Content Lifecycle
Posts age. Your access rules should keep up.
Members get the story first, then it goes public. Or the other way round: free for a month, then behind the paywall for the archive. Ghost can do either — one post at a time, by hand, if you remember. Content Lifecycle does it by rule: once a post is a certain age, change its access, unpublish it, or tag it.
How it works
Write the rule once. It handles the catalog.
Say what happens, and when
After three weeks, make it public. After a year, members only. After a month, add the archive tag. Narrow a rule to posts at a particular access level, or carrying a particular tag, if you need to.
Preview before anything moves
Run all now checks every published post against every rule and shows you what would change — a count per rule, with sample titles — then waits for you to apply it.
Then let it run nightly
On Core, a nightly run picks up the posts that crossed a threshold since yesterday. Adding a rule never sweeps your back catalog on its own — only Run all now does that, and only when you press it.
What it can do
Rules that know when to leave a post alone.
Three things a rule can do
Change access — public, members, paid, or specific tiers — unpublish back to a draft, or add a tag. Several rules can fire on one post; it gets a single edit with everything in it.
Filters, when you need them
Apply a rule only to posts at a certain access level, or only to posts carrying one of your tags — so the sponsored series keeps its own schedule and the rest of the site keeps yours.
An opt-out tag
Tag a post #automation-optout and no rule will ever touch it — the evergreen pillar page stays exactly as you left it. Pages, drafts and email-only posts are never candidates.
Each rule touches a post once
Flip a post back by hand after a rule has handled it and the rule doesn't flip it again. Your editors aren't fighting a robot.
Content Lifecycle is in alpha: the rules work as described, and the rough edges are still being sanded. If you hit one, tell me.
Pricing
Free to run. Paid to run itself.
Rules and Run all now are on the free tier — no card required. The nightly run comes with Core, along with the rest of the toolbox on simple, fair pricing.
Set up a rule free