From The Plain Works Co., Ltd.
The Plain Works Content Pipeline
The Plain Works Content Pipeline is our internal publishing tool. It turns our own researched, fact-checked material into posts, card graphics and videos. After each piece clears our checks and approval rules, it publishes it to The Plain Works’ own social media accounts. We don’t offer it to anyone else, and it never acts on accounts we don’t own.
What it does
- Gathers source material from public feeds and our own research, then drafts a story.
- Makes the content: written posts, news-style card graphics, pins, and short and long videos.
- Waits for approval. Each piece must pass our automated checks and a separate blind review. A team member must also approve anything that goes out under a team member’s name, and must release each set of related videos, posts and pins before the posts go out.
- Publishes to our own accounts once cleared, through the services listed below. For X and TikTok it connects to nothing; a team member posts there by hand.
Connected services and why we request access
Content Pipeline connects only to accounts we own. It asks for the least access it needs to publish what we’ve approved. Each service has a dry-run mode, in which the tool records the request it would send, without credentials, and sends nothing. A post goes out for real only when that service’s live switch is on. A YouTube upload needs an explicit live flag, and every upload is private until a person makes it public in YouTube Studio.
| Service | Access requested | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Google / YouTube | Upload and manage our videos; read-only analytics accessyoutube., youtube, youtube., yt-analytics. | To upload approved videos to The Plain Works’ own YouTube channels as private, add their thumbnails and captions, and check that each upload is private. The analytics permission may be used to read our own channels’ analytics; the tool does not read them today. We don’t delete videos or touch any other channel’s data. |
Read and manage boards, read and write pins, read account detailsboards:read, boards:write, pins:read, pins:write, user_ | To confirm the connected account, find the board for a pin and create the pins the tool makes from our own content. Until Pinterest approves our API access, we upload pins ourselves with Pinterest’s bulk upload file. | |
Sign in and share postsopenid, profile, email, w_ | To publish approved posts and image carousels to the LinkedIn profile of a team member who signs in and authorizes it. Posts to our LinkedIn company page are made by hand. | |
Basic profile, content publishing and insightsinstagram_, instagram_, instagram_ | To publish approved card carousels, images, Stories and Reels to our own Instagram accounts. The insights permission may be used to read our own accounts’ insights; the tool does not read them today. | |
| Threads | Basic profile, content publishing and insightsthreads_, threads_, threads_ | To publish approved posts to our own Threads accounts. The insights permission may be used to read our own accounts’ insights; the tool does not read them today. |
| Facebook Page | Page access token | To publish approved photos, Reels and posts to our own Facebook Page. |
| Bluesky | App password (not our login password) | To publish approved posts to our own Bluesky accounts. |
| dev.to | API key | To publish approved articles to our own dev.to accounts. |
| X, TikTok | None. Not connected. | The tool has no connection to either. A team member posts approved items there by hand. |
How we handle Google user data
We use these YouTube permissions solely to upload and check videos we have produced for our own YouTube channels. We may also use the analytics permission to read those channels’ analytics. Our Privacy Notice describes the YouTube data we access, store and share. We do not sell Google user data, do not use it for advertising, do not use it to train generalized AI/ML models, and do not transfer it to others except as needed to provide this feature or as required by law. You can revoke access at any time from your Google Account permissions.
Data and privacy
Our Privacy Notice, hosted on this same domain, describes how we collect, use, store and protect data, including data from connected services.