Newsroom settings
Every setting in the workspace, what it changes, and which role can change it.
Settings is the last item in the left sidebar and is visible to everyone. What you find inside depends entirely on your role and your plan — a member sees two tabs, an owner on a Business plan sees seven.
The page header is Settings, and under it a line naming your role: "Owner controls for the newsroom.", or Admin, or Member.
Settings belong to the workspace, not to you. Everyone in a team newsroom shares one set of newsroom settings; your personal workspace keeps its own, separate set.
Which tabs you see
| Tab | Who sees it |
|---|---|
| Newsroom | Owner, Admin |
| Team | Owner, Admin — and only with a team workspace on a Business or Enterprise plan |
| Billing | Owner only |
| Usage | Owner, Admin |
| Integrations | Owner only — and only on Plus or above |
| Notifications | Everyone |
| Account | Everyone |
Tabs always appear in that order, and Notifications and Account are always last. If you follow a link to a tab your role cannot open, ErmisAI quietly shows the first tab you can open instead. For a member, that means Settings opens on Notifications.
The Team and Integrations tabs check your plan, but not whether your subscription is in good standing. If a payment lapses, both tabs stay on screen and the actions inside them start failing. See Billing and AI capacity.
If ErmisAI cannot read your billing record at all, a warning appears above the tabs titled "Billing access check failed", and Team and Integrations are hidden until it recovers.
You also cannot reach Settings until your newsroom setup is finished and you have given yourself a title. Until then every workspace link sends you back to the setup wizard. See Set up your newsroom.
The Newsroom tab
Headed "Newsroom settings" — "Update newsroom identity, source coverage, delivery preferences, and drafting defaults." This is the only tab that changes how the product behaves for the whole desk, and it is owner and admin only.
Nothing on this tab saves as you type. Everything is held in the form until you press Save settings in the right-hand rail. The one exception is custom sources, which are added and deleted immediately.
Publication identity
Three text fields:
- Publication name (placeholder Daily City Wire) — this is the workspace name shown at the top of the sidebar, the name on the WordPress connect screen, and the name used in welcome and team-invite emails. If it still starts with "Untitled", the sidebar shows ErmisAI Desk instead.
- Desk or team name (placeholder Politics desk) — required to finish setup, and shown back to you in the summary rail. It does nothing else. It does not name the desk in the sidebar and it does not group anything.
- Your title (placeholder Managing Editor) — free text, up to 80 characters, with nine suggestions offered as you type: Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, Desk Editor, Reporter, Producer, Analyst, Publisher, Contributor, Freelancer.
Your title is yours alone — it is stored against your membership, not against the newsroom, so changing it does not change anyone else's. It also grants nothing: permissions come from your role, never from your title. See Team, roles and permissions.
Because the title field lives on the Newsroom tab, a member cannot change their own title after setup — they do not see the tab. An owner or admin edits it for them from the members table on the Team tab.
Language defaults
Two dropdowns, described in the product as "Keep interface language separate from article language. Prompt language follows the article language by default."
- Interface language — the language of the workspace itself: menus, buttons, labels. Ten languages are offered.
- Article language — the language ErmisAI writes in. Also ten languages. It is never inferred from the language of the source reporting.
Both dropdowns list the languages named in whichever interface language is currently selected.
Picking a new interface language does not re-translate the screen on the spot. Save, and the next page you open comes back in the new language.
Changing the article language affects work started after the change. A draft keeps the language it was composed in. Full detail in Interface language and article language.
Display style
Three buttons — Desk ("Dense cards + editorial controls"), Magazine ("Visual-first layout for broader audiences"), and Timeline ("Chronological stream for live events"). Your choice is saved and shown as selected the next time you open the tab.
Display style currently changes nothing. No screen in ErmisAI reads it — the feed looks the same whichever option you pick.
Primary vertical, interests, tags and categories
Primary vertical is a row of category pills with the rest behind a More categories dropdown. Picking one also filters the source picker below to that vertical. It is shown back to you as Primary niche in the summary rail.
Beside it, three comma-separated free-text fields:
| Field | Placeholder | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Interest tags | ai, geopolitics, markets | Stored. Nothing reads it. |
| Custom tags | cyber, startup, energy | Stored and capped by your plan. Nothing reads it. |
| Custom categories | food, gaming, true-crime | Added to the category filter on the feed and to the category options when you build an alert rule. |
Custom categories are the only one of the three that has a visible effect. Custom tags are stored and counted against your plan's custom-tag cap. Interest tags are stored and nothing more — there is no limit on them and nothing reads them.
Source selection
The sub-line reads Selected sources: n/max · Custom sources: n, followed by the Local news by country panel and the source picker itself. This is where your coverage is decided, and it has enough behaviour of its own to warrant a separate page — including the fact that country presets are additive and re-apply on every save, and that removing a source here does not stop its alerts.
Read Choosing and adding sources before you make large changes here.
Add custom source
New custom source opens a dialog: "Enter a website or feed URL. The system validates the URL and checks common feed endpoints before saving." Paste a site or feed address, press Validate URL, and if a feed is found a green "Valid feed endpoint detected" pill appears. Then Add custom source.
Custom sources are listed to the right under Custom sources — empty, it reads "No custom sources added yet." Each row has a Delete button. Adding and deleting take effect immediately; they do not wait for Save settings.
Every custom source counts against the same source cap as catalog sources.
The right-hand rail
Workspace capacity — four read-only rows drawn from your plan:
- Tier — Free, Plus, Pro or Enterprise. Business Plus reads Plus and Business Pro reads Pro, because their workspace caps are identical.
- Sources — selected against your cap.
- Articles/day — your daily delivery allowance, or Unlimited.
- Custom tags — your cap.
Workspace summary — Publication, Desk, Title, Primary niche and Source coverage as they currently stand in the form. Empty fields read "Not set"; no vertical chosen reads "Not selected".
Save changes — "Changes are saved to the tenant newsroom profile and stay available across the workspace." — and the Save settings button, which reads Saving... while it works. Any error appears in red directly above the button.
What happens when you save
The whole form is sent at once. On success a toast confirms "Newsroom settings saved".
If you submitted more than your plan allows, ErmisAI keeps what fits and drops the rest rather than refusing the save, then tells you what went: "Your plan only accepted part of the update: 12 sources · 3 tags were dropped." Sources you picked yourself are kept ahead of sources that arrived through a country preset, so preset sources are dropped first.
A failed save leaves your typing in the form and shows "Failed to save newsroom preferences". Nothing is lost; press the button again.
The Team tab
Headed "Team management" — "Manage invites, roles, and workspace access." Invite colleagues, set their role and title, and remove them. Requires a team workspace and a Business or Enterprise plan; a solo workspace never shows this tab. Covered in Team, roles and permissions.
The Billing tab
Owner only. Three panels: your current plan and its AI capacity, a plan comparison grid where each card carries a button naming that plan (Choose Pro, and so on), and Invoice history. Cancellation, payment methods and card details live in the Polar-hosted billing portal, reached from the Billing portal button — not in ErmisAI. Covered in Billing and AI capacity.
The Usage tab
Headed "Usage" — "Monthly AI capacity, delivery mix, and volume trend." How much of the month's AI capacity has been used, how many requests were blocked, which parts of the product consumed it, and — in a team newsroom, for the owner only — a per-member breakdown. Owners and admins can open it.
The Integrations tab
Owner only, and only on Plus or above. Headed "Integrations" — "API keys, webhook status, and delivery observability." API keys, the outbound webhook endpoint, connected WordPress sites, and a delivery log. Admins have no access at all, not even read-only. Covered in API keys, webhooks and WordPress.
The Notifications tab
Headed "Notifications" — "In-app alert and operational notifications." This is your notification inbox, not a preferences screen. It shows what has fired, with a live-status pill reading Live stream, Polling fallback, Connecting stream or Offline, plus Mark all read and Refresh. Read state is per person.
There are no notification preferences anywhere in ErmisAI. You cannot mute a type, choose a delivery channel, set a digest, or change how often anything arrives. What you can control is which rules exist and which sources are monitored — see Alert rules and notifications.
The Account tab
One card, Delete account, available to every role: "Permanently delete your account and personal newsroom. Articles, drafts, chat sessions, settings, integrations, and usage history are erased after a 14-day grace window, and you receive an email confirmation once the erasure completes."
It also notes that "Content in shared team newsrooms belongs to those newsrooms and is not affected". Pressing Delete account opens a confirmation asking "Delete your account?", with Yes, delete my account and Cancel. You are signed out immediately. Read Your account and your data first.
Settings that do not exist
Things people look for here and will not find:
- No time zone setting. Timestamps are not configurable.
- No notification preferences. See above.
- No per-story language override. The article language is a workspace setting only.
- No overage switch. Whether your newsroom is billed past its AI capacity is set by ErmisAI operations, not by you.
- No seat control on the Team tab. Seats are chosen at checkout, on the Billing tab, which is owner-only.
- No category mapping to your CMS. Categories pass through as they are.
- No separate Sources tab. Sources live inside the Newsroom tab.
Set up your newsroom
The setup wizard that has to be finished before Settings opens at all.
Choosing and adding sources
The Source selection card in full, including country presets and custom feeds.
Team, roles and permissions
Who holds which role, and what each role can reach.
Interface language and article language
Two independent language settings and what each one changes.
Billing and AI capacity
Plans, capacity, invoices, and what a lapsed payment does to the workspace.
Plan and quota reference
Every cap the Workspace capacity rail is drawn from.