Article Studio
One button turns a topic into a researched, illustrated, on-brand article, published to Designally's Knowledge Hub in Thai and English.
Overview
I designed and built Article Studio myself, from the first sketches to the version Designally's content team uses today. It helps the team research, write, illustrate and publish articles for the Knowledge Hub, and many of the Hub's articles began there.
Challenge
Editors don't always arrive with a topic, every article has to sound like Designally, and AI writing is only worth publishing when its facts hold up and an editor can steer it. With one person designing, building and running it, everything had to stay simple.
How It Works
One button runs research, planning, writing and checks. The editor watches each step happen and steps in where judgement matters.
Auto Direction
Starting Points
Progress
No spinners. Each of the twelve steps in an article has its own small drawing, one line saying what is happening, and a countdown that says "Almost done" instead of going below zero.
Draft
Image
Publish
Routines
Set it once, and the Hub gets a researched, illustrated article every Monday at 9 with nobody pressing a button. Each run can wait in the Hub as a draft for review, or go live on its own.
Details
Motion is one system: arrivals take longer than exits, every timing lives in one place, and with reduced motion on, nothing travels at all.
Under the Hood
I measured before choosing. GitHub's 30-minute schedule really fired every two to four hours, so a tiny Cloudflare Worker now pokes the app every two minutes, and each unattended article moves forward one safe, resumable step at a time.
Stack
Next.js, Tailwind CSS, Drizzle and PostgreSQL, Claude for research and writing, Fal.ai for images, Cloudflare R2 and Workers, Google sign-in, and Docker on Designally's own server.
Outcome
Article Studio is in production and in use by Designally's content team. Many of the Knowledge Hub's articles, in Thai and English, began here, with 45 drafted or published so far.
Next
An authenticated API, so other Designally tools can request an article without an editor starting it by hand.