Step 2 — the outline.

The outline is the article's spine. Every heading here becomes an H2 in the finished piece, and the one-line summary you write under each heading is literally the instruction the writer follows for that section. It is the highest-leverage screen in BlogCraft, and it takes about a minute to review.

What runs when you confirm a title

Clicking Continue with this title in Step 1 kicks off three jobs. The first two run at the same time; the third waits for them.

If the search research fails — the search back-end is down, say — the outline is still built from your keyword family alone. You'll simply get a less SERP-aware structure. It doesn't block you.

Both halves are cached for 30 days

The keyword expansion and the search research are each cached for 30 days — the expansion against your brand and seed keyword, the search results against the keyword itself.

Two consequences worth knowing:

• Coming back to the same keyword is instant and costs nothing. Writing three articles around one topic doesn't re-run the research three times.
• The search picture can be up to a month old. For a fast-moving topic that matters; for most service businesses it doesn't. Neither the expansion nor the research costs you credits either way.

Reloading the page does not re-run any of this. Your saved outline is loaded back as-is.

The H1 and the meta description

At the top of the outline card:

• H1 · article title — pre-filled with the title you confirmed in Step 1. Editable, up to 240 characters.
• Meta description — a character counter sits in the label. The box holds up to 320 characters, but the AI writes to about 160, because that's roughly what Google shows.

The sections

Each numbered row is one H2 section, and holds two editable fields:

• The heading — the H2 as it will appear in the article.
• The summary — one sentence saying what the section is for. This is not a note to yourself. It is handed to the writer as the prompt for that section. A vague summary produces a vague section.

Per row you can also:

• Move it up or down with the arrows on the left.
• Delete it with the × on the right.

And under the list, Add section appends a new empty one — rewrite its heading and summary and it's treated exactly like the rest.

Schema hints

Some sections carry a small badge. That's a schema hint — it tells the writer what kind of block that section has to be, and it's what makes the section machine-readable to a search or AI engine.

Hint	What the section becomes
Answer	A 40–60 word direct answer to the question in your keyword. This is the block an AI Overview lifts. Always section 1.
FAQ	A question-and-answer block near the end. Its sub-headings become the questions, drawn from the People Also Ask results. It also drives the FAQPage JSON-LD in your SEO pack. Every outline gets exactly one.
How-to	A step-by-step section, where the sub-headings are the steps. Added when the topic is procedural.
Table	A comparison table. Added when the topic invites one — versus, alternatives, best X for Y.
List	An ordered or unordered list rather than flowing prose.

You can't add or change a hint by hand. They're assigned when the outline is built, from the intent you chose and the shape of the live search results.

Why section 1 is locked

The first section carries a padlock and has no move or delete controls. Its heading and summary are still editable — you just can't move it out of first place or remove it.

That's because section 1 is the answer block. AI answer engines and featured snippets pull from the top of a page; a direct, 40–60 word answer sitting first is the single most reliable way to be the thing they quote. Everything else in BlogCraft is negotiable. This isn't.

If you don't want it, you can turn off GEO / AEO optimization in the writer settings — but understand what you're trading away. The answer block is worth more Content Score points than any other single criterion. The score, in full →

How many sections you get

The section count is derived from the length you've picked in the right-hand rail — roughly one H2 per 450 words, held between 4 and 11 sections.

That's the honest mechanism, and it explains something people find odd: a shorter article isn't a longer article with less in each section, it's an article with fewer sections. If you change the length and then regenerate the outline, expect the number of headings to change with it.

Choosing a length →

Regenerate from SERP

Under the section list, on the right. It rebuilds the outline from the research that's already loaded — the same keyword family, the same search results, a fresh structure.

It does not re-read the search results, and it does not cost credits. Use it when the structure you got is off but the topic is right. It replaces everything, including any edits you've made, so make your edits after you're happy with the shape.

The Generated / Edited pill

Once you've generated a full article, a pill appears at the top-right of the outline card:

• Generated · up to date (green, padlock) — the article matches this outline and these settings. The Regenerate Full Article button is disabled, because regenerating would produce the same thing at the same cost.
• Edited · regenerate (orange, pencil) — you've changed the outline, the length or a writer setting since the last generation. Regenerate is now live.

So if the Regenerate button looks dead: nothing has changed. Edit a heading, a summary, a length or a toggle and it wakes up. Generating an article →

Related

BlogCraft

Writer settings

BlogCraft

Generating an article