FAQ
FAQ
Plain answers. If a question you have isn’t here, email me and I’ll answer it — and probably add it to the page.
The product
What is Specter, exactly?
Specter is a hosted workspace for your published content. Connect your Shopify, WordPress, Ghost, or Webflow site in the browser and every post opens as clean, structured content. Run AI recipes across the whole archive, review every change as a diff before anything goes live, and publish back. There’s nothing to install. Subscribe now and your workspace opens with 500 free credits.
If you’d rather run the engine on your own machine — your content as plain .md files on disk — there’s a desktop and open-source edition too. See the local FAQ for that side.
Does Specter have AI built in, and what do credits cover?
Specter isn’t an AI itself — it’s the workflow and control layer that runs a model across your whole site and shows you every change before it ships. Browsing your content and reviewing diffs are free; only AI runs spend credits, and every workspace opens with 500 free — enough to see exactly what a recipe does across your archive. For now it’s credits-only; you don’t bring your own API key or model account.
What can I actually do with AI?
Anything a recipe can do across the whole archive at once, not one post at a time. Examples that work today:
- Rewrite or expand drafts with full awareness of the rest of your archive
- Translate every post into another language and publish each as a localized post
- Generate meta descriptions and SEO titles across your whole archive
- Weave accurate internal links during generation (because the AI can see what else exists)
- Enforce a style guide globally — heading hierarchy, brand voice, oxford comma
- Batch-fix tags, slugs, or frontmatter that drifted over years of editing
- Find duplicate intros, near-duplicate posts, or content that contradicts itself
- Pivot a product mention or marketing angle across thousands of pages in one pass
All of these are things the CMS editor makes you do one post at a time. In Specter they’re a single recipe plus a review.
Does Specter work with Shopify, WordPress, Ghost, and Webflow the same way?
Yes. The workflow is identical: connect the CMS, your posts open as clean content, run a recipe or edit by hand, review the diff, and publish back. The capability surface varies slightly by platform — Ghost cards versus WordPress blocks versus Shopify article HTML — but the core round-trip works the same way for all four. The Webflow connector is currently in beta.
See the Capabilities matrix for the precise current state of each connector.
Can I migrate content between CMSes with Specter?
Yes. Because Specter normalizes all four platforms to the same clean content shape, you can pull from one and publish to another — WordPress to Shopify, Ghost to WordPress, Webflow to Ghost. The Webflow connector is currently in beta.
It won’t carry over platform-exclusive features 1:1 — Shopify-specific metafields, Ghost-specific cards, WP custom blocks may need attention — but the body, metadata, tags, and slugs port cleanly. The Capabilities matrix is the reference for what crosses cleanly and what doesn’t.
Which versions does Specter support?
- Ghost 5.x and later, via Admin API. Self-hosted and Ghost(Pro).
- WordPress 5.6+ for Application Passwords. Self-hosted, WordPress.com Business and above, managed hosts (WP Engine, Kinsta, Pantheon, Pressable, etc.).
- Shopify any current plan, via Admin API and the Specter app.
- Webflow sites with CMS collections, via the Webflow API (beta).
If you’re on an older version and can’t upgrade, tell me what you’re running and I’ll see if there’s a workable path.
Sync and review
Will it overwrite my work?
Not without asking. Nothing touches your live site until you’ve seen a dry-run diff — which posts would change, exactly what changes in each, and anything flagged as a conflict. If both you and the CMS changed the same post since the last sync, Specter pauses and shows you both versions rather than silently picking one. And every publish keeps a snapshot behind it, so rolling back is a decision, not a recovery project.
Is browsing free?
Yes. Connecting a site, browsing your content, and reviewing diffs are all free — you only spend credits when you run an AI recipe, and every workspace opens with 500 free credits.
How fast does it work?
Connecting a site does a full initial read — a 500-post site might take around 90 seconds; a 5,000-post site a few minutes. After that, only changed posts move, so the workspace stays in step with your live site without re-reading everything each time. Publishing a reviewed change goes back to your CMS through its normal API.
What about images, themes, members, newsletters?
Specter works on text content — body, title, tags/categories, status, slug, feature image URL, excerpt, and the platform’s metadata equivalents. It doesn’t touch images (it references them by URL), themes, plugins, members, customers, orders, or newsletter systems. That’s by design: Specter does content well, and only content.
Images stay on whatever host they live on — your CMS’s media library, a CDN, an S3 bucket. Specter keeps the URL reference; the image itself never moves.
Pricing and access
What does the webapp cost?
The hosted workspace is live. Signing up costs nothing — your workspace opens with 500 free credits, and only AI runs spend them. Subscribe now.
Does it work for all four CMSes?
Yes. One workspace connects as many Shopify, WordPress, Ghost, and Webflow sites as you want, side by side. The Webflow connector is in beta. See the Capabilities matrix for the exact per-platform surface.
Is there a desktop or self-hosted version?
Yes. The desktop and open-source edition runs the same engine entirely on your own Mac, with your content as plain markdown files on disk. Spectersync Core is the signed, supported app at $99/year (desktop only — that price never applies to the webapp); the open-source DIY edition is free forever. Full details are in the local FAQ.
Privacy and security
Where does my content live in the webapp?
Connecting a site is read-and-write access to your own CMS — the same kind of API access a publishing tool needs. Your content stays yours, and nothing here makes your site harder to leave. For the precise data-handling answer per platform, see is my content private.
What if I don’t want anything hosted at all?
Use the desktop and open-source edition. It’s local-first: your markdown files live on your own disk, credentials sit in the macOS Keychain, and the only network calls are direct HTTPS from your Mac to your CMS (plus an occasional license check that sends a key and a hashed machine ID — never your content). The local FAQ covers it in full.
Is Specter open source?
The engine is. The open-source project is on GitHub and is free forever — that’s the DIY edition. The hosted webapp and the signed Spectersync Core app are the paid, supported ways to run that same engine.
Platform and roadmap
Do I need a Mac to use the webapp?
No. The hosted workspace runs in any modern browser — there’s nothing to install, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re on macOS, Windows, or Linux. The Mac requirement only applies to the desktop edition, which runs on macOS 13 (Ventura) or later, on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.
What’s the next platform connector?
Not committing publicly — but Sanity, Contentful, and Strapi are the most-asked. The next connector ships when one of them has the round-trip fidelity to deserve being on the Capabilities matrix without an asterisk.
Who builds Specter?
Specter is built by Axel Antas-Bergkvist under Brilliant Rebels (aabergkvist AB), an indie studio in Sweden. I’ve run SEO sites for 20 years and operate multiple revenue-generating Shopify, WordPress, and Ghost sites on this exact tool. I built it for my own work, then productized it. More on the about page.
Support and questions: support@spectersync.com.