Publication Flow

🚦 Publication Flow

The publication flow in Hatchgrid defines how content moves through its lifecycle—from draft to published and distributed across multiple channels. This workflow supports scheduled publishing, previews, and channel-specific control.

🧭 Lifecycle States

Each content item can exist in one of the following states:

Draft: The default state upon creation. Editable and not visible to readers.
Scheduled: Content that has a future publishedAt timestamp. It will be published automatically at that time.
Published: Finalized and distributed. Cannot be edited; must be versioned to change.

⏰ Scheduling Content

Users can schedule content to be published at a specific time. This enables:

Planning editorial calendars
Coordinating releases with marketing events
Aligning across time zones

Scheduling is handled via the publishedAt field. When the backend clock reaches that time, the item transitions to Published.

🧪 Previews

Before publishing, users can preview content in multiple formats:

Email layout
Web version
RSS preview

This ensures content appears correctly across different channels before going live.

📢 Channel Distribution

Upon publishing, content is distributed to the selected channels:

Email: Sent to subscribers of the workspace.
Web Feed: Added to the public listing on the frontend.
RSS: Appears in the generated feed.
Custom Channels: Future support for Slack, Telegram, etc.

Each content item can target multiple channels, and workspaces can configure default behavior.

🔁 Versioning and Revisions

Once content is published, it becomes immutable. To make changes:

Duplicate the original item.
Apply updates.
Publish as a new version (optionally linking to the original).

This allows for audit trails and consistency across distributed copies.

🔐 Access and Permissions

Only users with Editor or Owner roles in the workspace can publish or schedule content. All operations are validated both at the API and RLS level.