How Tidenda works

Tidenda is where a newsroom plans, writes, approves and publishes its stories. Everything in it is a document, every document moves through a workflow, and publishing produces a signed copy that leaves through the public site, a webhook or the API. This page is the model in five minutes. Every section links to the page with the detail.

A story, start to finish

1. An editor creates a planning item for a story: what it is about, when, and how important it is.
2. The planning item holds assignments, one per thing the story needs: the text, a photo, a video, audio, a flash or a graphic.
3. A reporter writes the article for the text assignment. Wires, images and recorded interviews are pulled in as sources.
4. The article moves through the newsroom's workflow, for example draft, review, published. Each step names who may take it.
5. Publishing makes a signed snapshot: a fixed copy of the article that anyone can check has not been changed.
6. The snapshot goes out to the public site, to your own systems by webhook, or to anyone reading it through the API.

In simple mode the planning step is hidden. A reporter just writes and publishes, and the planning item is created behind the scenes.

Organisations and roles

Each newsroom is an organisation. Its data is sealed off from every other organisation. In the API an organisation is called a tenant.

The people in it are members, and each has one or more roles: owner, admin, publisher and editor. Roles decide which workflow steps a member may take and which settings they can change. See Security.

Documents

Everything Tidenda stores is a document with the same outer shape: an id, a type, a title, meta, content and links. The main types:

Type	What it is
Planning item	A story being planned, with its assignments
Article	The text that answers an assignment
Newswire	An item from a wire service or an in-house feed
Image, audio	A media file, its caption, credit and rights
Workflow	The statuses and steps a document type moves through
AI operation	A recipe for one AI task, such as translating a wire

Field-by-field shapes are in Document formats. Images and audio are described in Media.

Workflows and statuses

A workflow is the list of statuses a document can be in, and the steps between them. Each step can require a role, ask for confirmation, start a new version or run AI. Every document follows the current version of its workflow.

Four statuses mean the same thing in every workflow:

Status	Meaning
draft	Being worked on. Every document starts here.
usable	Published. A signed snapshot is made.
withheld	Ready but held back, for an embargo or a scheduled release. A signed snapshot is made.
cancelled	Withdrawn or dropped. Kept, and can be reopened.

Statuses you add yourself, such as review, sit in between. See Workflows.

Snapshots and signatures

When a document reaches usable or withheld, Tidenda freezes it into a snapshot and signs it. Images are signed when they are uploaded, and approved quotes from a recording are signed too. Anyone holding the public key can check that a published article, image or quote is exactly what the newsroom released. See Signatures and trust.

In and out

In. Members write in the app. Your systems push wires, planning items and articles through the API with a scoped key. See Wires and the Integration overview.

Out. Every published story can go three ways, and you can use any of them together:

• The public site. Turn it on and published articles appear on it. Add your own domain when you are ready. See Public site.
• Webhooks. Tidenda sends a signed request to your URL each time a document changes status. See Webhooks.
• The read API. Fetch published documents whenever you like. See the API reference.

Extending Tidenda

AI operations send part of a document to a language model and write the answer back: translate a wire, summarise an article, suggest a category. They run at the workflow steps you choose, or on demand. The included models run inside Tidenda, or you connect your own provider. See AI integrations.

Plugins add views and actions to the app itself, for example a desk overview of who is working on what. See Plugins.

Words used in these docs

• Organisation - one newsroom and its data. Called a tenant in the API.
• Member - a person in an organisation.
• Document - anything Tidenda stores: an article, a wire, an image.
• Status - where a document is in its workflow.
• Usable - the status that means published.
• Snapshot - the signed, fixed copy made when a document is published.
• Assignment - one piece of work a planning item needs.

Where next

• Running a newsroom: Workflows, then Adding AI to a workflow.
• Connecting a system: Integration overview, then Receive your first webhook.
• Building a plugin: Your first plugin.
• Reviewing security: Security, then Signatures and trust.