# Who publishes content

> When you, Willo in chat, Willo's autonomous work and connected AI agents can publish content, and how auto-publish gives Willo standing permission.

Last updated: October 16, 2026

Source: https://www.willo.ai/docs/content/who-publishes

A draft is private and changes nothing visitors see, so Willo writes drafts freely. Publishing changes your public site, so by default a person decides. This page explains who can publish, and the one setting that changes that.

## You, in the Content tab

Editors, admins and owners publish from the Content tab with the **Publish** button. That click is the decision. Viewers can read items but not change or publish them.

## Willo, in chat

When you ask Willo to publish ("publish the post we just wrote"), it asks you to confirm first. Scheduling a publish in chat is the same: setting the time is your confirmation, and nothing asks again when it fires.

## Willo's autonomous work

Some of Willo's work runs without you in the conversation: the Growth Engine working through your roadmap, and Agent Programs running on their schedule or trigger. By default that work can only **draft**. When it writes a post, you get a message in chat saying a draft is waiting, and you review and publish it yourself.

## Auto-publish

To let Willo's autonomous work publish without review, turn on **auto-publish** for a collection: in your business, go to **Settings → Autonomy** and find the **Content auto-publish** card. It lists each collection with its own **Turn on** / **Turn off** button.

- Auto-publish is per collection. Turning it on for the blog does not let Willo publish testimonials.
- Only an admin or owner can change it, because it gives Willo standing permission over your live site. Others see the buttons disabled.
- Turning it off stops autonomous publishing from then on, with two exceptions: items already scheduled still publish at their time, and roadmap tasks you wrote yourself (below) still count as your go-ahead. Items already published stay published.

If you put autonomous posting on your roadmap yourself ("post a blog article every week"), Willo treats that as your go-ahead for that collection's roadmap task. It does not extend to other collections.

> **Tip: Start with drafts.**
>
> Leave auto-publish off for the first few weeks. Read what Willo drafts, publish the ones you like, and tell Willo in chat what to change. Turn it on once the drafts reliably need no edits.

## Connected AI agents

An AI agent you connect with an agent token (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex CLI) can write drafts without asking. Publishing, scheduling, unpublishing or deleting an item always needs a person to approve it on a card. Auto-publish does not apply to agents. See [Edit CMS content and publish](https://www.willo.ai/docs/ai-agents/edit-cms-content-and-publish).

## Did Willo publish without asking?

Only if one of these is true:

- auto-publish is on for that collection,
- you confirmed the publish in chat,
- you scheduled it earlier, or
- it came from a posting task you put on the roadmap yourself.

Otherwise autonomous work can only draft.

Related: [Drafts, publishing and scheduling](https://www.willo.ai/docs/content/drafts-and-publishing), [Approvals](https://www.willo.ai/docs/ai-agents/approvals).