Arcline documentation: set up in minutes.

What Arcline is, and the three setup steps

Arcline looks after your website's visibility on Google and in AI answers such as ChatGPT. It reads every page, scores the result in plain words, tells you what to improve and, if you allow it, makes the safe fixes for you. Every change is checked on your live website and undone if it fails. You do not need technical skills, and nothing on your website changes unless you allow it.

This guide follows the order in which you will meet things. If you are new, read the first six sections and you are ready to go. For what each plan includes, see Pricing. For a tour of everything Arcline does, see Features.

1. 1
   Your website

   Type your website address, then prove the website is yours. This changes nothing on your website. See “Proving you own your website”.

2. 2
   Connect it (optional)

   Connect GitHub, WordPress or Ghost so Arcline can make fixes for you. If you skip this, Arcline only looks and tells you what to improve. You can connect later from your profile.

3. 3
   Start

   Choose how much Arcline may do, then press “Start reading my website”. It visits every page while you watch the progress. When it finishes, your dashboard opens on the Home page.

Creating your account. On the sign-in screen choose “Create account”, then enter your e-mail address and a password of at least 8 characters. If the form asks for an invite code, access is by invitation at the moment: enter the code you were given. Your websites stay private to your account.

Where things are. After setup, the left side of the screen (or the bottom bar on a phone, with the rest under “More”) has these pages:

The Free plan covers 1 website and Premium includes 3, with more for a fee. Where a feature belongs to Premium, the section says so, and “Plans, limits and billing” lists everything in one place.

Proving you own your website

Arcline only works on websites whose owner has confirmed them, because typing an address proves nothing. You do this once for each website. Any one of three ways is enough, and none of them changes how your website looks.

After you type your address, the screen shows a verification code and the exact text to use for each way. Copy the values from the screen with the Copy buttons: the code is unique to your website. In short:

1. 1
   Copy the line

   Press the Copy button next to “The line to copy”.

2. 2
   Open where you build your website

   Look for a box called Header code, Custom code or Code injection.

3. 3
   Paste it and save

   Cannot find the box? Send the page to whoever built your website. It takes them a minute.

4. 4
   Press “I've added it. Check now”

   Arcline looks for the proof and, if it finds it, moves you on to the next step.

The other two ways are under “Other ways to prove it's yours”. Press “Check now” after you add any one of them.

Reading the verification code. The code is a string of 32 letters and numbers that identifies your website to Arcline. In the header line it sits after content=. In the DNS record and in the file it follows arcline-verify=. Copy it rather than typing it.

Typed the wrong address? Under the proof, press “Typed the wrong address? Use a different website”, then “Yes, start again”. This only works while the website has not been confirmed.

Connecting your website: which way to choose

Connecting is optional, and it is the only way Arcline can change anything. Without it, Arcline still reads your website, scores it and gives you a to-do list with exact steps. Connect when you want fixes made for you.

During setup Arcline takes a quiet look at your public pages and marks the best fit with “Looks like yours”. Not sure how your website was made? Ask the person who built it.

Managing the connection. Open your profile and find the connection row. “Check connection” tests the login and the row shows when it was last checked. Open the row to see, in plain sentences, what the connection allows, to connect in a different way or to disconnect. Disconnecting erases the saved login. Arcline can still look at your public website.

Your secrets. What you paste is sent to Arcline's server only, stored encrypted and never shown back to you or anyone else. You can always cut the connection at its source as well: delete the token on GitHub, the application password in WordPress or the integration in Ghost. More in Security Practices.

Connecting GitHub

Use this when your website's code is stored on GitHub. You create a token that lets Arcline read and suggest changes to one repository, and nothing else.

1. 1
   Sign in to GitHub

   Go to github.com, click your picture at the top right and choose Settings.

2. 2
   Open fine-grained tokens

   At the bottom of the left menu click Developer settings, then Personal access tokens, then Fine-grained tokens, then Generate new token.

3. 3
   Pick only your website's repository

   Under Repository access choose Only select repositories and pick the repository that holds your website.

4. 4
   Set the two permissions it needs

   Under Permissions and Repository permissions, set Contents and Pull requests to Read and write. “Pull requests” is GitHub's name for suggested changes.

5. 5
   Optional: let it see build results

   Also set Commit statuses, Checks and Deployments to Read-only. Then Arcline can see straight away if your website's host fails to build a change, instead of waiting to find out. Everything works without them.

6. 6
   Generate the token and paste it

   Click Generate token, copy the long text GitHub shows you (it appears only once) and paste it into Arcline together with the name of your repository.

• Repository looks like owner/name. Pasting the full GitHub link works too.
• Branch is the one your website is published from. Leave it empty and Arcline uses the main one.
• Press Connect my website. If something is wrong, the screen says what to check.

What it can edit. HTML pages (including the index.html of Vite and Create React App websites) and Next.js App Router pages that set their title and description in a static metadata export, plus the robots.txt and llms.txt files and, on Next.js websites, new FAQ and landing pages. Metadata set by code that runs when a page is requested (for example generateMetadata) or by a script in the browser is recognised and reported as not editable instead of being guessed at, and you get exact steps for it.

Connecting WordPress or Ghost

WordPress. You create an application password, which is a separate password that only lets Arcline edit your pages.

1. 1
   Open your WordPress dashboard

   It is usually at yourwebsite.com/wp-admin.

2. 2
   Go to your profile

   In the menu on the left click Users, then Profile.

3. 3
   Create an application password

   Scroll down to Application Passwords. Type any name, for example “Arcline”, and click Add New Application Password.

4. 4
   Copy it once

   WordPress shows the password just once. Copy it and paste it into Arcline with your WordPress username. Spaces in it are fine.

What it can do. It depends on the role of the WordPress user: Arcline reads what that user is allowed to do. With the right to edit, it can change titles and page text (for links) and create drafts. With the right to publish, it can also publish. Fields kept by SEO plugins (Yoast, Rank Math, All in One SEO) are detected and read but not written, so search descriptions stay manual.

Ghost. You add a custom integration inside Ghost.

1. 1
   Open your Ghost admin

   It is usually at yourwebsite.com/ghost.

2. 2
   Add a custom integration

   Click the gear icon (Settings), then Integrations, then Add custom integration.

3. 3
   Name it

   Call it “Arcline” and click Create.

4. 4
   Copy two things

   Copy the API URL (your site's address) and the Admin API key (a long secret text with a colon in the middle) and paste them into Arcline.

What it can do. Titles, excerpts, links between pages, drafts and publishing, and Ghost's own SEO fields: the search description, the social-media title and text, and the preferred address.

After you connect, Arcline tells you if the login can only read. In that case try again with a login that is allowed to edit.

Choosing how much Arcline may do

You choose a level of access for each website. It is the master rule: whatever else is switched on, Arcline never does more than the level allows. There are five levels and a sixth choice, “No access”, that switches everything off. You pick one during setup and can change it any time in your profile, under “How much may I do?”.

In your profile, “No access” and “Full care” sit under “More choices”. During setup you choose between “Look only”, “Ask me first” and “Fix small things”.

How the level and the autopilot switch work together. The autopilot switch is separate from the level. It is on Home, in the side panel and in your profile.

Never, at any level. Arcline never changes prices, stock, checkout, orders, customers or payments on your website.

The pause-everything switch. In your profile, “Pause everything for my account” stops all automatic work on all of your websites at once: no scheduled checks, no autopilot and no changes. The same switch (“Automation”) sits on the page that lists your websites. Turn it off to resume. To stop just one website, use the autopilot switch or choose “No access” for it.

Autopilot and approvals

The autopilot is Arcline's routine (more on safety: is it safe to let Arcline change my website?). After each scan it works out which fixes would help most and acts within the access you gave. The Approvals page is where it asks you about everything it should not do alone. Arcline re-scans your website on a schedule (every week on Free, every 5 hours on Premium), and you can press “Check my site now” on Home for a check at once (once a day on Free, every 5 minutes on Premium).

What runs by itself (needs the autopilot on and “Fix small things” or higher, which is part of Premium):

• Page titles, search descriptions and social-media previews, drafted from your own pages (through GitHub and Ghost; WordPress allows titles).
• A preferred-address (canonical) link that points to the page itself, where one is missing.
• Search markup (structured data) built only from facts already on the page, on HTML and Next.js websites connected through GitHub.
• Links between your own pages, on WordPress and Ghost.
• Main headings, on kinds of pages where Arcline can edit them safely.
• An llms.txt helper file for AI assistants, through GitHub.
• Keyword wording in titles, descriptions and headings, when Arcline is confident in the new wording.

What always waits for you:

• Sensitive changes: a changed preferred address, hiding or showing a page to Google, edits to robots.txt. These need an “I understand” tick.
• New pages: a FAQ page, a landing page for a search, or an article. You read it first.
• Rewrites of wording that already exists, when Arcline is not confident enough in the new wording.
• Anything where Arcline could not draft trustworthy wording. It asks you to type what it should say.
• Kinds of change that were undone or failed often on your website. Arcline stops doing those by itself and asks.
• Anything that needs a higher access level than you have granted.

What only you can do. Some findings have no safe automatic fix: page speed changes, broken links and pages, redirects, sitemap problems, a missing About page, image descriptions and more. They appear under “Only you can do these” on Approvals, grouped by kind of work, with exact steps and a “Copy text” button.

Fixes per month. Every fix applied to your live website after your OK counts as one. The Free plan allows up to 10 a month, and Premium has no limit. The app shows how many you have used, and a fix that fails and is put back does not count. See “Plans, limits and billing”.

Limits and calm rules. These are the defaults:

It never repeats the same change. Arcline keeps a memory of what it did to each place on each page (the title, the search description, the main heading and so on) and follows these rules:

How a change reaches your website

Every change takes the same safe path, whether Arcline started it or you approved it. For a website connected through GitHub it looks like this:

1. 1
   Check and read

   Arcline confirms the change is allowed at your access level and reads the page as it is right now. If the page changed since the change was prepared, it prepares it again instead of overwriting someone's edit.

2. 2
   Save a before-copy

   It keeps a snapshot of the page so it can be put back exactly as it was.

3. 3
   Open a pull request

   On a new branch it changes only the one file and opens a pull request, GitHub's way of suggesting a change with a full record. Several fixes can travel in one pull request.

4. 4
   Merge

   It merges the pull request. If your repository only allows another merge method, it uses that. It never bypasses your protections.

5. 5
   Your host publishes

   Your host, for example Vercel, Netlify or GitHub Pages, builds and publishes the new version. This step is in your host's hands.

6. 6
   Live check

   Arcline reads the real public page and waits, patiently, until the new text shows. It then checks that nothing else on the page changed.

7. 7
   Done, or undone

   If everything matches, the change is marked Done. If not, Arcline puts the old version back through a revert pull request and checks that too.

For WordPress and Ghost the pull request, merge and publishing steps are replaced by Arcline saving the change through the platform's own connection, so your website updates straight away. The checks before and after are the same, and the old values are kept so they can be put back.

What you see while it happens. The Approvals page and Home show where each change is:

If the live check fails. The change is undone automatically and Activity shows it as “Put back”, with the reason. If someone else edited the page in the meantime, Arcline will not overwrite those edits. It says that it could not confirm the change and could not safely undo it, and checks again at the next scan. If the change turns out to be live, it is counted as done.

Undoing a change yourself. Open Activity, find the change and press “Undo”. Arcline puts the page back the way it was and will not try that change again. A brand-new page created in WordPress or Ghost starts as a draft and is not removed automatically.

Understanding your scores

Your overall health score is a number from 0 to 100 with a plain verdict: 90 and above is “Excellent”, 75 to 89 is “Good”, 55 to 74 is “Needs work” and below 55 is “Needs attention”. It is a weighted average of thirteen scores. A score with no data yet is left out and re-weighted, never counted as zero.

Open a card to see what to fix. It tells you how many things are waiting for your OK and how many can only be done by you, then lists the problems page by page. Each page carries a chip: “I'll do it”, “Needs your OK” or “Only you can do this”. Steps for the last kind are given once when they are the same for every page. “How this number is worked out” lists the parts of the score and how much each counts, how sure Arcline is about the number and when it was last measured.

Estimates. Some numbers are measured and some are best guesses. A guess carries the chip “An estimate”. Speed is the common example: until Google's full speed test has run, the number is Arcline's own estimate.

The Speed section on Scores gives a verdict (Fast, Could be faster or Slow), Google's speed score, how long the main content takes to appear, how fast your server answers, a list of what would make it faster, what real visitors experience, other pages and how the numbers changed over time. “Measure now” runs a fresh measurement.

How often scores update. Scores only change once your pages have been read again: on the next automatic re-scan, or when you press “Check my site again”. The line chart “How your health has changed” draws one point for each check.

Keywords, competitors and articles

The Keywords page has three tabs. Keyword ideas are on every plan. Checking real search results, competitors (3 per website) and the content studio (8 article drafts a month) are part of Premium. “Update my pages” changes your website, so it needs an access level that allows changes.

Keyword states. Each keyword shows one chip: “Done” (your page already says it), “Coming up” (Arcline will update it), “Only you can do this” (copy the wording into your website), “New page” (no page covers it yet, so Arcline will write one and ask first), “Later” (it changed recently, so Arcline waits) or “Covered” (another page already handles it).

How keywords are found. Arcline starts from what your pages are about and looks at what search engines suggest as people start typing. “Interest” is a best guess, never an exact number of searches. Rising and trending searches appear only when they clearly match your topics.

Competitors. You add the competitors you know, up to 3 per website on Premium. Arcline reads a few of their public pages, respects each website's rules about what may be read, and shows topics they cover that you do not. It does not look for competitors on its own, and it cannot see their private data, rankings or traffic.

Articles (Content). Arcline plans articles only for searches people make and your website does not answer yet. You can also press “Suggest a new article”. Each article moves along five stages:

1. 1
   Idea

   Arcline shows its plan first: who the article is for, the questions it will answer, an outline, a length range and pages of yours to link to.

2. 2
   Writing

   Press “Write it”. It takes about a minute and nothing goes on your website.

3. 3
   To read

   Read the article. Facts only you know, such as prices or names, appear as yellow blanks. Edit the text and press “Save and re-check”.

4. 4
   Draft

   With WordPress or Ghost, “Save to my website” creates a draft that nobody can see. Otherwise copy the article, or download it as a web page or as simple text.

5. 5
   Live

   “Publish” needs the “Publish for me” level. You confirm, Arcline makes it public and then checks that it really shows up.

AI-answer visibility

AI visibility has two halves: can AI assistants read your website, and what do they say about you when someone asks? For the background, see what AI visibility is. Both are on the Visitors page, under “AI assistants”. The scores “Ready for AI answers” and “AI assistants can find you” are on Scores and are part of the Free plan. The AI assistants view on Visitors holds the read check, which is on every plan, and the tracking of what assistants actually say. Premium tracks 25 questions per website every week, with history, and includes 150 AI checks a month (plus 40 for each extra website). Free gives one snapshot of 5 checks, once for each website address.

Can AI assistants read my website?

1. 1
   Open the check

   Go to Visitors, then “AI assistants”, and press “Check now”. It takes about 20 seconds.

2. 2
   How it works

   Arcline fetches your key pages the way the crawlers of ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google and Bing do, without running scripts, and compares them with what a normal browser gets.

3. 3
   Read the result

   You see “AI assistants can read your website”, or the list of those that are turned away and why: your host's bot protection, a robots.txt rule or text that only appears after scripts run.

4. 4
   Fix it

   Open the security or “bots” settings of your website host (or of a service such as Cloudflare), allow ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google, then press “Check now” again.

Questions customers might ask. Arcline prepares questions from your business: about you, “best” searches for your topics, comparisons with the competitors you added, real customer questions and, for local businesses, near-me searches. You can add your own, from 8 to 300 characters, within the 25 questions per website that Premium tracks.

Asking the assistants. “Ask them now” puts the questions to AI assistants that search the live web and stores every answer: which assistant, when, whether it mentioned you, whether it linked to your website, which competitors it named and which sources it used. On Premium, Arcline also asks every week and keeps the history, and every question asked uses one AI check from your monthly allowance. Open a question to read the answers.

How to read it. A question shows “Mentions you”, “Doesn't mention you” or “Couldn't answer”, and a chip “Links to your website” when the answer cites you. Whether an answer recommends you and its tone are rule-based guesses and are labelled that way. If an assistant stops citing you for a question, or mentions you far less than the week before, Arcline raises it as a change on Home and Activity.

Files and markup that help.

The visitor tracker

The tracker is one small line on your website. It counts visitors without cookies and shows who comes, where from and which pages they read. Basic visitor tracking is on every plan. The AI-assistant and bot view is part of Premium.

1. 1
   Copy one line

   Open Visitors. On a website with no visits counted yet, a card shows one script line that carries your own site key. Press “Copy the line”.

2. 2
   Paste it into your website

   Look for “Custom code” or “Header code”, paste the line there and save. It belongs in the header of your pages, like the ownership proof.

3. 3
   Check that it worked

   Press “Check my website”. Arcline opens your home page and confirms the line is there with the right key. Visits start to show up within a few minutes.

If the check says the line belongs to a different website, copy the line again and replace the old one. If it cannot see the line on your home page, make sure you saved and published the change, then try again.

What it collects. The address of the page, its title, the page the visitor came from, the screen width (to tell a phone from a computer) and the browser type, which is used only to tell phones from computers and people from crawlers. It sets no cookies and never stores IP addresses. Visitors are counted with an anonymous hash that changes every day, so someone who comes back on another day counts again. Visitors who send Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control are not counted. The tracker only accepts visits for your own website.

What you see. On “People visiting”: visitors, visits from search, visits from AI assistants, visitors each day (last 7 or 30 days), where they come from, the pages people look at, what seems to bring people from search and what they use. Search engines do not say what people typed, so those search words are best guesses, and the screen says so. On “AI assistants”: answers that used your page, pages read for AI search, people sent by AI, AI visits each day and one row for each assistant.

If no visit has been seen in the last day, the Visitors page says so and offers “Check setup”.

Activity, “coming up” and change alerts

Home shows what is happening now. The Activity page shows everything, day by day: fixes, undone changes, changes Arcline noticed and full checks of your website. Filter it by Everything, Fixes, Noticed or Checks.

Why, how and what I checked. Open this note on a fix to read why it was made, how the wording was written, where it went and what was checked afterwards. For websites connected through GitHub it links to the pull request. Undo puts the page back, after a confirmation, and Arcline will not try that change again.

Coming up. A short list of what Arcline plans to do next and when it will look again. It includes changes that are held back on purpose, such as a page that is still settling after a recent change, or a fix that waits for your OK. Nothing here is forgotten or done twice.

Things it noticed. By comparing each scan with the one before, Arcline spots pages that stop loading or become unreachable, pages that become hidden from Google, a robots.txt that blocks your whole site, changed titles, search descriptions, main headings and preferred addresses, removed search markup, content that shrinks sharply, new pages and a changed sitemap. Serious ones are marked Urgent or Important. Changes Arcline made itself are recognised and do not raise alarms. Slower pages and drops in AI mentions or citations are raised the same way.

When a fix did not check out on your live website, Home also shows how many changes were undone automatically, and says that nothing was left broken.

Several websites, and removing one

One account can look after several websites: 1 on the Free plan, and 3 on Premium with more for an extra fee (see “Plans, limits and billing”). Each website has its own proof of ownership, connection, access level, autopilot switch, scores, keywords, articles, visitors and activity. Websites never mix: every record is tied to your account and to one website, and nothing about one website is shown on another. The same address cannot be added twice to one account.

1. 1
   Open your list of websites

   Press “All websites” at the top of any page. The list shows each website as “Ready” or “Needs setup”, whether ownership is confirmed and whether it is connected or look-only.

2. 2
   Add a website

   Press “Add website” and repeat the setup: address, proof, connection and the first read.

3. 3
   Switch between them

   Open any website from the list. Your choices for one website do not change another.

The “Automation” switch on that list pauses automatic work for your whole account, all websites at once.

Removing a website. Open that website's profile and press “Remove this website” at the bottom. You are asked to confirm. Arcline then stops working on it and forgets everything it learned about it, including the saved website login. This cannot be undone. What is deleted:

• The pages that were read, the scans and the scores with their history.
• The findings, plans, to-do list and everything the autopilot kept for that website.
• The record of changes made, including the copies that let them be undone.
• Keywords, searches checked, competitors, AI questions and answers, articles and ideas.
• Visitor counts and the tracker key, so a counting line still on your website is no longer accepted.
• The saved connection, the access level, the schedules and any queued work.

If you only want Arcline to stop for a while, do not remove the website. Switch autopilot off, choose “No access” for it or use “Pause everything for my account”.

Plans, limits and billing

Arcline has two plans, Free and Premium. Your plan is decided on our servers from your payment status, and the limits are enforced there too, so a limit holds in the same way wherever you use Arcline. This section lists what each plan includes, how the usage meters work, what happens at a limit, and how to upgrade, add websites, downgrade and cancel. The Pricing page shows the same facts, and the Terms of Service and the Refund and Cancellation Policy hold the exact terms.

Usage meters. Where a plan has an allowance, such as the fixes on Free, or the AI checks and article drafts on Premium, the app shows how much you have used and how much is left. Monthly allowances count by calendar month and start again at the beginning of the next month. A fix is counted when it is applied to your website, and a fix that fails and is put back does not count. The one-time AI snapshot on Free is counted once for each website address and does not start again.

Upgrading to Premium.

1. 1
   Choose Premium

   Open Profile, then Plan and billing, and choose Premium, billed monthly or yearly. Yearly is 20% off twelve monthly payments.

2. 2
   Pay on Polar's checkout

   You pay Polar, our payment provider and merchant of record, in Polar's own hosted checkout. People in India pay in rupees and everyone else pays in dollars; Arcline works that out from your location. Polar collects and passes on sales tax or VAT where it applies, shows it before you pay and sends your receipt.

3. 3
   Come back to Arcline

   When you return from checkout, Arcline confirms your subscription with Polar and switches Premium on. Arcline never sees or stores your card number.

Adding websites. Premium includes 3 websites. To look after more, add extra websites under Plan and billing: each costs $2 a month, or $19.20 a year, and adds 40 AI checks a month to your allowance. Then press “Add website” as described in “Several websites, and removing one”.

Canceling. Open Profile, then Plan and billing, then Cancel my plan. Before you confirm, the app tells you plainly whether a refund applies and how much it is. Canceling stops all further payments and there is no cancellation fee. Within 7 days of your first payment you are refunded in full and Premium ends right away; after that, Premium stays until the end of the period you already paid for. If a renewal payment fails, Premium continues for a short grace period of 3 days and then ends.

Manage billing. In Plan and billing, Manage billing opens Polar's customer portal, where you can update your card and billing details. Canceling there inside the first 7 days is refunded automatically too.

Going back to Free. When Premium ends, which is at the end of the paid period or, if you are refunded under the money-back guarantee, right away, the account moves to the Free plan. If you have more websites than the Free plan allows, the extra websites are paused: they are kept and readable, nothing runs on them and nothing is deleted. The autopilot stops, and the access levels above “Ask me first” are not available until you return to Premium. Your scores, to-do lists and history are kept.

Money-back guarantee. Your first purchase of Premium, and your first purchase of extra websites, are each covered by a 7-day money-back guarantee: cancel within 7 days of the first payment (7 x 24 hours) and you are refunded in full, including any tax, automatically, with no form, no reason and no waiting for us. Polar sends the money back to the payment method you used, and it usually reaches your account within 5 to 10 days, depending on your bank. It is for a first-time purchase, once per account for each of the two. After 7 days you can still cancel at any time, but there is no refund for the unused part of the period, and renewal payments are never refunded, so cancel before the renewal date shown in the app. The Refund and Cancellation Policy has the full rules. If prices ever change, you get at least 30 days' notice and the change applies from your next renewal.

Troubleshooting

Still stuck? Contact us or write to thescalelab10@gmail.com. Premium accounts get priority e-mail support.

Glossary: plain words for SEO terms

More questions? Browse the FAQ and the full glossary, see Features, read the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy, or contact us.