Asset Library — Published Indicator and Status Machine
What each status means — Draft, Ready, Scheduled, Published, Generating — and how drafts move between them.
What is it?
Every draft carries one of five statuses. The status pill appears in both Table and Cards views.
- Generating (amber, pulsing) — AI is still producing the content. Wait for it to complete.
- Draft (slate) — content exists but hasn't been reviewed. Default state for manual creations or failed generations.
- Ready / Generated (orange) — content is complete and ready for approval or scheduling.
- Scheduled (blue) — a calendar event exists pointing to this draft. Publish date set.
- Published (green) — pushed live to WordPress or marked as used by the team.
When should I use it?
- To filter the library to specific stages of your content pipeline.
- To report status to a client ("3 ready, 2 scheduled, 5 published this week").
- To find stuck drafts — anything in Generating for >10 minutes has a problem.
How to use it
- Apply the Status filter in the Asset Library toolbar to isolate a stage.
- Click any draft to see its full status and move it forward (Approve & Schedule, Publish).
- Hover a Generating status pill for elapsed time.
Status transitions
- Generating → Ready — happens automatically when Gemini/Manus completes.
- Generating → Draft — if generation failed; error message shown on the draft.
- Ready → Scheduled — when you use Approve & Schedule.
- Scheduled → Published — when the WP plugin publishes, or manually set via Mark as Used.
- Any → Draft — by clicking "Revert to Draft" (rare, admin-level only).
Tips and best practices
- Cycle through statuses weekly to find stalls. If a draft sits in "Ready" for 3 weeks, ask why it hasn't been scheduled.
- Scheduled drafts link to Calendar events. Unschedule from the Calendar, not the Asset Library.
- Published is the terminal state. If a post is unpublished externally (e.g. deleted in WordPress), the NexusSEO status doesn't auto-update.
Gotchas and limits
- Status can only go forward through its lifecycle. To revert, delete and regenerate — or use an admin-only rollback.
- "Used" and "Published" overlap in the data model. UI shows Published, but the underlying field is
used: true. Ignore the distinction. - A draft with a WordPress post URL is considered Published even if
used: false. Edge case of imported existing posts. - Generating stale for >20 minutes triggers a failure marker automatically (set by the poller).