🧑🤝🧑 Writers, Invites and Bot Accounts
The Studio is not just for one person. An owner can invite writers, and can create bot accounts for tools and AI agents that write on the site. This page will guide you through the two roles, inviting someone, changing or removing access and setting up a bot.
This page is for the site owner. The "People" screen, where you manage who can use the Studio, is available to owners only.
The two roles
- Owner: can do everything in the Studio. That includes every story, writer persona, Brief, page and setting, "Export / Import", API tokens and the "People" screen.
- Writer: works on the stories under the writer personas they manage. A writer can create, edit, publish, move and delete those stories, add choices, share draft preview links, restore revisions, upload images, see the story health check and their own reader stats. A writer can see every published story, and link a crossroad to one, but cannot edit it. They do not see other people's drafts or the backlog of ideas.
A story belongs to whoever manages its writer persona (its byline). A new story written by a writer gets their persona automatically. A writer who manages no persona cannot create stories until an owner gives them one. See Writers and tags.
Who can sign in
People sign in to the Studio with Pocket ID. Only people the Studio knows can get in:
- an existing owner or writer signs in as normal;
- anyone else needs an invite from an owner.
Anyone else who signs in is shown "This account hasn't been invited" and gets no access.
Inviting a writer
- Open "People & site", then "People", and press "Invite".
- Enter their email, choose a role (writer is the default) and, if you like, a name.
- If the Studio can create the Pocket ID account for you, it shows a one-time sign-in link. Copy it and send it to them yourself. The link works once and for 72 hours. They open it, add a passkey, then sign in to the Studio.
- If the person already has an account, no link is made. Ask them to sign in with their own passkey. The invite is waiting for them.
- Give them a persona to write under by setting who manages it on the "People" screen or under "Writers".
Revoke a pending invite to withdraw it. An accepted invite leaves the list.
Changing roles and removing access
On the "People" screen you can change anyone's role, set the personas they manage and remove them. The site always keeps an owner: the last owner cannot be demoted or removed, and nobody can remove themselves.
Removing someone ends their sessions and switches off the API tokens they created. Their stories stay, under their personas.
Bot accounts
A bot is a service account for a tool or an AI agent. It has a name, a role (writer by default, or owner) and a default persona for its byline. A bot never signs in to the Studio.
- On the "People" screen, create the bot.
- Issue an API token for it. See Access Tokens.
- Give the token to the tool or agent.
What a bot's token does:
- Stories it creates are recorded as made by the bot, under its default persona when the request names none.
- A writer bot follows the writer rules. It can only work on its own stories and read published ones, and it cannot be given the "Settings" or "Pages" scopes.
- An owner bot works like an owner's token, within the scopes you choose.
- Everything it changes is in the log, and the "People" screen shows its tokens and recent activity.
Removing a bot revokes its tokens at once.
Prefer a writer bot for an AI agent that only needs to draft stories. It cannot touch settings, pages or other people's stories. See Safety and permissions.