How the broadcast planner works

The planner's job is reaching a group of people with one piece of news without sending the same private message to many of them, which X's rules don't allow. It prepares text. You decide where it goes and send it yourself.

What you type

The planner asks for five things, and only the first is required:

• The announcement, in plain sentences, the way you'd say it.
• A link, if there's a page with details.
• Up to two hashtags. More than that looks like spam to readers and to X.
• Who the group is, such as "volunteers" or "members," used in the chat greeting.
• What people should do: reply, RSVP, read, pass it on, or nothing.

As you type, all four versions update in place. Nothing is sent over the network; the page doesn't even have a server-side component.

Version 1: the public post

This is the version almost every announcement should start with, because your followers already opted in by following you.

The planner adds your call to action, link and hashtags after the text, then counts the result the way X does for standard accounts: 280 characters maximum, every link counted as 23 characters whatever its length, and emoji and CJK characters counted as 2. If the whole thing doesn't fit, it trims your text at the last whole word that fits and adds an ellipsis, keeping the link and call to action intact. The meter turns amber near the limit and red over it.

Version 2: the group chat message

This version is for a group chat that people joined, like an XChat group with an invite link. It opens with a short greeting to the group, includes your full text and link, and ends with a request worded for a conversation ("Reply in this chat so we know you saw it").

Chats have no tight character limit, so the meter counts words. Past about 120 words it suggests cutting down, because group messages are read on phones and long ones get skimmed. The tip under it repeats the one rule that matters here: send it once to the group, never as copies to many people.

Version 3: the reply thread

When your announcement is too long for one post, a thread keeps it all public. The planner splits the text at sentence boundaries into posts that each fit within 280 characters including a counter like "(2/3)". If a single sentence is too long, it breaks that sentence between words. The link and hashtags go into the last post if they fit, or a final post of their own.

Post the first part, then reply to your own post with each next part. If the whole announcement fits in one post, the planner still suggests a short second post with the details link or an invitation to ask questions in replies, which keeps questions under the announcement where everyone can see the answers.

Version 4: the List note

This is the shortest version: the first sentence of your announcement, trimmed to 100 characters with a short call to action. That's the length X allows for a List description, and it also works as a pinned note at the top of a group chat or as a bio-line update.

Lists became more useful as group tools after X shut down Communities in 2026. A public List of your members, with a one-line description and your chat's invite link, gives a group a public front door. Our Lists guide explains the setup.

What the planner does not do

It doesn't log in to X, post, schedule, send messages, collect addresses or track you. It doesn't add the same text to multiple chats or accounts. These aren't missing features. Each of them would either require your X credentials or encourage exactly the duplicate and bulk messaging that X's spam policy prohibits.

It also can't know your account's exact limits. Premium accounts can post longer text, and X changes its counting rules from time to time. Treat the meter as a close guide and X's composer as the final check.

Getting better results

The planner handles length. The wording is still yours. Two quick improvements make the biggest difference: put the news in the first sentence, since that's what the List note and the trimmed post keep, and give people one clear thing to do. The message templates guide has eight starting points.