Channels and Delivery

One Knowledge Base, Many Surfaces

After Pilot produces content and you approve it, the next question is: where does it go? Channels are Pilot's answer. A channel is a delivery surface — your website, your documentation site, your CMS, your newsletter, your social accounts, your embedded search. Each channel has its own format requirements, and Pilot adapts the content for each one.

You configure channels in the Pilot console. Each channel defines where content goes and how it gets there. An article can publish to one channel or several simultaneously. The same article that appears on your website also shows up as a WordPress draft and a LinkedIn post — same sourcing, different formats.

Web Channel

The web channel makes content available through Pilot's REST API. Your frontend — whatever it is — calls the API and renders the content however you want.

GET /api/v1/web/articles
GET /api/v1/web/articles/:slug

The API returns clean JSON with the article title, summary, body as semantic HTML, inline citations, source documents, and related articles. Your frontend handles layout, typography, and design. Pilot handles the content.

This is the headless model: Pilot manages what gets published, your site manages how it looks. pilotwme.com works this way — a Next.js app pulling from Pilot's API. Builder's Benchmark works the same way. Any frontend that can make HTTP requests can consume the web channel.

The web channel is best for teams that want full control over presentation, developers comfortable building a frontend, and new sites that don't have an existing CMS to integrate with.

Documentation Sites

The same headless API that powers editorial websites can power full documentation sites. Upload your source material — product specs, API references, guides, internal docs — and Pilot organizes it into a navigable knowledge base. Your frontend renders it as structured documentation with navigation, search, and cross-references.

Pilot Docs is a working example. The entire documentation site is powered by Pilot: every page draws from the knowledge base, voice configuration ensures consistent tone across all pages, and the Ask feature provides embedded search that returns cited answers from the documentation.

Documentation sites built on Pilot stay grounded in source material. When your source documents change, your docs update. When someone searches, they get answers traced to specific sources — not hallucinated responses. The same citation model that makes editorial content trustworthy makes documentation authoritative.

This channel is best for product teams, developer relations, and technical writers who need documentation that stays accurate and consistent as the underlying knowledge evolves.

CMS Webhook

The CMS webhook channel pushes content to your existing content management system. Pilot generates the article, formats it according to your CMS's requirements, and sends it via webhook. The article arrives in your CMS as a draft, ready for your editorial team to review and publish using the tools they already know.

Currently supported:

• WordPress — Pilot pushes articles as draft posts with featured images, citations, and metadata. A WordPress plugin handles the webhook receiver and creates the post. Your editors see new drafts in their post queue.
• Any CMS with webhook support — Contentful, Strapi, Ghost, or any system that can receive HTTP POST requests with structured content. Configure the webhook URL, authentication method, and content format in the Pilot console.

The webhook payload includes the article content, citations, source document references, and optional images. Your CMS receives it and creates a draft through its own API. Pilot tracks delivery status and retries failed deliveries automatically.

The CMS webhook channel is best for teams with an established CMS, editors who prefer their existing tools, and organizations adopting Pilot gradually alongside their current content workflow.

Email Channel

The email channel formats articles for newsletter distribution. Pilot generates the content, adapts it for email — adjusting length, formatting, and structure for inbox reading — and makes it available for your email service provider.

Email formatting is different from web formatting. Articles are typically shorter, citations are simplified, and the structure favors scannable sections over long-form reading. Pilot handles these adaptations based on the channel configuration.

Social Channel

The social channel creates format-appropriate versions of content for social platforms. A 1,200-word article doesn't work on LinkedIn or X. Pilot condenses the key points into platform-appropriate lengths, maintaining the voice and sourcing while adapting the format.

Social output is still cited content from your knowledge base — not generic social copy. It's a compression of the same article, maintaining the same claims and the same source material, just in a format that fits the platform.

Channel Configuration

Each channel has its own settings in the Pilot console:

• Format — HTML, markdown, or plain text, depending on what the receiving system expects
• Voice — each channel can use a different voice configuration, so your newsletter sounds different from your website
• Authentication — API keys, bearer tokens, basic auth, or custom headers for webhook delivery
• Content selection — which articles go to which channels, controlled per-article or by rule

You can also connect channels to AutoPilot for scheduled generation and publishing. Set a cadence, choose the channel, and Pilot generates and delivers content on your schedule.

Publishing Workflow

The typical flow:

1. Pilot generates an article (via Pilot Lights, AutoPilot, or manual generation)
2. The article enters your review queue
3. You review the draft — check citations, edit if needed
4. You select which channels to publish to
5. Pilot formats the article for each channel and delivers it
6. Delivery status is tracked in the console — you can see whether each channel received the content

In supervised mode, every article waits for your approval before publishing. In autonomous mode (for AutoPilot), articles that meet your quality threshold publish directly. Either way, you can see what went where and when.

Why Channels Matter

Channels are what make Pilot a delivery system rather than a writing tool. A writing tool produces a document. Pilot produces content and puts it where your audience is — your website, your documentation site, their inbox, their LinkedIn feed, their CMS, their search bar. The content is adapted for each surface, but the sourcing, citations, and voice are consistent across all of them.

For how to set up your first channel and publish your first article, see Getting Started. For how scheduling works, see AutoPilot.