thestory.run is a web app positioned as a "writing coach for corporate influencers," created by Swat.io GmbH in Vienna, Austria. Swat.io is a social media management tool already used by more than 18,000 people, with a team of 15 years of experience, 50 employees, and no external investment.
Core purpose: to help employees write posts on LinkedIn in their own name. The coach does not write posts or rewrite them for users; it only guides users through conversation to write on their own.
Main capabilities:
- Guided conversation: asks only one question at a time, digs into the story around what actually happened, and helps users discover the opinions they already have.
- Marking strengths: underlines the strong sentences users have already written.
- Providing structure: gives the narrative arc of an article for users to fill in with their own words, rather than giving a draft for users to approve.
- Editor role: after writing, the coach switches to editor and marks which content supports the post and what can be tried to improve.
- Weekly plan and reminders: provides a weekly to-do list, topic suggestions, a publishing streak, and daily reflection prompts to help maintain publishing rhythm.
- Team coordination: administrators can set a topic and time window (such as hiring, product launches, conferences), and the coach integrates it into each person's weekly plan; the team calendar shows who is posting what and which days no one has claimed; members can voluntarily share results and receive encouragement from colleagues.
- Privacy: each person's ideas, drafts, conversations with the coach, and personal plans remain private at the data layer, and teammates can only see coordination information.
- Publishing: can be published manually and then reported to the app, or published by the app after explicit user action.
How to use: users log in with a work email, start from a rough idea, converse with the coach, and write the post themselves; they can start individually and invite the team when ready.
Pricing: teams of five or fewer are free forever, with no credit card and no trial countdown; from the sixth person onward, each coaching session costs 1 euro plus tax, and people, channels, and all features are always included. Prices are in euros, and at checkout local currency payment is available in more than 150 countries, converted by Stripe at exchange rates with a small currency fee.
Special feature "cheat mode": this is the only place where the coach is allowed to write the post for you, and it requires the user to actively activate it on a work already started. The coach writes based on your rough ideas, conversation, retained sentences, agreed structure, and a small number of published posts, consuming a small monthly quota (one cheat per four posts, up to three per month). That post is permanently marked as written by the coach and does not count toward your progress.
Use cases: suitable for people who post in their own name at work, often called corporate influencers, including founders, salespeople, recruiters, engineers, and experts; it is also suitable for companies that want teams to speak collectively on the same topic.
Limitations: thestory.run is not an employee advocacy platform and will not send finished posts to employees to repost; nor is it an AI ghostwriting tool, and what you publish is what you wrote (except for cheat mode). Missing information: no details are provided on multilingual support, specific interface screenshots, mobile apps, or integrations with other platforms.
