wizard walks you through five steps. A progress bar at the top shows where you are, and you can navigate back to previous steps at any time.

Step 1: Basics

Enter the foundational details for your publication:

• Name — The display name for your blog (e.g., “Looking Ahead”).
• Slug — A URL-friendly identifier that becomes your subdomain. For example, a slug of looking-ahead gives you the URL looking-ahead.hotmetalapp.com. The slug auto-generates from your name, but you can customize it.
• Description — A brief summary of what the publication covers. This helps the Content Scout and AI writer understand the focus of your blog.

The slug can only contain lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens. Once your publication is created, the slug determines your live URL, so choose something memorable.

Step 2: Topics

Topics tell the Content Scout what subjects to monitor for content ideas. Enter a topic name and an optional description to guide the scout’s focus.

For example, you might add:

• AI in Software Engineering — “Focus on practical applications of LLMs in code review, testing, and developer tooling.”
• US Politics & Policy — “Focus on policy analysis and legislative impacts rather than partisan commentary.”

You can add multiple topics here, or skip this step and add them later from your publication settings. The Content Scout needs at least one topic to find ideas for you.

Tier limits apply: Creator plans allow up to 3 topics per publication. Growth and Enterprise plans allow unlimited topics.

Step 3: Writing Style

Choose the tone and voice the AI writer uses when drafting posts for this publication. You have three options:

• Default style — A balanced, professional tone that works well for most publications.
• Prebuilt styles — Select from Hot Metal’s built-in style options, each with a distinct personality and voice.
• Set my own tone — Describe exactly how you want the AI to write in your own words (e.g., “Conversational and witty, like explaining tech to a smart friend over coffee”).

This step is optional — you can skip it and configure writing styles later from the Styles page.

Step 4: Publish Mode

Choose how much automation you want for your publication:

• Gather Ideas — The Content Scout finds ideas based on your topics. You decide what to write and when to publish. Best if you want full manual control.
• Draft Mode (recommended) — The Content Scout finds ideas and the AI writes drafts for you. You review everything and decide what to publish. A good balance of automation and editorial control.
• Auto Publish — The Content Scout finds ideas, writes posts, and publishes them automatically on your schedule. Best for established publications with clear topic boundaries.

When you select Draft Mode or Auto Publish, you can also set a posts per week target. This tells the system how many drafts or published posts to aim for each week. Tier limits apply — Creator plans allow up to 3 posts per week, Growth plans allow up to 10.

Step 5: All Set

The final step shows a summary of everything you configured: your topics, writing style, and publish mode. From here you have two options to get started:

• Find me ideas now — Triggers the Content Scout immediately so it starts searching for ideas based on your topics.
• Write my first post — Opens a new AI writing session so you can start drafting your first post right away.

Either option takes you out of the wizard and into the main app. Your publication is already created at this point — you can always come back to adjust settings later.

Publication limits by tier

The number of publications you can create depends on your subscription tier:

Tier	Publications
Creator	2
Growth	5
Enterprise	Unlimited

If you’ve reached your limit, you’ll need to upgrade your plan or delete an existing publication before creating a new one.