Building a Content Format in the CSA

When you have a documented content format—a spec like What to Know Next—and you need the CSA to actually generate it, you translate that spec into the Content Format form in the Admin Panel. This page is the durable how-to: what the form controls, where each kind of spec requirement belongs, and what lives outside the form entirely. Read it once before building any format; keep it open the first few times.

This is a how-to for editors, not a content format spec. The format pages listed above it in the sidebar are the specs it references.

⬇ Download this page

The one thing to understand first

The form controls generation only: the prompt, the word floor, the tone settings, and the extraction rules the AI follows when it writes a draft. Two consequences shape everything below:

  1. It never rewrites content. No field shortens, edits, or alters what the AI produces. If a draft comes back too long, the system asks the AI to revise; the form only ever extracts pieces (like the headline) out of the output.
  2. It does not control the whole spec. SEO title, dek, meta description, focus keyphrase, hero image, URL structure, tags, and the pre-publish review all live in the CMS / CUE (the McClatchy CMS) / editorial workflow—not on this form. Much of translating a format is knowing which requirements the form can hold and which it can’t. See What the form doesn’t cover.

Three truths before you start

Where to find it: Admin Panel → Content Formats → + New Format (from scratch), or Edit on any format card.

The translation pattern

This section is the reusable core: a format spec is a bundle of different kinds of requirements, and each kind has one right home in (or outside) the form. Route by type:

The requirement is… It goes in… Why
Baseline tone / house style / sourcing standards shared with other formats System Prompt (a dev-maintained file the format points to) Keeps one source of truth; the file itself is changed only by a developer in the codebase.
A rule that should apply to more than one format (quote handling, headline rules, citation integrity) Instruction Block (ask a developer to add it, then toggle it on) Inlined shared rules drift out of sync across formats over time.
The format’s structural identity: section order, callouts, pull quotes, fixed value lists, word-count split Prompt Template This is what makes the format unique; general rules belong above it.
The shortest a draft may be Word Minimum A floor only—not a target, not a ceiling.
A length range or cap, or section proportions (e.g. 25/30/45) Prompt Template The form has no upper-bound field; spell the cap and the split out in the prompt.
How much creative variation is wanted Temperature 0.7 default; 0.9–1.1 for lifestyle/creative; 0.3–0.5 for structured formats (recaps, listicles) where consistency matters. A structured skeleton with a directional voice sits between—just below the 0.7 default (≈0.6).
Pulling the headline out / measuring length / de-duplicating the headline the three output checkboxes Extraction only—they never change the writing.
The generation token ceiling Max Tokens Default (65536) fits almost every format; change only on a developer’s advice.
SEO/meta, hero image, URL, tags, human review outside the form—see below The form doesn’t reach these; routing them here silently drops them.

The easiest requirement to misroute is a structural one: putting a mandatory callout or a section split into a shared block, or hoping the System Prompt covers it. Structural identity always goes in the Prompt Template, stated explicitly—models otherwise default to the generic explainer shape.

The form, field by field

The basics

Field What it controls How to set it
Name (slug) (required, permanent) The internal ID. Lowercase with underscores (what_to_know_next). Appears in logs; can’t be changed. Never name it after an internal project or vendor.
Display Name (required) What editors see in the picker. Clear and brand-accurate (“Woman’s World”, not “Womans World”). Never use “AI”, “generate”, or “automated”—those are internal words, not user-facing.
Icon The emoji on the format card. One distinctive emoji; defaults to a plain document. Pick something that reads at a glance against similar formats.
Category (required) The picker group. When in doubt, Editorial—it fits most formats and is easy to change later.
Organization (permanent) Everyone vs. one org. Default to system-wide. Restrict only for a real reason (brand voice, legal, contract). Org-specific copies fragment the library.
Description The card blurb. One sentence on when to use it—not a restatement of the name.

Who can see it

Field What it controls How to set it
Visible to Roles Which roles see the format in the picker. Leave empty to show everyone (the usual choice). Restrict only for a specific reason—e.g. keeping marketing formats away from editorial users.

How the story gets written

Field What it controls How to set it
System Prompt Which shared editorial-rules file the format follows. Point to the shared baseline other explainer/recap formats use; leave none for a self-contained format. If no baseline in the dropdown fits, ask a developer whether one exists before defaulting to none. The file’s contents are changed only by a developer—this field just picks the file.
Word Minimum The floor on draft length. Default 300. Set it to your publication’s real minimum (250–400 short-form, 800+ longform). Use 0 only when any length is fine.
Instruction Blocks Shared, reusable rule sets. Toggle on the existing ones that apply. Need a brand-new rule for more than one format? Ask a developer to add it as a block—don’t type it into the prompt.
Prompt Template (required) The format-specific instructions. Carry the format’s structural identity here. Keep general rules in the System Prompt / Instruction Blocks. See Preview before you save for how to test it.

Fine-tuning the AI

Field What it controls How to set it
Max Tokens Upper limit on generation. Default (65536) is fine for almost every format.
Temperature Creative variation. 0.7 standard; 0.9–1.1 for creative/lifestyle; 0.3–0.5 for structured formats where consistency matters. A structured format that still needs a directional voice sits between—≈0.6. Pick one value; the field takes a single number.

Cleaning up the output

These three checkboxes pull pieces out of what the AI writes—they never change the writing itself:

For a standard editorial format, turn on all three. Turn off Strip Headline From Body only when repeating the headline in the body is intentional (e.g. social posts).

What the form doesn’t cover

Several common spec requirements live outside the Content Format form. Flag these to whoever owns CMS/publishing configuration rather than forcing them into a form field:

Spec requirement Where it actually lives
SEO title, dek, meta description, focus keyphrase CMS metadata fields, filled at the article level
Hero image specs (size, ratio, no logos/text/stock) Image/asset guidelines enforced in CUE or the publishing checklist
URL structure and suffix pattern URL slug settings at the publishing level
Tags (e.g. TH-CSA, The Commons) The tagging step in CUE, per-article or per-org
Pre-publish checklist / human review requirement Editorial workflow, enforced by the team, not the form

Before assuming the Prompt Template must generate the H1 formula, SEO title, dek, and meta, confirm with a developer which CMS fields this format’s generation step actually populates. Some are filled by the same generation step; some are not configured through this form at all.

Worked example: What to Know Next

The What to Know Next spec, mapped onto the form, shows the pattern in action:

Field Enter Why
Name (slug) what_to_know_next Matches the format name; permanent.
Display Name What to Know Next Exactly as editors see it.
Icon 🔭 Signals “looking ahead”; distinct from other explainers.
Category Editorial A news explainer, not marketing.
Organization system-wide Spec says all platforms, no org constraint.
Visible to Roles empty, or exclude assuredintel_user An editorial format; exclude the marketing role, or leave empty if all editorial roles should see it.
Word Minimum 700 The spec’s 700–1,000 range is a floor here; the 1,000 cap and the 25/30/45 section split go in the prompt.
System Prompt the shared explainer baseline, if one is in the dropdown The format needs no prompt of its own for tone/sourcing; ask a developer if you don’t see a fitting baseline.
Instruction Blocks toggle the existing blocks for named-source attribution + headline rules The spec requires named-source attribution for every causal claim in Section 2; if no such block exists, that’s a developer ask.
Temperature 0.6 A structured skeleton (fixed Status Bar values, exactly three signals) but a directional voice—between the 0.3–0.5 recap band and the 0.7 default, so just below default.
Output checkboxes all three on Standard editorial; the headline shouldn’t repeat in the body.

Everything structural goes in the Prompt Template, in order: the italicized Status Bar under the headline (all three fields filled from their fixed lists, never blank); a short forward-looking lede; Section 1—What’s Happening (~25%, a snippet-ready, facts-only news lede); Section 2—Why It’s Happening (~30%, 2–3 named/sourced causes); a Forecaster Pull Quote (named, titled, affiliated, forward-looking) placed anywhere in Section 2 or 3; Section 3—What Could Be Next (~45%, the longest section, 2–3 predictions paired with reader actions, closing on one clear takeaway); a boxed Three Signals to Watch callout (exactly three concrete, monitorable signals). State explicitly that Section 3 must be the longest section: models otherwise front-load the earlier sections and shortchange the payoff.

The Prompt Template is prose instructions to the model. A skeleton for this format, which you’d flesh out with the spec’s full wording:

Write a forward-looking explainer on {topic}, 700–1,000 words.

Open with a one-line italicized Status Bar (Stage, Momentum, Forecast
confidence — fill each from its fixed value list, never blank), then a
2–3 sentence forward-looking lede.

Section 1 — What's Happening (~25%): a snippet-ready, facts-only news lede.
Section 2 — Why It's Happening (~30%): 2–3 causes, each with a named source.
Section 3 — What Could Be Next (~45%, the LONGEST section): 2–3 predictions,
  each paired with a concrete reader action; close on one clear takeaway.

Place one Forecaster Pull Quote (named person, title, institution;
forward-looking, not a definition) in Section 2 or 3.

End with a boxed "Three Signals to Watch" — exactly three concrete,
monitorable signals.

The What to Know Next spec is the authoritative source for the exact wording; use its Article Structure block as the scaffold.

Living outside the form for this format: the SEO title, dek, meta description, focus keyphrase, hero image specs, URL pattern, tags, and pre-publish checklist—all routed to CMS/CUE/editorial per the table above.

Preview before you save

Every format has a Preview button that runs it against a pasted draft or a recent article, without creating a draft or touching anything live—so you can see what a format actually produces: whether the style guide and instruction blocks come through, and how word-minimum and headline handling behave.

One catch: Preview runs the currently saved version of a format, not your unsaved edits. A brand-new format has nothing to run until you save it as a draft first. And editing an existing live format and then previewing won’t show your change—so to test a change safely, ask a developer to clone the format into a scratch copy and preview there, the reliable path, since an approved edit to a system-wide format goes live immediately. For a structured format, confirm the unique pieces render (callouts, pull quote), that Section 3 comes out longest, the length lands inside the range rather than just above the floor, and any generated pull quote reads as forward-looking rather than a definition in disguise.

What happens after you save

Common mistakes to avoid

When to loop in a developer or super_admin

Ask before submitting the draft—it saves a review cycle: