Your first week

Your project is running. The wizard's end screen told you what comes next: the first answers usually land within minutes to a few hours, the deck fills in, and nothing sends until you launch it, or Spot or your agent does where you set "Emails and posts to publishers" to Apply at once. This article walks through the seven days after that screen: what arrives when, what you see on the console, and what is worth your time each day and each week.

Autopilot checks the tracking feed on its own, reviews what arrives and deals you the decisions that are yours. Your part is a few minutes a day on the deck, and a look at the report once it has something to say.

The first hours

Press "Open the console". While no answer has landed, the masthead reads "Tracking is live. First answers on the way." and the deck leads with a card headed "First run in progress": "Your questions are queued with the engines". It lists what is already done and names the next automatic check.

For the first two days the feed is checked every hour, at :15 UTC. Once the first answers are in, or two days after tracking starts, the daily data update at 06:00 UTC takes over. You can also press "Check now" on the card to ask the feed straight away. If nothing has arrived the result says so, and a short cooldown applies before the next press.

When the first answers land, the owners and admins get one email about it, once per project and usually within two hours: it names the first page worth a decision once one is scored, says who AI named, and its button opens your deck.

The floating setup checklist reads "Tracking is live. Waiting for the first answers." until its step "First answers land" is checked. Then it closes on its own; if you had minimized it, opening it reads "Answers are flowing. You can remove this."

The first data update

Every update is recorded on the Imports tab of the Data step, under Settings: one row per run with its day, "Scheduled" or "Manual", and how many of the three datasets arrived (cited pages, visibility and AI answers). The note beside "Run import now" shows the last update and a countdown to the next.

Three outcomes matter in the first week:

• "Ready": the run finished and saved its data.
• "Nothing new": the feed had nothing newer than the answers already held. A quiet morning, not a failure.
• "Failed": the row says in plain words what is missing, and a notice at the bottom of the screen offers "Retry" (or "Open settings") and "Contact support". It clears on its own once a run reaches the feed again.

The answer feed and data updates covers every state.

The AI review

Whatever an update brings in is then reviewed by AI without you touching anything. If the review leaves pages unfinished, a strip above the table on the Opportunities page says how many are waiting ("N pages are waiting for AI review") with a "Run the AI review" button; running it again is safe, nothing is done twice. A page moves from "New" to "AI reviewed" once the review has been through it.

Each cited page gets a 0 to 100 priority for outreach. "Why this score" on its deck card names the reasons for that page. Your prompts change a little too: the buying stage you saw in the wizard is a first read, and it can move once the prompt is tracked.

The deck narrates it. While a run is going, the lead card names the step running and when to look again. When the deal lands you read "Autopilot dealt you N decisions", the strongest first. If the first pass found nothing worth a decision yet, the deck says "Your project is set up" and the autopilot keeps checking on its schedule.

Your first deck

Every new project starts with the default auto-promotion rule on. Once pages are scored, Autopilot finds a contact and drafts a pitch for each page the rule picks, the highest priority first, up to 30 a day, and each draft reaches your deck as an "Approve draft" card. Drafting needs a sending mailbox. If you skipped that step, a "Connect a mailbox" card leads the deck: connect Gmail, Outlook or other email from it, or later under Settings, then Mailboxes. Put it away with "Not now" and a header chip keeps the ask, counting the pages waiting.

The cards you are likely to meet first:

• "Approve draft": the opening email as it will land, with your signature, and its follow-ups. Press A, "Mark reviewed", and it moves to Outreach, Ready to launch. Approving never sends.
• "Promote?": a scored page the autopilot left to you, with its priority, how many answers cite it and "Why this card". Press A to promote it; a contact is found and the draft comes back for your approval.
• "New competitor": a brand AI answers name alongside you that you do not track yet. Track it or ignore it.

The deck deals 10 new pitches a day by default. Click the count in the deck header to open "Today's deck" and set the daily decision budget anywhere from 1 to 30. The deck describes every card and key.

What to look at each day

A daily visit is short.

1. Read the console's first lines: your good news, then the ask ("N decisions are yours today, about N minutes."). The count scrolls to the deck.
2. Open "Since your last visit" in the deck header. Your first visit covers the last 7 days: responses read, new opportunities, drafts prepared, replies and wins, each chip a link to its rows.
3. Clear the deck. Replies come first and are always dealt; once it is clear, "Pull another stack" deals five more pitches.
4. Launch what you approved under Outreach, Ready to launch.
5. Glance at the rail's foot. It says what Autopilot is doing right now, or that all is quiet; "Engine room" opens the run in progress and the steps your data moves through, each with a status.

"What the autopilot did" on the console logs every import, draft, send and reply, day by day.

What to look at each week

• The "Your week" card in the rail: AI share of voice with its change in points, replies and emails sent this week, wins this month. Before enough history it reads "Your share-of-voice trend appears after a few days of imports."
• The weekly briefing, written every Monday at 07:00 UTC: a read of your last 7, 30 and 90 days that says what moved, what landed and what is worth a look, kept with your reports under Internal analysis.
• The Schedule tab of the Data step: everything that runs for the project, when it runs next and when it last ran.
• The Prompts and Competitors pages: prune questions that do not fit, and keep or drop the brands the autopilot suggests.

When the first report is worth reading

Reports compute every figure over complete days, so a window always ends yesterday and today's checks are shown separately as "data collection in progress". Open Reports after your first few updates and read the Overview's cover sentence: how often your brand was named in the tracked AI answers over the period. A missing number is a dash with its reason, never a zero.

What to expect in week one:

• A topic with too few checks reads "Insufficient data", not a percentage. Topics fill in as checks accumulate.
• A comparison needs the earlier period on record, so "Vs previous period" stays empty until enough history has built up; on "All time" the picker says "Nothing to compare". The report opens on "Last 90 days".
• The Impact timeline needs a verified win, and a win needs about five weeks before its before-and-after can be read. Newer wins read "Early data".
• Traffic & search shows "Not connected" until you connect Google Analytics 4 or Search Console in the project's settings, under Google traffic.

The report is worth sharing once the Overview has a period you can compare and the topics you care about carry numbers rather than "Insufficient data". Until then, the weekly briefing is the better read, from its first Monday on. Reports overview explains each screen.