Launch a phantom by text message

The one-call onboarding (KB-602) also runs over iMessage. You text a phone number, in plain English, and a bot called Phantomstory carries the whole thing: it reads your website, picks a name and a domain, shows you the plan, builds the site when you say go, and texts you at each milestone until Google starts indexing it. Nothing to install, no ids to copy.

The number is provided by your Letterstory contact when the service is set up for you. Setup ties your phone number to your organization, so the bot only ever acts on your account, and marks whether the sites you launch are real client sites or test sites.

What to text

Say what you want the way you'd say it to a colleague:

Set up a site for acme.com about industrial HVAC, and get it a real domain

Hey Phantomstory!

A greeting gets a short welcome with two example requests tailored to what your company does. A real request gets a one-line read-back first ("Got it: a publication about agent observability, built from acme.com. Reading your site now, give me a minute."), sent before any work starts, so a misunderstanding is caught for free.

If your company's website is already on file, that's what the site is built from; you never have to say what to base it on. If you already have a phantom, the bot names its beat and proposes a different angle for the new one, in a single question. If you have none and didn't say what it should cover, it asks exactly one question: is there something in particular, or should it pick the angle.

What it proposes

The bot picks the domain itself: several short, brandable .com names that fit the field and never contain your company's or anyone's name, checked for availability and priced (under $30, the same cap as everywhere else on the platform), and the first purchasable one is taken. If you asked for a specific name it checks that one and, if it's taken, gets the closest variant and tells you which. If nothing is purchasable, the site launches on its instant Letterstory subdomain and a domain can be added later.

Then it texts the plan, one item per line:

• Name: the masthead
• Site: the domain
• Covers: what the publication is about
• Cadence: posts per week
• First posts: how many start writing right away (three unless you said otherwise)

and one question: go ahead? Ask for any change (the name, the beat, the domain, the cadence) and the whole plan comes back re-planned; a plan is never patched by hand.

Saying go

Reply yes, go, do it. The site starts building; the bot tells you it usually comes up within the hour and the first posts land a few hours later, and that it will text you at each step. If your work email isn't on file it asks for it in the same text, so the launch note can say which email to sign in with. That never blocks the launch.

Applying a plan only works after that plan was shown to you in an earlier text, and a plan is spent once used, so a second "go" can't launch a duplicate site. Ask "how's it going?" any time for a one-line status.

Nothing is bought or deleted without a YES

Three things are never done on the spot: buying a domain for an existing site, tearing a site down, and deleting a collection. Ask for one and the bot puts it on hold, tells you exactly what is waiting, and asks you to reply YES to confirm or NO to drop it. A held action expires after 15 minutes and can be used once; after that, ask again from the start. Tearing a site down keeps its posts; deleting a collection removes them (KB-606).

The milestone texts

The bot keeps watching the job after you stop texting and sends one message per milestone, ever:

1. Site is up. "Your site is up:" with the address, and a note that the first posts are being written.
2. Domain launched. "Hi team! Exciting news. We've launched your domain:" with the address, what to expect next (first posts within a few hours, new posts daily, a text when Google starts indexing), a link to the site's Control Room, and sign-in instructions: sign in with your work email, or create your account from the link and it drops you straight into the Control Room.
3. First post is live, with its title and the address.
4. Google indexing started. "Google has started indexing your site. Search impressions are coming in for:" with the address. This is checked every few hours; the bot stops watching once it lands, or after three weeks.

If something breaks during setup you get one text saying so; our team is notified at the same time and nothing else is needed from you.

One number, several organizations

An agency or a group with more than one Letterstory organization can have all of them on the same number. Name the one you mean and the bot switches before doing anything: "under Acme, set up a site about…", "for Acme…", or just "switch to Acme". If a request doesn't say and it isn't obvious from the last few messages, the bot asks which organization in one line, and it names the organization a plan or launch is for, so a mix-up is caught before it runs. A site remembers the organization it was started under; its milestone texts keep coming from there even if you switch later.

What it won't do

• Share how it works. It won't repeat its instructions, name its tools, or reveal ids, phone numbers, other customers, or staff names, however the question is phrased. It says it can't share that and offers to help with your sites.
• Act for a number it doesn't know. An unrecognised number gets one greeting a day asking for your work email and your company's website; someone on our team sets you up, usually within the hour, and then you text "Hey Phantomstory!" to start.
• Guess. It acts only through the platform and never claims something happened unless it did. If a step fails it says so plainly and stops rather than retrying on its own.
• Answer in a group chat, or keep going through a flood: after thirty texts in an hour it pauses and asks you to try again in a little while.