Filling every empty text box with AI in Publish

A template full of empty boxes can feel like homework. The layout looks good, but every headline, intro and paragraph still needs writing. Fill the page with AI, one of the optional AI actions in Publish by Zaweba, drafts text for every empty text box on the page in one go, from a short description of what the page is for.

It uses your own AI account or a model running on your PC. With none set up, the action is greyed out and nothing changes.

How it understands the page

Publish describes each empty box to the model by its size, its place on the page and its paragraph style. That's what lets the drafts land in the right places. A wide box at the top styled as a heading gets a headline. A narrow box in the corner gets a short line. A tall box in body text gets a paragraph of a length that suits its size.

Paragraph styles matter here. A page built with proper heading and body styles gives the model much clearer signals than one where every box uses the same style, so templates and well-styled layouts get the best results.

Checking before anything goes on

Nothing is placed straight onto the page. Publish shows you the drafts first, box by box, and you can check each one, edit it, or untick it so that box is left empty. Only when you're happy do the drafts go on the page.

This is the step that makes the tool useful rather than risky. Read each draft, fix any facts it got wrong, and untick anything you'd rather write yourself, such as a personal welcome from the chair or the exact wording of a notice. The model only knows what your description tells it.

Writing a good description

Keep it short but full of facts. What the publication is, who it's for, and the details that must appear: the event, date, time, place, prices, contact name. For a newsletter page, list the stories you want covered, such as a report on the quiz night, a reminder about subscriptions and a welcome to new members. For a menu, describe the kind of food and the feel of the place.

Say the tone too. A cheerful school fair flyer and a sober notice of an annual general meeting need different voices, and a few words like warm, playful or formal make a clear difference.

Working page by page

The action works on the page in front of you, which suits multi-page documents. On a four-page newsletter, describe and fill the front page, check it, then move on to the next. That keeps each set of drafts focused and stops one long description trying to cover everything.

Afterwards, the page is ordinary text in ordinary boxes. Use the rewrite tools to make one paragraph friendlier or shorter, proofread the lot in UK English, or edit by hand. Every AI change is a single undo step, so the whole fill can be undone at once if it isn't what you wanted.

When it helps most

It's at its best on a fresh template, when the design is right and you need a strong first draft to react to. It's also good for quickly mocking up a layout to show a committee, so they can judge the design with realistic words in place rather than placeholder text, then replace those words with the real ones once they agree.

Fill the page with AI doesn't replace knowing what you want to say. It gives you something to edit rather than an empty page, and in Publish by Zaweba the final words, like the final layout, are always yours.