What autopilot does on its own

The autopilot is the part of sourcesignal that keeps working between your visits. It collects the latest AI answers, scores the pages they cite, finds who to pitch, writes the drafts and sends the emails you launched. It never makes a commitment for you. Anything that sends, posts or agrees waits for your decision, most of it as a card in your deck, or goes at once where you set "Emails and posts to publishers" to Apply at once for Spot or your agent.

This article draws the line: what runs without asking, what always asks, and the switches that steer it. For the cards themselves, read The deck. For watching a run and its history, read The engine room and pipeline.

What runs without asking

• The data update. Every morning the autopilot collects your latest AI answers, the pages they cite and your share of voice. Whatever is new is grouped, scored and classified. In the first two days after tracking starts it checks every hour until your first answers land. See The answer feed and data updates.
• Promoting pages that match your rules. A page that matches a promotion rule is promoted to outreach: the autopilot finds a contact, verifies the address and drafts the sequence. The draft lands in your deck and under Needs review in Outreach. Rules promote at most 30 pages a day per project, the highest priority first. See Auto-promotion and reply rules.
• Drafting posts and listings. A cited thread, directory or review platform is drafted as a reply, a listing or a profile claim for you to paste. Autopilot drafts at most 10 posts and listings a day for each project, and 3 per site a day; the deck says when a page waits until tomorrow.
• Sending what you launched. Emails you launched go out from your own mailbox, inside your send window and under the mailbox's daily cap. Each follow-up waits its days after the previous email and sends only if nobody has replied. See Sending schedule and limits.
• Reading replies. A reply stops its sequence's follow-ups at once. The AI reads it and gives a one-line summary, a tone (Positive, Neutral or Negative) and, when they quoted a price, the price as a chip. A reply that matches a reply monitoring rule is flagged "needs attention" in Sequences. Replies waiting on you then come first in your deck.
• Spotting competitors. Brands that AI answers name alongside you, and that you do not track yet, are dealt as New competitor cards. Tracking one is your call.
• Checking placements. Each verified win is re-checked about once a week. If your brand has gone from the page, you get a removal alert the next morning. An agreed placement becomes a win once a check, or you, confirms the page live.
• Refreshing traffic. Sessions, engaged sessions and key events from Google Analytics 4 and Search Console, each morning, where you connected them.
• The weekly briefing. A written read of your last 7, 30 and 90 days, every Monday morning, kept with your reports.
• Content outlines. Where the content area is available, Autopilot outlines a set number of topics a week and never writes without you. The rail says "Content outlines: up to 2 a week" or "Content outlines are off".

Most of this work is written to "What the autopilot did" on the console, and recent runs and imports show in the engine room's history.

What always waits for you

Each of these arrives as a card in your deck, with its key printed on the button.

The autopilot never agrees a price for you. When a publisher asks to be paid, the AI draft follows your fee policy and the Inbox shows where the price stands. Nothing is agreed until you edit the draft and press "Send reply", or Spot or your agent sends a reply where you set "Emails and posts to publishers" to Apply at once; a reply that names a figure outside your fee policy always waits for you. See Fees, placements and wins.

The default rule

A new project starts with auto-promotion on and one promotion rule switched on. The rule promotes pages from a set priority upward, with any page type and any topic. Once a mailbox is connected, matching pages from each data update become drafts for your deck without you touching anything.

A rule runs only while the master switch and its own switch are both on. The rail's Auto-promotion row says which: "Off", "On · no rules yet", "On · every rule is off", or "On" with the rule's name (or how many rules run). "Manage rules" opens the rules page, where you can change the range, add page types, stages, opportunity types, topics and the mailbox drafts send from, or switch the rule off.

When the autopilot will not take a page, it deals it to you as a Promote? card instead. "Why this card" says why: auto-promotion is off, no rule is switched on, or none of your rules matches a waiting page. Now and then a Promote? card is a page your rules did not pick. The card says so; judge it like any other page.

The budget

The daily decision budget is how many new pitches the autopilot deals you today: pages to promote, drafts to review, competitors to add. It runs from 1 to 30 and starts at 10 each day. Open it from the deck header, "3 of 10 resolved" (or "10 a day"), and drag the slider. The estimate under it shows roughly how long today's decisions take.

• Conversations and content pages never count toward the budget. Replies waiting on you, nudges and hand-offs are always dealt, and dealt first.
• Pitches past today's budget wait in the stash for tomorrow. Nothing is lost. After you clear the deck, "Pull another stack" deals 5 more, up to the daily 30.
• The budget cannot go below what you already resolved today, and it resets at midnight.

The budget is yours and is separate from the autopilot's own caps. The engine room's "Caps" line names them: your rules promote at most 30 pages a day in this project, the highest priority first, and each mailbox sends no more than its own daily cap, set in its send settings.

How it reads your steering

Four controls shape what the autopilot works on and what it deals. All but the focus are shared by everyone on the project.

Decision types. "Decisions" in the deck header lists Outreach ("Replies, drafts, pages to pitch and follow-ups."), Competitors ("Brands AI answers name that you do not track yet.") and, where available, Content. Switching a type off sets its decisions aside, it never deletes them: replies wait in the Inbox, other outreach in Outreach, suggestions on the Competitors page, pages in the Content plan. The cards come back when the type is on again.

Steering rules. A rule is a sentence the project follows, such as "No listings" or "No community posts". Autopilot stops drafting for those pages and the deck stops dealing them. You set one by switching Community posts or Listings off on the rules page, or by asking Spot in a sentence ("no listings"); both write the same rule. Rules show as chips above the deck. On the rules page, each one says how it was set: set here, set through Spot, set by your agent, or suggested from your decisions. A rule is ended, never edited. Pressing a chip's × asks "End this rule?" and says that everyone on the project sees the change. A project holds up to 12 active rules.

Your focus. A focus such as "quick decisions only, pricing prompts" is yours alone and shapes only your deck. It lasts until the end of your day unless you keep it, and it never makes the deck look finished: "Nothing else matches this focus. N other decisions wait." Clear it from its chip or in the engine room.

Reply rules. Reply monitoring flags replies for you to look at before anything else happens. "Negative sentiment: the reply declines, complains, or asks to stop" is always on; you can add up to 10 conditions in plain words, such as "They ask to be paid for the placement". Reply reminders set how many working days a publisher who had replied may leave your message unanswered before a Nudge card is dealt (4 by default; 0 turns reminders off). Nothing is sent for you: Nudge opens the thread with the reply box ready.

What never happens without you

• No email sends until you launch it, or Spot or your agent does where you set "Emails and posts to publishers" to Apply at once. Approving a draft moves it to Ready to launch and sends nothing. See Reviewing and launching.
• No reply goes out until you press "Send reply", or Spot or your agent sends it where you set "Emails and posts to publishers" to Apply at once, and a reply that names a figure outside your fee policy always waits for you.
• Nothing is posted anywhere. The autopilot drafts; you copy it, post from your own account and mark it posted.
• No win is marked for you by hand. A win comes from a placement check that finds an agreed page live, or from you: "Mark as win", or a post that names your brand and that you mark posted with its link. A win is removed on the wins screen, never by an undo.
• Nothing is deleted when you switch a decision type off, end a steering rule or switch a promotion rule off. Pages a deleted rule already promoted keep their drafts.
• A do-not-contact entry is lifted only by you, under Settings, then Do not contact. See Do not contact.
• Your own agent acts alone only where your setting under Settings, Agents applies that kind of change at once, or under a mandate you granted, on the changes it names, with a daily number of decisions, a daily amount of paid work and an end date. Mandates in force are listed in the engine room's Agents section, where you can end one. Even under a mandate, an agent never approves a pitch or a reply to send, pays a publisher, claims a win or lifts a do-not-contact. See Agent scopes and limits.

Good to know

• The status line on the console ("Autopilot is working", "Autopilot has it from here") and the engine bar on every project page say what the autopilot is doing right now. Spot acts the mood; the words carry the state.
• "Since your last visit" in the deck header counts what landed while you were away: responses read, new opportunities, drafts prepared, replies and wins. Each chip opens its rows.
• The console's log, "What the autopilot did", shows the latest entries folded by kind, newest first. Its footer says it: "Everything the autopilot does is logged · the full history is in the engine room".