RapidScript Pro

User Manual

Last updated: November 2026

1. Getting Started

RapidScript Pro is a newsroom intelligence platform that surfaces trending stories from your configured sources and generates broadcast-ready scripts in seconds. This manual walks you through every feature.

2. Logging In

Go to /auth and sign in with the email address your organisation administrator (or RapidScript superadmin) invited. If you forget your password, use the "Forgot password" link to receive a reset email.

3. The Dashboard & Map

Your home screen shows a compact world map with the latest scrape activity. The live "scraping" indicator confirms data is being refreshed.

  • Flat / Globe toggle — switch between a flat world map and an interactive 3D globe. Expanding the map opens the auto-rotating globe view by default.
  • Pins — decorative capital-city markers give the map context; on top of that, stories geocoded to a location appear as coloured hotspots. Click any pin to filter the story list to that location.
  • No national borders — the base layer is deliberately border-free, so no country's frontier appears misrepresented.
  • First-login auto-refresh — on your first visit each session RapidScript fires a scrape automatically and shows a "Stories are loading…" modal that nudges the Refresh button. The modal dismisses itself as soon as stories arrive.
  • Seeding progress bar — brand-new newsrooms see a progress bar while default sources are auto-seeded on the backend, so the dashboard fills in without any manual setup.

4. Trending Now & My Feed

Two ways to scan today's news:

  • Trending Now — stories ranked by engagement and Google Trends signals across all four segments (Elections, Sports, World News, Business & Finance). Near-duplicate stories from multiple outlets are collapsed into a single card with a "+N more sources" indicator so the same story never appears twice. Stories older than a few hours are hidden unless Google Trends still considers them relevant.
  • My Feed — a chronological firehose of every story from your enabled sources, newest first. No de-duplication, no trending filter. Auto-refreshes in the background. If any of your enabled feeds errored or returned no items in the past 24 hours, a yellow banner appears at the top with a Fix URL / Delete shortcut for each bad feed.

Each card shows the headline, engagement score, the actual publisher name (e.g. SportsKeeda, NDTV), and the publication time. Click any card to open the detail view.

Content-based segment classification. Stories are now segmented from their headline and summary, not just the source. A cricket score from a general news aggregator lands under Sports; a missile-strike headline from a national wire lands under World News. World News is ranked purely by trending score — there is no regional weighting.

5. Story Detail, Coverage Timeline & Editorial Signals

On a story's detail page you'll see:

  • Headline, summary, and full text aggregated from all sources. Click Read full article to trigger an on-demand deep scrape of the primary source.
  • Cross-source coverage timeline — a horizontal timeline showing every outlet that has covered this story, ordered by publish time. The earliest publisher is chipped Leading; later outlets are Following; anyone more than two hours behind the leader is flagged Late. A 1h / 3h / Life window toggle rescales the axis. A header line summarises "N outlets · first seen Xh ago · latest Ym ago". Single-source stories show a placeholder ("no cross-outlet coverage yet").
  • Editorial Signals panel — a compact stat block covering:
    • Velocity — accelerating, plateau, or cooling, with a per-hour rate.
    • Coverage — number of outlets and platforms carrying the story.
    • Geography — locations mentioned and geographic spread.
    • Reporting — verification status and cross-source corroboration.
  • Source list with publication, engagement count, and timestamp for every outlet.

6. Insights

The Insights nav opens the Editorial Intelligence Report — a dense, boardroom-style dashboard of newsroom-level performance.

  • KPI chips across the top: total stories, unique outlets, average velocity, script conversion rate, and more.
  • Segment, velocity, and coverage panels break the numbers down by category and time.
  • Story leaderboard ranks the strongest performing stories in the current window.
  • Time-window toggle: Today (live), Week, and Month. Because live stories are purged after a few hours, Week and Month views read from persisted daily rollups on the backend — your history survives logging out, browser refreshes, and story purge cycles.
  • Recompute velocity — a manual button rebuilds the peak-velocity metric on demand if you want the freshest numbers before a meeting.
  • Export PDF — renders a white, print-friendly boardroom report of everything on screen.

7. Generating Scripts

Click Generate Script on any story, pick a preset, choose a format and tone, and the AI produces a draft. Edit inline, then save or export.

7.1 Formats

Five output formats are supported: Short Form Video (SFV), Long Form Video (LFV), Online Article, Broadcast, and Newsletter.

  • SFV is locked to 30 seconds (≈75 words). The word-count slider is hidden and a "Capped at 30 seconds" badge is shown — ideal for Reels, Shorts, and TikTok.
  • LFV exposes a duration slider from 1:00 to 8:00 in 30-second steps (default 4:00). The word target is derived at ~150 words per minute — e.g. 4 minutes ≈ 600 words, the 8-minute cap ≈ 1200 words. Before generation, RapidScript runs a material pre-flight; if the source story is too thin to support the chosen length, a modal offers to switch to a 30-second SFV instead.
  • Online Article, Broadcast, and Newsletter keep the classic 50–800 word slider.

7.2 Voiceover toggle (SFV / LFV only)

Directly above the Generate button, SFV and LFV expose a voiceover toggle:

  • Voiceover + on-screen (default) — narration lines interleaved with [VISUAL], [SUPER], and [B-ROLL] directions.
  • On-screen only (no VO) — a beat-by-beat visual script with numbered shots and [VISUAL], [ON-SCREEN TEXT], [SUPER], [B-ROLL], [CAPTION], and [SFX] cues. No narration lines are produced — the word target now applies to on-screen copy and captions.

7.3 Reporting gaps

Any claim the AI can't verify from the source material is wrapped in a [NEEDS REPORTING: …] flag and highlighted in amber, both in the generator and the saved-script viewer, so an editor can fill the gap before publishing.

8. Presets

Presets define the tone, format, platform, and target word count for generated scripts. Your newsroom ships with six factory defaults — including SFV 30s 🎬 (75 words) and LFV 8min 🎥 (1200 words) — and you can add custom presets in Settings → Presets.

9. Sources

The Sources tab is where you control what feeds RapidScript scrapes for your newsroom. Switch between the four segments (Elections, Sports, World News, Business & Finance) using the tab bar — each segment has its own list.

9.1 Built-in catalog

RapidScript ships with a curated catalog of feeds per segment. Tick the box next to any feed to include it; untick to exclude. Use the Select all / Deselect all shortcuts in the catalog header to flip the whole list for the current segment in one click. Catalog feeds added after your newsroom was created are marked NEW.

9.2 Adding a custom source — Find & Test Feed

Click Add Custom Source. You don't need to know the exact feed URL — the Find & Test Feed button accepts any of three inputs:

  • the feed URL directly (e.g. https://example.com/feed.xml),
  • just the site's homepage (e.g. https://example.com), or
  • just the publication's name (e.g. "The Hindu", "Sangbad Pratidin") — RapidScript resolves the name to a homepage, discovers native RSS/Atom feeds on it, and, if none exist, falls back to a Google News RSS proxy scoped to that publisher.

Every candidate feed is shown with the item count and latest headline. Click Use this feed next to the one you want, then Save. Results panels use plain-English verdicts:

  • Verified — green panel with the number of items found and the latest headline. Save is unlocked.
  • Auto-discovered feed — you pasted a homepage or a name and we found the real RSS feed. Click Use this feed, then Save.
  • No RSS feed found / Couldn't reach the URL / Feed is empty — red panel explaining what went wrong with a suggestion to fix.

Save stays disabled until a feed is verified, so you can't accidentally add a broken source.

9.3 Re-testing a feed

Each custom feed row has a small wand icon — click it to re-validate that feed on demand. You'll get a toast saying it's healthy (with the latest headline) or a specific error if it's broken.

9.4 Bad-feed banner & Fix broken sources page

Feeds can break later (a publisher redesigns their site, rate-limits us, etc.). If one of your enabled feeds errors or returns zero items for 24 hours, a yellow banner appears at the top of My Feed with a Review broken sources button.

That button opens a dedicated Fix broken sources page that lists only the unhealthy feeds. For each one you have three actions:

  • Re-validate — re-tests the current URL. If it's healthy now, the row is marked "Verified just now".
  • Find alternative feed — probes the publisher's homepage for declared RSS/Atom feeds, common feed paths (/feed, /rss, etc.), and a Google News search for the source name. You'll see every candidate that returned at least one item, with the item count and latest headline; click Use this feed to queue it as the new URL.
  • Delete — queues the source for removal.

Changes are batched — nothing is written until you click Save changes. Each row shows a pending-change chip ("Will update URL", "Will delete on save", "Verified just now") and an Undo link, so you can review everything before committing.

9.5 Google Trends

At the top of the Sources page, toggle which segments should pull in Google Trends suggestions in addition to your direct feeds.

9.6 Daily catalog watchdog

Once every 24 hours RapidScript automatically re-checks every feed in the built-in catalog. If any feed has gone dark, the watchdog probes the publisher's site for a working alternative and swaps the URL globally, so every newsroom benefits without any manual work on your side.

10. My Scripts

All scripts you have generated are saved under My Scripts. Filter by story, preset, or export status. Each row shows the format chip (SFV, LFV, Online Article, Broadcast, Newsletter); SFV and LFV scripts generated with the voiceover toggle off carry an extra "No VO" badge next to the format so you can tell visual-only scripts apart at a glance. Use the export button to download as text or copy to clipboard.

11. Settings

Manage your profile, organisation name, presets, and (if you're an admin) the member list. Seat usage is shown at the top.

12. Roles & Seats

  • Admin — can manage members, sources, and presets.
  • Editor — can generate scripts and verify stories.
  • Viewer — read-only access.
  • Each active member occupies one seat. Deactivating a member frees a seat.

13. FAQs

Why is a story missing from Trending Now? It may have been (a) filtered for low engagement, (b) collapsed into a near-duplicate from a higher-engagement outlet (look for the "+N more sources" indicator on similar cards), or (c) older than the live window and not flagged by Google Trends. Switch to My Feed to see every story from your sources without any of these filters.

I added a custom source but no stories appear. First, click the wand icon next to the source on the Sources page — it will re-test the feed and tell you exactly what's wrong (unreachable, empty, blocked). If the feed checks out, new stories appear after the next scrape cycle (within ~15 minutes).

I don't know the feed URL — can I just type the publication name? Yes. On Add Custom Source, type the name (e.g. "The Hindu") and click Find & Test Feed. RapidScript resolves the name to a homepage, discovers the real feed URL, and falls back to a Google News RSS proxy when no native feed exists. Pick a candidate, then Save.

Why can't I invite a new user? Your seat limit has been reached. Deactivate someone or contact your administrator to raise the limit.

What do the Coverage Timeline and Editorial Signals show? The timeline plots every outlet's publish time for a story so you can see who broke it and who is catching up — the earliest outlet is Leading, later ones are Following, and anyone more than two hours behind the leader is flagged Late. Editorial Signals below it summarises velocity (rate of engagement growth per hour), coverage breadth, geographic spread, and reporting/verification status.

Why does my Insights page keep data after I log out? Live stories are purged after a few hours, but every night RapidScript rolls up the day's numbers into a persistent backend table. The Today tab reads live data; Week and Month read those daily rollups, so your history survives sign-outs and browser refreshes.

Why did the world map lose its country borders? Borders were removed deliberately to give a cleaner, non-political base layer — no country appears misrepresented on any map surface, whether the small dashboard map, the large expanded flat map, or the globe.

Why does a story show the publisher name instead of "Google Trends"? Trending signals from Google Trends are used internally to surface still-relevant stories, but the chip on every card now shows the actual publisher (e.g. SportsKeeda) so you always know where the story came from.

What's the difference between SFV and LFV? SFV (Short Form Video) is fixed at 30 seconds (~75 words) — designed for Reels, Shorts, and TikTok. LFV (Long Form Video) runs anywhere from 1 to 8 minutes, chosen with a duration slider in 30-second steps, and the word target scales at ~150 wpm.

How do I get a visual-only script with no narration? Pick SFV or LFV, then switch the voiceover toggle above Generate to On-screen only (no VO). The output will be a beat-by-beat shot list with visuals, supers, B-roll, captions, and SFX cues — no voiceover lines.

14. Support

For account, billing, or technical issues contact support@rapidscriptpro.com.