When Riterly generates a draft, you have a choice: edit it in the app before you copy it out, or copy it straight to your CMS and edit there. Both paths work. The difference is what Riterly can measure — and understanding that distinction is what makes the draft editor useful rather than just another step between generation and publishing.
What draft editing is
Draft editing is an in-app editing step available when a post is in Drafted status. It sits between generation and the copy step, and it is entirely optional.
You do not have to use it. If your workflow is to generate a draft, copy it to your CMS, and make changes there, that works fine. The editor exists for users who want to refine the draft inside Riterly before copying — and for users who care about the word retention metric, which only captures edits made before the copy step.
How to open, edit, and save
On the draft view page, click Edit draft. This replaces the rendered preview with the editor.
The editor is CKEditor — the same rich text editor used in the profile and outline editors. It supports:
- Headings (H1, H2, H3)
- Bold and italic
- Bulleted and numbered lists
- Block quotes
- A Source button for viewing and editing raw markdown directly
Make your changes in the editor. When you're done:
- Click Save edits to save the changes and return to the rendered preview showing the updated version
- Click Cancel to discard your changes and return to the last saved version
Cancel does not ask for confirmation, so if you've made changes you want to keep, save before navigating away.
What the Copy to clipboard button does
The Copy to clipboard button copies raw markdown — not rendered HTML. This is intentional. Most CMS platforms handle markdown imports or paste-from-source better than they handle HTML copied from a rich text editor, so the raw format gives you cleaner output on the receiving end.
The non-obvious behavior: if the editor is open with unsaved changes when you click Copy to clipboard, those unsaved changes are included in the copy. Riterly does not wait for Save edits — it copies whatever is currently in the editor, saved or not.
This means you can edit and copy in a single step without explicitly saving. It also means that if you've made changes you don't want, clicking copy before canceling will include those changes in your clipboard. Know which state your editor is in before you copy.
What the word retention metric actually measures
When you mark a post as published, Riterly records the word count of the published draft against the word count of the originally generated draft and calculates the ratio. The result shows up as "You kept X% of the draft."
This metric only captures edits made inside Riterly before the copy step. Once you've copied the draft to your CMS, Riterly has no visibility into what happens next. If you rewrite three paragraphs in your CMS, Riterly still records the copy-time word count — and when you mark the post published, the retention figure will show 100% even though you significantly changed the content.
That 100% figure doesn't mean the draft was perfect. It means Riterly couldn't see the edits.
If retention data matters to you — if you're using it to track how well your drafts are landing, or to identify patterns in what needs changing — edit inside Riterly before copying. If you don't care about the metric, editing in your CMS works equally well. The quality of the final content is not affected either way.
When to edit here versus in your CMS
The practical decision comes down to whether the retention metric is useful to you.
Edit in Riterly if:
- You want the word retention metric to reflect your actual edits
- You're in the habit of reviewing and refining before copying out
Edit in your CMS if:
- You prefer your CMS editing environment
- The retention metric isn't part of your workflow
Neither is the wrong choice. Riterly does not require you to use the draft editor, and the generated draft quality is identical either way.
One thing worth paying attention to regardless of where you edit: if you find yourself making the same kinds of corrections across multiple drafts — adjusting the tone in every introduction, removing the same type of filler, restructuring the same section pattern — that's not a draft problem. That's a writing profile problem. The draft editor is where you fix individual posts; the writing profile is where you fix the pattern. Repeated edits to the same things are a signal that the profile needs updating, not that each new draft needs the same manual correction.
The Generate a new draft button at the bottom of the draft view (in the "Not happy with this draft?" section) is separate from editing. Use the editor when a draft needs corrections or refinements. Use Generate a new draft when the draft needs to be fundamentally redone — that button discards the current draft, records an implicit negative signal, and immediately re-runs generation against the same approved outline. For guidance on when to discard and regenerate rather than edit, see the Re-Drafts documentation.