Set up your newsroom

Setup takes a few minutes. One screen at a time, four steps: Workspace, Identity, Coverage, Sources. The first one is the only decision that is hard to undo, so read that section before you click.

Where setup starts

You do not navigate to setup. After you sign in, ErmisAI checks whether your newsroom is finished, and if it is not, every page in the workspace sends you back to the setup screen. You cannot reach the feed, editorial, monitoring, or settings until you finish.

The setup screen strips the workspace chrome down to the ErmisAI mark, a placeholder newsroom name above the subtitle Newsroom setup, a workspace switcher, and the light/dark toggle. There is no sidebar and no navigation.

The four steps at a glance

Above each question you see Setting up · step 1 of 4 and so on, ending with Setting up · final step. The four names run across the top as a progress rail; a step becomes clickable once everything before it is done. On your first visit you land on the first step that is not already satisfied, which is usually Workspace.

Step 1: workspace

Is this desk yours alone, or a shared newsroom?

You can invite colleagues later either way - this only decides where the workspace lives.

Two options:

• A desk of one — "Your personal workspace. The fastest way in."
• A team newsroom — "A shared workspace with roles, reviews, and assignments."

Under your choice, a line tells you exactly what will happen when you finish: A team workspace will be created from the publication name when you go to press, The newsroom stays in your personal workspace, The active team workspace will be used for this newsroom, or Going to press will switch this account back to the personal workspace. Read that line — it is the whole story of what this screen does.

If you have not picked anything, the footer reads Pick one to continue and Continue stays disabled.

Why this is the consequential screen

A personal workspace and a team workspace are two separate newsrooms. Each one has its own publication identity, its own sources, its own drafts and stories, its own team, and its own subscription. Nothing moves between them.

There is no conversion. ErmisAI has no "turn this into a team" button anywhere after setup, and setup itself cannot be reopened once it is finished. If you start solo and later want a shared newsroom, you are starting a new, empty newsroom, not upgrading the one you built.

Before you pick a team newsroom

Creating a team newsroom is unrestricted. Inviting anyone into it is not. Team management requires a Business or Enterprise plan in good standing; on Free, Plus, or Pro, the Team section of settings does not appear and an invite attempt is refused with Team management requires a Business or Enterprise plan.

So a Free-plan user who picks "A team newsroom" ends up with a shared workspace that has exactly one person in it. The on-screen note that you can invite colleagues later either way does not mention that. If you are not on a Business or Enterprise plan and are not about to be, pick A desk of one — you get owner-level access to everything except team management, and you avoid an empty second newsroom.

See Plan and quota reference for which plans include team management, and Team, roles and permissions for how invites work once you have the plan.

If you already belong to a team workspace

When your session already has a team workspace active, this step arrives with A team newsroom pre-selected and the note "The active team workspace will be used for this newsroom." You can change it, but changing it to solo triggers the switch described above.

The workspace switcher in the setup header lets you move between your personal account and any team workspace you belong to. Switching reloads setup for whichever workspace you land on, because each one has its own setup to finish.

Step 2: identity

Put a name on the masthead.

Three fields, all three required.

The publication name goes in a large masthead field across the top, with Estd. and the current year typeset beneath it. The other two sit side by side underneath.

Your title is the field people miss, and it is the one that blocks everything. It is yours alone — every other field on this screen belongs to the newsroom, but the title belongs to you, and every person in a newsroom sets their own. It is free text up to 80 characters. The field suggests nine common ones — Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, Desk Editor, Reporter, Producer, Analyst, Publisher, Contributor, and Freelancer — but you can type anything.

Leave any of the three blank and the footer reads Add the publication name, desk name, and your title to continue.

Step 3: coverage

Which section is yours?

Your primary beat. It steers source suggestions and what reaches the desk first.

A two-column, scrollable list of sections. Each row shows the section name and how many sources in the catalog cover it. Pick one — it is single-select. The footer hint is Pick your section to continue.

What your section actually does: it pre-filters the source list on the next step, and it decides what the Add visible vertical sources button adds there. It also shows up as "Primary niche" in your settings summary. It does not rank your feed and it does not change which stories reach you — that is decided entirely by which sources you select next.

Step 4: sources

Who do you trust on this beat?

Select at least three trusted outlets. Country presets pull in a nation's press at once; you can add your own feeds after the desk opens.

This step has two parts.

Local news by country. A grid of country tiles with a flag, the country name, and a source count. Selecting a country adds every catalog source from that country in one click. There is a search box (Search country...), a running count, and Clear all.

The source picker. Search by name, filter by section — the dropdown arrives pre-set to the section you chose in step 3, and All verticals clears it — or press Add visible vertical sources to add everything in the current section at once. Each source card shows its icon, name, sections, region, feed address, and an origin badge — Catalog, Curated, or Custom. Selected cards get a Selected badge. If nothing matches, you get No sources match your current filters.

On the right, Selected sources lists what you have chosen with a counter against your plan's cap, and a Remove button on every row. Before you choose anything it reads No sources selected yet.

Beneath the picker, a live counter reads {n} selected · minimum 3 and flips to {n} selected - ready for press in the brand colour once you reach three. Until then the footer shows Select at least 3 trusted sources to go to press.

The source cap

Your plan sets a hard ceiling on how many sources one newsroom can have. Free is 20. Catalog sources and any custom feeds you add later count against the same number.

• Clicking an unselected source when you are already at the cap is refused, with the toast You reached the {limit} source limit for your tier.
• Adding a country that pushes you past the cap adds what fits and warns you with the same message.
• Add visible vertical sources silently stops at the cap. No warning.

Custom feeds are not here

There is no "add your own feed" form on this step. The description is accurate: you add your own feeds after the desk opens, from the Newsroom section of settings. See Choosing and adding sources.

Moving between steps

Back and Continue sit in the footer, with the blocking hint for the current step between them. Continue is disabled until the current step is satisfied. On the last step, Continue is replaced by Go to press, which reads Saving… while it works. Back is hidden on step 1.

You can jump around by clicking the step names at the top, but only backwards, or forwards into a step whose predecessors are all complete.

Two things are already filled in

A brand-new account arrives with a section already chosen and five sources already selected. That means Coverage and Sources are technically satisfied from the start, and you can click Continue, Continue, Go to press without choosing a beat or a single outlet of your own.

Do not. Those five are an arbitrary slice of the catalog, and they determine everything the newsroom collects for you. Spend the two minutes on steps 3 and 4.

The publication name and desk name are deliberately left blank so you type your own, so steps 1 and 2 will still stop you.

Interface language and article language

Below the footer, on every step, sit two dropdowns: Interface language and Article language. They are independent.

• Interface language is the language of the ErmisAI screens themselves. Ten to choose from.
• Article language is the language your articles are written in. It has nothing to do with the language your sources publish in — ErmisAI writes in the language you set here regardless.

Both are saved when you go to press, and both can be changed later in settings. The interface only re-translates after the page reloads from the server. See Interface language and article language.

What "Go to press" does

In order:

1. If you chose a team newsroom and do not have one yet, a shared workspace is created, named after your publication name, and your session switches into it. You become its owner. If the publication name is empty at that point you get Publication name is required to create a team workspace.
2. If you chose a desk of one while a team workspace was active, your session switches back to your personal workspace.
3. Your newsroom is saved — publication name, desk name, your title, your section, your sources and countries, and both languages.
4. Every source you selected is added to monitoring, with breaking-news alerts switched on and all-story alerts off. Only owners and admins can see or change that afterwards, on the Monitoring screen. See Alert rules and notifications.
5. Your workspace is registered for billing on the Free plan.
6. A welcome email is sent, once, in your interface language.
7. Your newsroom joins the scheduled refresh that pulls new stories from your sources into the feed.

You get the toast Newsroom setup saved. If any of your selections did not fit — over the source cap, or a source that is no longer in the catalog — a second warning toast tells you: Your plan only accepted part of the update: followed by what was dropped.

If the save fails after a team workspace was created, ErmisAI switches you back and deletes the workspace it just made, so a failed attempt does not leave a stray newsroom behind. Any error appears in a red strip under the buttons and as a toast.

What counts as finished

All five of these, or the newsroom is not finished and you are sent back here:

• a publication name
• a desk or team name
• a section
• at least three selected sources
• your own title

Trying to finish without a title returns Add your title before finishing onboarding.

The finish screen

The wizard is replaced by a single screen: the kicker Ready, your publication name typeset large between double rules, and a line reading desk · section · n sources on the wire. One button, Enter the newsroom, takes you to the feed.

Your feed will be empty or thin at first. Stories arrive as ErmisAI reads your sources. See Your first story, end to end for what to do with the first one.

If you were invited to an existing newsroom

You walk the same four steps, but only one thing you type is kept.

Because the newsroom is already set up and you are joining as a member, the server accepts your title and the act of finishing. Every workspace-level field — publication name, desk name, section, sources, countries, languages — is discarded. You are not told. There is no message and no warning; the screen behaves as though your changes were saved.

So: pick whichever workspace option matches the note on screen, fill in the identity fields to get past the block, set your real title, and click through. If the newsroom's sources or languages need changing, ask an owner or an admin.

Changing any of this later

Setup cannot be reopened. Going to the setup address once your newsroom is finished sends you straight back into the workspace.

Everything from steps 2, 3, and 4 lives in Settings → Newsroom afterwards, which only owners and admins can open. There you also get the things setup does not offer: adding your own RSS feeds, interest and custom tags, and custom categories.

One consequence of that gate: members cannot change their own title after setup. The field lives on a screen they cannot open. An owner or admin can change it for them from Settings → Team.

See Newsroom settings for the full section-by-section breakdown, and Choosing and adding sources for coverage changes.

When something goes wrong

If setup keeps sending you back after you finish, the usual cause is a missing title. Open Identity and confirm Your title is filled in.