What everything does
Every feature, in the same three lines: what it is, what it does, and how to use it. Nothing here is aspirational — if it is on this page, it works today.
Where things live. The bar at the top has four sections: Today, Articles, Comments and Publishing. Everything about you is behind your avatar, top right, under Profile — which has its own six tabs: You and your voice, Be interviewed, Your field, Your look, How TelePost reaches you, and Settings.
Getting set up
The setup interview
Profile → Be interviewed- What it is
- A one-off recorded phone call about you rather than about a story.
- What it does
- It rings you and spends five to ten minutes working out who it is calling: your job in about ninety seconds, then a title it offers and you correct, what you would talk about for an hour, what drives it, the take your own field would argue with, how deep each subject really goes, what you never want to be rung about, where you get your news, and what you want out of TelePost. Near the end it asks when to call you and reads it back. Afterwards it writes a draft profile from the recording and notifies you that it is ready to review.
- How to use it
- Press Call me now. It dials straight away — this is the one call that ignores your calling hours, because you just asked for it. When the draft arrives, read it under Here is what it heard, correct anything, and press This is right — save it. Untick anything in the keep-or-drop lists you do not want kept; unticking is the only way to remove one. You can re-run the whole thing any time with Interview me again.
- Worth knowing
- If you miss it, nothing rings back — press the button again. Throwing a draft away marks the call abandoned, so the checklist will still ask you to do it. The call needs a phone number on file first.
Your phone number
Profile → How TelePost reaches you- What it is
- The number TelePost rings, stored encrypted.
- What it does
- It is the one thing nothing else can fill in for you, and no call of any kind happens without it. Saving it also offers to connect text messages, so the morning menu can reach you.
- How to use it
-
Pick your country from the list and type the rest of the number.
Eighteen countries are offered; US numbers are grouped as you type.
If you type a full number starting with
+, that wins over whatever the country box says. - Worth knowing
- Saving the form with the number box empty deletes the number. The number shown on the Settings page is read-only — the link there brings you back here to change it.
The contact card
Dashboard → Get the card- What it is
- A contact file for TelePost, with a QR code to get it onto your phone.
- What it does
- It puts TelePost in your address book so the morning call arrives with a name and a logo instead of as an unknown number. A call from an unknown number at the same time every morning is a call that gets screened.
- How to use it
- Point your phone’s camera at the code, tap the card that pops up, and choose Save as New Contact — not Done, and not Add to Existing. Then Save.
- Worth knowing
- Tapping Done only closes the preview and saves nothing; this is the step people miss. It has to be done on the phone that rings — downloading it on a laptop achieves nothing. It changes what your own phone shows, not how carriers score the number generally.
When TelePost may call
Profile → How TelePost reaches you- What it is
- One appointment a day, inside outer hours you set.
- What it does
- Call me at is the appointment. Days is which days it happens. Not before and Not after are hard limits that bound every call including retries — nothing rings outside them unless you ask for a call yourself.
- How to use it
-
Set the time, the timezone, the outer hours, and the days as a
comma-separated list like
mon,tue,wed,thu,fri. Press Save calling times. Under If you do not pick up you can also set whether to retry, how often, until when, and how many attempts in total. - Defaults
- 09:30, monday to friday, inside 08:00–22:00, timezone America/Chicago. Retries on, roughly every 20 minutes, until 12:00, four attempts including the first.
- Worth knowing
- The Days box is free text and is not checked — a typo silently narrows your calling days. The outer hours close at the minute you name, so 22:00 means the phone is already quiet at 22:00. This is not on the Settings page.
The calls
The morning call
Automatic- What it is
- Your daily appointment.
- What it does
- At your chosen time it either rings you about the single best story it found, or — if you have connected a phone for texts or Telegram — texts you a short numbered menu and waits. With a linked channel the morning is a text, not a call, and no reply means no call that day.
- How to use it
- Answer the phone. If you got the menu instead, reply with a number to read what that story is about, or TALK to be called straight away about whatever you like. MORE adds a few more stories, SWAP replaces the list.
- Worth knowing
- On a quiet news day nothing happens at all and you are not told — a daily “nothing today” would train you to ignore the message that matters. The menu is sent once a day, not repeated.
Interview me now
Today- What it is
- Picking a story yourself instead of waiting for the appointment.
- What it does
- It opens a list of stories ranked by how well each fits what you can speak to. Choosing one shows what it is about, what is worth talking about in it, and why you are being shown it, before anything is decided. Pressing Call me now there spends about a minute writing questions only you could answer, then rings you.
- How to use it
- Interview me now → Choose this story → Call me now. Or Save for 09:30 to keep it for your next appointment, or Show me four more for a different set.
- Worth knowing
- The button itself does not start a call — it opens the chooser. Nothing rings until you press Call me now on a story.
We’ll do it Live!
Today- What it is
- A call with no story and no script.
- What it does
- It rings you immediately and lets you talk about whatever is already on your mind. Nothing is prepared, so there is no minute of writing questions first.
- How to use it
- Press it and answer. Just start talking. By text, sending TALK does the same thing.
- Worth knowing
- Because no questions were written, a call that fails leaves nothing to retry from — press it again.
Finding something specific
Today → the search box- What it is
- Search for a topic, a sentence, or paste a link.
- What it does
- It finds matching stories and puts them through exactly the same two steps as the daily picks — read what it is about, then call.
- How to use it
- Type at least three characters and press Find it. A link to a specific article works too.
- Worth knowing
- Fewer than three characters does nothing at all, with no message.
Call me anyway
Today, when it appears- What it is
- An override for your own calling hours.
- What it does
- Writing questions takes about a minute, and occasionally your calling window shuts inside that minute. The questions are saved rather than thrown away, and this dials them anyway.
- How to use it
- It appears on the dashboard under Your questions are ready, but TelePost did not call, with the reason underneath. Press it when you want the call now.
- Worth knowing
- This is the only thing that overrides your calling hours from the web. The scheduler and the retries never do.
Articles
Your articles
Articles- What it is
- Everything TelePost has written for you, grouped by what it is waiting for.
- What it does
- Four groups: To read, Ready to publish, Published and Unpublished. Above them sits Interviews waiting — calls that have not produced an article yet, each saying why, so a stalled one is visible rather than silently gone.
- How to use it
- Open a draft with Read & approve. Published pieces offer Share and View live.
- Worth knowing
- The list shows the 200 most recent and does not say when there are more. Discarded pieces are not deleted — they are in In the bin at the foot of the page, with a Restore button, up to twenty.
Start from something you have already written
Articles- What it is
- Paste a piece you wrote elsewhere and have it rewritten in your voice.
- What it does
- It treats what you pasted as though it were the transcript of a call, then runs the same pipeline a real interview goes through — so the read-over, the gap report and follow-up calls all work on it afterwards.
- How to use it
- Expand it on the Articles page, paste the piece, optionally give What it was called and Where it ran, then Rewrite it as a draft.
- Limits
- At least 200 characters and 120 words; at most 60,000 characters; ten imports an hour. It needs a name and a job title on your profile first, since it is writing in your voice.
The article editor
Articles → Read & approve- What it is
- The draft on the left, everything about it on the right.
- What it does
- The words themselves are the editor — click a paragraph and type. A toolbar appears with bold, italic, strikethrough, link, and buttons to turn the block into a heading, subheading, pull quote, bulleted list or numbered list. Pressing a type button again turns it back into a paragraph. Everything saves as you leave the paragraph.
- How to use it
- Hover the gap between two paragraphs to add a new one — paragraph, heading, subheading, pull quote, list, numbered list, or an image with a caption. Each block has arrows and a drag handle to move it, and a ✕ to delete it. Undo is on the toolbar, and Ctrl/⌘+Z works when no paragraph is open.
- Worth knowing
- Undo remembers the last 25 changes and is forgotten when you reload. A paragraph cannot be emptied — delete it instead. Everything here locks once the piece is published; unpublish it first if it needs changing.
Ask for a change
Under any paragraph- What it is
- A note to the writer, rather than an edit you make yourself.
- What it does
- It records what should change, in your words, and is never printed. When you have a few, Rewrite from my notes does a pass over the whole piece acting on them.
- How to use it
- Write an instruction, not the replacement wording. Mark a note done if you handled it yourself.
- Worth knowing
- Open notes are the one thing that blocks approving. Rewrite from them, or mark them done. Editing the paragraph yourself does not close the note.
Read it over
The rail → Checks- What it is
- A checking pass that changes nothing.
- What it does
- It checks names, numbers and quotes against your transcript, looks for holes worth another call, and finds the companies and products you named. Everything it finds appears beside the paragraph it is about, to apply or dismiss. Takes about a minute.
- How to use it
- Press Read it over. Findings land under What the read-over found; anything worth another call lands under Questions not answered, with a Call me about these button.
- Worth knowing
- Rewrite the shape is different — it is a full structural pass applied to the draft rather than suggested, and takes about four minutes. Follow-up calls are capped at two per piece.
What this article is for
The rail → Purpose and takeaways- What it is
- One sentence saying what the piece argues, and what a reader should leave with.
- What it does
- Every later pass — restructuring, the gap report, follow-up calls — is checked against it. Yours overrides anything TelePost worked out for itself.
- How to use it
- Write the point of it, not what it covers. If you would rather not, Propose one from the article drafts one for you to edit.
- Worth knowing
- It is only editable before publishing.
Who is in this piece
The rail → People and companies- What it is
- The companies and products you named, found automatically.
- What it does
- The scan runs once per draft on its own, with no button. Tagging one links the name where it first appears, adds it to the list under the article, and lets social posts mention it rather than merely name it. A ticker is checked against the market before any price is printed.
- How to use it
- Confirm a guess, Ignore it (right company, no link), or say Not this one (wrong guess). Teach it an unknown name once and it will not ask again on any later article.
- Worth knowing
- Correcting a name rewrites that name everywhere it appears in the article, and tells you how many places it changed.
Pictures
The rail → Pictures- What it is
- The image that goes out with the piece.
- What it does
- Draw some options renders six candidates, strongest first, each with the reasoning behind it. Choosing one makes every share size from the original in one go and redraws the Instagram carousel cover, since that is the same picture with the headline over it.
- How to use it
- Pick one with Use this one, or expand Use your own photograph and upload. An uploaded picture is used immediately and gets all the same sizes.
- Limits
- JPEG, PNG, WebP or HEIC, up to 25MB, at least 600 pixels wide. Six uploads per article; past that the oldest unused one is replaced.
- Worth knowing
- A picture is not required. A piece with no image publishes perfectly well. Changing the picture on a published article changes the live page.
Publishing
Approving and publishing
The bar at the top of the editor- What it is
- Two separate presses, on purpose.
- What it does
- Approving is private and reversible. Publishing is neither. Approving also starts writing the plain-language and TL;DR versions and the spoken script in the background. Publishing puts the piece on your blog, tells anyone who was interviewed for it, pushes it to your own site if connected, prepares the share pack, and deletes the call recording — the transcript was kept so the draft could be checked against it, and there is no draft left to check.
- How to use it
- Approve this article, then Publish it. Back to draft and Unpublish both exist.
- Worth knowing
- The readiness list names what is outstanding but does not forbid publishing — the button reads Approve anyway. The one real gate is open notes. Retitling before first publishing changes the address; retitling after it does not.
Your TelePost blog and feeds
Publishing- What it is
- A hosted blog and three feeds, with nothing to set up.
- What it does
-
Published pieces live at
/your-name/blog/the-articleand are offered as RSS, Atom and JSON Feed at/your-name/blog/feed.xml,/atom.xmland/feed.json. - How to use it
- Most platforms take the RSS URL directly. Substack’s importer can pull articles in from it automatically.
Your own site
Publishing → Your own site- What it is
- Committing each published article into a GitHub repository you nominate.
- What it does
- On publish it writes the post file, and where they exist the hero image, the carousel slides and the spoken script, into your repository. Your own build then picks them up. It will not force-push, delete, or touch any other path.
- How to use it
-
You need a Repository as
owner/nameand a GitHub fine-grained token scoped to that one repository with Contents: Read and write. Branch defaults tomain. You can choose HTML with a meta header or Markdown with front matter. - Worth knowing
- GitHub only — there is no FTP, WordPress or Netlify path. A failed push never un-publishes anything. Connecting the repository does not repoint your share links: that is a separate setting, the URL pattern, on your profile. Unpublishing on TelePost does not remove the file already committed to your repository.
Boost
Publishing → Boost- What it is
- The one part of TelePost that can post as you — and it is built to be obvious rather than convenient.
- What it does
- It posts only when you press Boost, only on the article you pressed it on, only to destinations you ticked, and only to work you have already approved and published. It never posts on a schedule or on its own. It keeps a record of every post it makes.
- How to use it
- Read the terms, tick the box, press Turn Boost on, then choose destinations. You can withdraw on the same page — which stops all future posting immediately, but does not remove posts already made.
- Worth knowing
- Boost is switched on per account. If you cannot see it, ask us. Only LinkedIn, Instagram and X can be posted to automatically. An Instagram token from Meta lasts 60 days and has to be re-pasted.
Where TelePost cannot post for you
Publishing → You post these yourself- What it is
- The honest list, so you are not sent to connect something that will never work.
- What it does
- Each of these opens with the copy written for it and the artwork at that service’s size; the posting is yours.
- The reasons
- WhatsApp and Email have no publishing API at all. Facebook can only post to Pages — it removed posting to a personal profile, so nothing can post as you. LinkedIn articles and Substack are manual for everybody, not just TelePost, because neither has a publishing API. Telegram, Bluesky, Mastodon, Reddit, Tumblr, Threads and Pinterest have APIs that TelePost has not built against yet, and say so.
Your look
Profile → Your look- What it is
- How your Instagram carousel is drawn.
- What it does
- Three styles — Editorial (words over the photograph), Canvas (a photographic cover then near-black panels) and Quiet (lighter type, sentence case) — plus the colour of the small kicker label and an optional logo at the top left of every slide.
- How to use it
- Change a setting and the four slides above redraw immediately, so what you see is what Save would produce.
- Worth knowing
- It controls the carousel only, not the article page. Changing it does not redraw carousels already made. A PNG with a transparent background and light artwork works best, since the slides are dark where the logo sits.
Comment Builder
Comment Builder
Today → Comment Builder- What it is
- A comment on somebody else’s post, in your own words.
- What it does
- You give it a post. It calls you and asks four questions about it — the one line you would say straight to the author, the time you saw this yourself, the number that came out of it, and what you would genuinely want to ask them. Then it writes the comment from what you said, and usually a second version taking a different angle on the same call.
- How to use it
- Press Comment Builder, paste a link or the post itself, choose a length, and press Call me about this. The comment appears under Comments in the top bar, with a Copy button.
- The lengths
- Let TelePost decide reads the post first and picks. Otherwise: Short is about 40 words, a line or two; Medium about 90, a paragraph with one point and the reason behind it; Long about 180, for when you genuinely disagree and have to show your working. Most posts are not long.
- Worth knowing
- Nothing is posted for you — you paste it yourself. The call rings immediately and ignores your calling hours, because you just asked for it, and it uses one of your weekly calls. The page keeps your most recent 25.
What you can give it
The Comment Builder box- What it does
- A link is fetched by TelePost itself. That means it can only read a public HTML page — not a PDF, not an image, and nothing behind a login.
- How to use it
- For LinkedIn posts, use the paste box. LinkedIn posts are usually gated, so the link will not fetch — paste the text instead. That is what the box is for, and pasting is always reliable.
- Limits
- At least 120 characters to have something to ask about; anything past 20,000 is trimmed. If you give both a link and a paste, the link wins.
You and your account
Your profile
Profile → You and your voice- What it is
- Who TelePost thinks you are, which decides what it asks you.
- What it does
- Your name and job title are the minimum — no call happens without both. Your background, what you can speak to, and what not to ask about shape every set of questions. How your writing should sound reaches the article writer.
- How to use it
- Fill it in by hand, or import it: from a LinkedIn PDF (Resources → Save to PDF on your own profile), by pasting an About section or résumé, from a ChatGPT or Claude export, or from Obsidian notes.
- Worth knowing
- An import never saves itself — it fills the form in as a draft and you press Save profile. LinkedIn’s API only returns your name and email, never your role, company or bio, which is why the PDF route exists.
My Voice
Profile → You and your voice- What it is
- Examples of your own writing, so articles sound like you.
- What it does
- The writer is shown your most recent samples and asked to imitate the style, not the content. Optional — TelePost can work from your import and the interview alone — but it is the best way to get the tone right.
- How to use it
- Upload a markdown or text file, paste something you wrote, or link to something you published.
- Limits
- Twelve samples, at least 50 words each. The three newest are the ones actually sent to the writer, so put your best work in last.
- Worth knowing
- My Voice shapes articles. It does not currently reach the Comment Builder, which works from the call alone.
Your field
Profile → Your field- What it is
- Which news TelePost reads for you, and the angles it asks from.
- What it does
- Your main field sets the voice of your questions and loads a set of sources. Up to two adjacent fields widen what counts as relevant without diluting the questions. You can add your own feeds or a Google News keyword search.
- How to use it
- Type what you do, even if it is not in the list — TelePost will work out where it belongs, or create the field. Then use the Sources tab to add or remove feeds.
- Worth knowing
- Saving replaces the whole selection, so clearing the main field box and saving leaves you with none. A feed that cannot be read is refused at the point you add it, rather than silently never working.
Settings
Profile → Settings- What it is
- How you sign in, and how your public pages look.
- What it does
- Your publication name, the theme for your blog, whether the TelePost footer goes onto copies pushed to your own site, your password, and which sign-in methods are linked.
- Worth knowing
- If you can only sign in one way, the page says so and asks you to add a second — nobody else can let you back in. Your phone number is shown here but changed under How TelePost reaches you. Your web address never changes when you rename, so existing links keep working.
Billing
/app/billing- What it is
- What you are on, and how often TelePost calls because of it.
- What it does
- Shows your plan and its weekly calls, and during the trial the exact date and amount of the first charge. Changing plan, updating a card and cancelling all happen in Stripe’s own portal, so the remainder of what you have paid is credited properly.
- How to use it
- Change plan, card, or cancel opens Stripe. A downgrade takes effect at the end of the period you have paid for, so your allowance does not drop early.
- Worth knowing
- A failed payment does not stop your calls while Stripe is retrying. Once it gives up you fall back to the free allowance of 0 calls a week rather than to nothing. Weeks reset Monday, in your own timezone.
Notifications
The bell, top right- What it is
- Everything TelePost has told you, kept.
- What it does
- Every message is written here first and emailed second — so nothing is ever only an email, and a message that failed to send is still here. If your phone or Telegram is linked, it is sent there too.
- Worth knowing
- This is the first place to look when something seems to have happened silently. The page keeps the 50 most recent.
Phonebook
Today → the Phonebook count- What it is
- Everybody you have mentioned on a call as worth interviewing.
- What it does
- After an interview TelePost texts you for a name and number, and they appear here with the reason, quoted from what you said. Nobody here is called or messaged unless you press the button — and it sends one message, once.
- How to use it
- Ask them about the piece texts them. You can also set how long a piece waits for them: hours to answer, then hours to be interviewed once they agree. When either runs out the piece goes ahead without them, and they are told both limits up front.
Credits
Your avatar → Credits- What it is
- A record of interviews completed and work shared.
- What it does
- Half a credit when an interview completes, and half a credit each time you open the share sheet for a service — doing the interview is half the work, getting it in front of people is the other half. Opening the same service twice does not pay twice.
- Worth knowing
- Credits are a record today. Nothing in the product spends them yet.
The weekly podcast
Publishing → Weekly podcast- What it is
- A week of your published pieces gathered into one episode, read in your voice.
- What it does
- It is written as one show with a thread running through it, not seven narrations glued together — which would have the right length and no reason to keep listening. It can render the audio in your voice and send it to Buzzsprout always as a private draft; nothing reaches a public feed until you publish it.
- How to use it
- Make it now, or set a day and time to gather the week automatically. The page lists what is still missing before an episode can be made.
- Worth knowing
- Switched on per account — if the tab is not there, ask us. An article is covered once ever, not once per window. If nothing new was published, no episode is made and you are told why rather than one being padded out.