Sources are the feeds and sites Mediastilo monitors for material. Every pipeline run reads your active sources, scores each item against your Brand, and surfaces the best-aligned material in Signals, ready to become drafts.
Types of source
- RSS feeds: the most reliable kind. Paste a feed URL, or paste a site URL and Mediastilo will try to discover its feed for you.
- Scraped sites: for sites without a usable feed, Mediastilo reads the page directly using a set of selectors that tell it where the articles, titles, and links are. Sites that build their article list in the browser with JavaScript are supported: Mediastilo renders the page like a real browser when the plain page text has no items, so client-side-rendered listings are read correctly.
- Summary-only sources: some major publishers (for example large international papers) publish an open RSS feed but keep the article body behind a paywall. For these, Mediastilo ingests only the publisher's own headline and standfirst from the feed — enough to follow the story as signal, but not the full article. Because the full text isn't available, these items are not drafted from (drafting needs the real body), and they're marked Summary-only in your source list.
Adding a source
- Go to Sources and add a source by URL.
- Use Preview to check what Mediastilo sees before committing, you'll get a look at the items it would pull in.
- Mediastilo also checks whether the domain is already in your sources, so you don't add duplicates.
If Preview reports the site is bot-protected or behind a paywall, it can't be added automatically, some sites (many international majors) actively block automated reading. When that happens, try the site's official RSS feed if it has one; a custom scraper won't get past the same wall.
The number of sources you can add depends on your plan, see Credits & Billing.
Source health
The Health view shows whether each source is working. For scraped sites Mediastilo tracks a status:
- OK: the source is being read correctly.
- Broken: the selectors no longer match the page (the site likely changed its layout).
- Unreachable: Mediastilo couldn't reach the site at all.
A failing source also shows a Blocked badge when the site walled the last fetch, naming the wall (Cloudflare, DataDome, a paywall, rate-limiting, and so on). That's the signal to switch it to an official feed rather than keep retrying. A Summary-only badge means the opposite of a failure: the source is working, but by design Mediastilo keeps only its feed headline and standfirst (a paywalled publisher), so it contributes signal without a full article to draft from.
If a source is broken or unreachable, fix or update it so it keeps contributing material. You can also validate a source on demand to re-check it.
Keeping sources fresh
Sources are read automatically on every pipeline run, but you can Sync a source manually to pull its latest items right away.
Scrape configuration proposals
On higher plans, when a scraped site breaks or needs setup, Mediastilo can propose a new scrape configuration, the selectors that tell it where the content lives. You can review a proposal and confirm it (to apply it) or reject it. This keeps scraped sources working as sites change, without hand-editing selectors yourself.
Scrape-config proposals are a plan-gated feature. If you don't see them, check your plan in Credits & Billing.
Removing a source
Remove a source from the Sources list at any time. It will no longer be read on future pipeline runs.
What happens next
Material from your sources flows into Signals, where Mediastilo scores it for brand alignment, and the strongest matches become drafts. See Drafts & Publishing.