Using someone else's post as a reference

Paste a link and ask for something in your voice

Saw a post you like? Paste the link into chat and say what you want from it — "write me something using this hook", "same structure, our topic". The AI reads the post and builds from its shape, not its words.

Links work for:

• Instagram reels (it reads the spoken transcript and the caption) and carousels (it reads the slides)
• TikTok videos
• YouTube videos and Shorts
• X posts — it reads the words and the engagement
• Facebook posts from public Pages
• Any public web page — an article, a blog post, a landing page

Facebook works for Pages, not for people

A public Page post reads fine from a link. A personal profile, a private group, or a deleted post does not — Facebook only shows those to someone signed in with access, and no link can get round that. You'll be told which happened rather than handed an empty answer, and pointed at the two routes below.

For LinkedIn and Threads, use one of two other routes

These two need a login to read a single post, so a link gives us nothing. Two ways round it, and which is better depends on the post:

• Copy the text and paste it into chat. Usually best here, since LinkedIn and Threads posts are mostly words. Select the post, copy, paste. Faster than screenshotting several slices of text.
• Screenshot it into The Stash. Best when the reference is visual — a carousel, a design, anything where the layout carries the meaning. The Stash reads a screenshot from any platform, because a screenshot doesn't care where it came from.

So it's a missing shortcut rather than a missing ability: every platform can be used as a reference, and only some of them accept a bare link.

What it takes from a reference, and what it won't

Three things: the format (carousel, video, text), the angle (what it's actually about), and the shape of the opening (a POV, a fill-in-the-blank template, a question).

Trend formats are fair game even though they're words. "POV:", "I was tired of ___, so I ___", "Patiently waiting for ___" are patterns lots of creators use — using one is joining a shared format, like starting a joke with "a man walks into a bar".

What it won't reuse is someone's own writing: their caption about their business, their story, their examples. Those get replaced with yours.

When a reference gives it a template, it'll say which template it read before using it — so if it's misread which way round the blanks go, you can correct it in one line instead of finding out in the finished post.

Your market analysis refreshes itself monthly

When you set up, SocialStache analysed your competitors, your niche and your own best-performing posts. That analysis shapes everything it writes for you — so left alone for a year, it'd be writing for the market you had a year ago.

Once a month it quietly re-runs both: what's working in your space, and what's working for you. Nothing to trigger and no email about it. Settings → Brand shows when each was last refreshed.

If a refresh can't complete — an account went private, a platform didn't respond — your previous analysis stays exactly as it was, and the date tells you so rather than pretending it updated.

You can turn it off in Settings → Brand, beside the analyses themselves. Worth doing if you're happy with your output and would rather it stayed still; otherwise leaving it on keeps your content tracking what's working now.