--- title: Exploring Topics description: Give visitors topic pages that pair a written overview with every matching artifact, and keep those overviews accurate and fresh. section: guides order: 20 updated: 2026-07-10 verified: 2026-07-10 related: [guides/public-discovery, guides/ai-settings, guides/ai-tools-and-provenance] features: [explore] --- # Exploring Topics You'll set up topic pages that combine a written overview with matching artifacts, generate overviews with AI when none exist, and keep them current. The Explore page lives at `/{your-institution}/explore`. A visitor picks or types a topic — a person, place, event, or subject — and gets one page with a short overview article on top and every matching artifact below it, with the full set of browse filters. The topic stays locked while the visitor narrows the results. ## What visitors see - **Without a topic**, the page shows a topic search box and chips for topics that already have a published overview. Only published, public articles are suggested. - **With a topic**, the page shows the overview article for that topic — if one exists and is published — above the matching artifacts. AI-written overviews carry an **AI Generated** badge. Overviews can include small captioned thumbnail images of specific artifacts from your collection, with the text wrapping around them; hovering a thumbnail shows the artifact's title and date, and clicking it opens that artifact in a new tab. You can edit an overview's images — caption, size, alignment — like any other content; see [Editing Website Content](/docs/en-US/guides/website-content). - **If no published overview exists**, visitors see the results with a short note that no overview has been written yet. Nothing generates automatically on a public visit. When your institution has end-user generation turned on (and your AI credit balance can cover a generation), signed-in visitors see a **Generate overview** button, and anonymous visitors see a **Sign in to generate one** prompt. Overview articles are ordinary wiki articles. The same article is reachable from the wiki and from Explore; there is no separate copy to maintain. ## Open Explore from search Two entry points hand an existing context to Explore: - On the **Browse** page, an active search query shows an **Explore this topic** button that carries the query over. - On a **wiki article**, **Explore this topic** opens the Explore page for that article's title, pairing the article with matching artifacts. ## Generate a topic overview When a topic has no overview, anyone with an account can create one with AI. The generator resolves the topic against your controlled vocabulary — subjects, object types, genres, cultures, events, and places — plus full-text search, ranks the matching public artifacts by curatorial and visual interest, and writes a short overview grounded in the top matches. It can embed images of the most illustrative artifacts inline, and it saves the result as a **published, public wiki article**. The next visit to the same topic renders it instantly — it is now pre-written content, not a repeated AI call. Who can generate: - **Institution admins** — always. - **Everyone else with an account** — including editors, members, and signed-in visitors from outside your institution — only when the **Explore overviews** toggle is on under **Admin → Settings → AI & Cost Controls** ([AI Settings](/docs/en-US/guides/ai-settings)). The toggle now controls whether your institution participates in end-user generation at all; with it off, only admins can generate. - **Anonymous visitors** — never. They see a sign-in prompt instead (when the toggle is on). Reading an existing overview is always free and public. Costs stay predictable: - **First requester pays.** A topic generates once; everyone after that reads the saved article. Two people requesting the same new topic at the same moment share a single generation. - **Requests are rate limited.** Non-staff users can request up to 5 new topics per hour. - **Regeneration stays staff-only.** Once a topic has a published overview — or a draft in progress — non-staff requests won't touch it; only editors and admins can replace existing text. - **Low credits hide the option quietly.** When your AI credit balance can't cover a generation, the generate button and sign-in prompt disappear for everyone — visitors just see that no overview exists yet, with no mention of credits. Admins with **Admin mode** turned on see a notice on the topic page explaining that generation is unavailable until credits are added. :::info Each generation is a metered AI run billed to your institution's AI credits. Staff generating over an existing article **replaces its text and publishes it**. ::: ## Curate or edit an overview Generated text is a starting point, not a final exhibit label. Editors and admins see an **Edit this article** action on the Explore page that opens the article in the content editor, where you can rewrite the text, change the summary, or set the status. Publication status is respected everywhere: - A **draft** article never appears on the public Explore page or in the topic suggestions. - Staff visiting a topic whose article is in draft see a notice that an unpublished draft exists, with a link to edit it — the public still sees "no overview yet." - Generating a new overview for that topic replaces the draft and publishes the result, so finish editing a draft before regenerating. AI-generated overviews keep full provenance like other AI content ([AI Tools and Provenance](/docs/en-US/guides/ai-tools-and-provenance)). ## Keep overviews fresh Overviews describe your collection, and collections change. From **Admin → Content → Wiki** tab, open **Freshness analysis** to review every wiki article sorted stalest-first. Age is measured from each article's last update; articles untouched for more than 180 days are flagged **stale**. For each article you can: - **Edit** — open it in the content editor and revise by hand. - **View** — read the public article. - **Regenerate** — rewrite it with AI against your current holdings. This is a metered AI action, and it replaces the article text and publishes it. Nothing regenerates automatically. Freshness is advisory: the flag tells you where to look, and you decide whether an article needs a manual refresh. ## Limits to know - Topic queries are capped at 500 characters and matched case-insensitively, so "Main Street" and "main street" resolve to the same article. - Overviews are grounded in your institution's **public**, general-audience artifacts; restricted or sensitivity-flagged material is never quoted, cited, or pictured. - Inline artifact images are verified against your actual holdings — a reference the AI invents is removed before the article is saved. - Non-staff generation requests are limited to 5 new topics per user per hour. - The freshness list shows up to 500 articles.