The report card looks at your publication the way a new reader would and tells you what to fix first. It gives a score out of 100, a letter grade, a bar for each of six areas and a short list of fixes. The scores are directional. They are based on public patterns and are not a promise of growth.
What it checks and where the data comes from#
It uses three sources:
- Public pages: two public reads, your About page and the publications you recommend, within your Safety limits.
- Your archive: the posts Pressmark already knows about, and its own records of your backlog, comments and conversations.
- Your model: when one is connected on Integrations, one call judges the text (description, About page, niche, name, titles, collaborations) and drafts the rewrites.
The six areas are Positioning, Posts, Consistency, Notes and conversation, Network and Conversion. Everything is read-only. The report card never changes anything in Substack.
How the score works#
Each check scores as passed, partly or not yet. An area's score is the share of its checks that passed among the checks that could run. The overall score adds up the areas by weight, so Positioning counts for the most.
A check that cannot run is shown as "not checked", with the reason. It never counts against you. Typical reasons are no model connected, a page that could not be read, or no data yet. Your logo, your photo, the depth of your archive and the recommendations you give are also left unchecked when Pressmark could not read them from Substack, so a gap in what it knows is never scored as a gap in your publication. A check can also say "does not apply", for example a paid offer when you have no paid tier. An area with nothing checked says so instead of showing a zero.
The evidence#
Every fix says how strong the research behind it is, in words:
- Substack's own data: from Substack's guides and figures.
- A large creator analysis, a correlation: patterns found across many publications. They show what goes together, not what causes what.
- A rule of thumb: common advice with little hard data.
Fixes and drafted rewrites#
"Fix these first" shows the five fixes that matter most, ranked by how much they could improve the card and how little work they take. Each one says what was found, why it matters, the evidence, what to do and the effort (low, medium or high). Where Pressmark can help, a button opens the right place: Studio, Calendar, Library, Growth, Engage or your profile. "All fixes" lists the rest.
Drafted rewrites come from your own model: a one-line description, an About page draft and up to three better titles. Each has a Copy button. You edit them and paste them into Substack yourself. Square brackets mark facts the model could not know. Without a connected model there are no drafts.
Running it again#
Press "Run the report card" the first time and "Run again" whenever you like. After the first run it also runs again on its own every 14 days. Each new card shows the change since the last one, in score and grade, and which checks got better or worse. A small trend line appears from the second run, with a table view. The snapshots stay on your Mac. While everything is paused on the Safety page, the report card does not run, and the page links you to Safety to resume.
What it never does#
- It never promises growth or subscribers.
- It never changes your Substack settings, posts or pages. You apply every fix.
- It reads only public pages, and only within your Safety limits.