Keywords and content

These tools cover the research-to-draft path: discover keywords, check whether interest is rising, group them into topic clusters, turn one into a researched brief, and generate an article from that brief for a human to review. Nothing here publishes. Publishing is a separate, deliberate step.

The table above is generated from RankX AI itself rather than written by hand, as at 19 August 2026 (source 377ef780). When the product changes, this page changes with it.

The workflow, in order

graph LR
  A[research_keywords] --> B[save_keywords]
  B --> C[link_keyword_to_cluster]
  C --> D[create_content_brief]
  D --> E[get_content_brief]
  E --> F[generate_article]
  F --> G[get_content_item]
  G --> H[A human reviews and publishes]

Each arrow is a decision point rather than an automatic hand-off, and two of the steps take minutes rather than seconds.

Discovery and trends

research_keywords discovers related keywords for up to twenty seed terms with volume, cost per click, competition and trend. It spends only for a fresh discovery: repeating a recent search inside the cache window is free.

There is no status tool for it, by design. If it reports that it is still running, call it again with the same seeds: the call is self-converging and safe to retry without spending twice.

get_keyword_trends is different in shape. It covers up to five keywords, and a fresh analysis is asynchronous: it returns a task id, and you poll get_keyword_trends_status until the data is ready. A repeat inside the cache window returns the data immediately and free. Related queries only come back for a single-keyword request.

Reading is always free, so polling costs nothing.

Topic clusters

list_topic_clusters reads a Website's clusters with their linked counts. A cluster is RankX AI's single source of truth for how keywords, tracked prompts and content group into a subject, so it is the join between the research side and the measurement side.

link_keyword_to_cluster attaches an already-tracked keyword to one. It is attach-only and idempotent: an existing link is never modified, so a retry cannot demote a link that already exists.

There is no tool that creates a cluster, and that is not an oversight: cluster structure is a decision about how the business describes itself, and it is made in the product.

Briefs

create_content_brief creates a brief for a primary keyword and starts its background research. The research is free; generating the article from the brief is the priced step, and it is separate on purpose.

Poll get_content_brief until the research completes. It returns the brief in full: primary and supporting keywords, the reader questions it should answer, the angle, the outline and the status.

Both brief tools are gated on the content-generation plan feature, so an account whose plan does not carry it will not see them listed at all.

Article generation

generate_article is the second dispatch-and-poll pair. It returns a content item id immediately, generation runs in the background over a few minutes, and you poll get_content_item until the status is ready for review.

Four properties worth knowing before you call it:

It needs a brief with completed research. A brief whose research has not finished is refused before any credits are reserved, so a premature call costs nothing.

It approves a draft brief as part of the step. A confirmed generate is taken as approval of the brief it is generating from.

Its price is tiered by length, and the tool's own description carries the current figure. This documentation does not print prices, because rates are versioned and republishable.

It does not publish. The draft lands in Content Studio for a human to review. Publishing to a connected site is a separate group of tools, under a different scope, with a dry run of its own.

Reading a draft back

list_content_items returns items with status, target keyword and quality scores. get_content_item returns one in full: the body as plain text, meta title and description, target keywords, quality and GEO scores, and counts of fact-checked claims and internal links.

A null score means not yet computed, not zero. A null body means the article has not been drafted yet, which is what you will see while a generation is still running.

Example prompts

"Research keywords around 'ai visibility tracking' and show me the ten with the best volume-to-competition ratio. Do not save anything yet."

"Save the five keywords I just picked for tracking, then link them to my 'AI search' topic cluster."

"Check the search trend for 'generative engine optimisation'. If it is still processing, wait and check again."

"Create a content brief for 'how to appear in AI answers', then tell me when the research is done and summarise the outline."

"Generate an article from brief X. Confirm the cost with me first, then poll until it is ready and show me the first three paragraphs."

Where to go next

• Content briefs for the workflow in the product.
• Publishing to WordPress for what happens after review.
• Credits and metering for how the spend tools are charged.