Smarter AI Assistant, Instant Directory Creation, and 3× Faster Pages

We've shipped a wave of updates that touch nearly every corner of MakeADir — from the AI Assistant getting new superpowers, to a radically simplified directory onboarding flow, to performance gains that make your pages feel snappier than ever. Let's dive in.

New AI Assistant Tools: Web Search & Post Search

The AI Assistant inside your dashboard just got two powerful new capabilities that make it far more useful for research and content creation.

Web Search enables the assistant to pull in fresh, real-world data from across the web. When you ask it to write a blog post about industry trends, enrich a listing with up-to-date details, or research a topic before drafting content, it now searches the internet and weaves those findings directly into the result — no more relying solely on its training data.

Post Search gives the assistant awareness of your existing content library. It can find related posts you've already published, understand what topics you've covered, and suggest internal links between articles. This is a big deal for SEO: internal linking keeps readers on your site longer and helps search engines understand your content structure.

Together, these tools turn the AI Assistant from a writing companion into a full-fledged research partner.

"Propose Next Post" — Your AI Blogging Strategist

Speaking of smarter blogging: the blog post editor now has a "Propose Next Post" shortcut. Hit it, and the assistant goes to work:

• It searches the web for trending topics and current angles in your niche
• It scans your existing posts to find gaps and avoid duplication
• It surfaces related past articles that deserve an internal link from the new piece

The result? A concrete, actionable post idea — with a working title, a clear angle, and links to your own content that you can weave in for a healthy SEO boost. No more staring at a blank editor wondering what to write next.

Instant Directory Creation: From Idea to Full Directory

This is the update we're most excited about. Creating a new directory used to require several manual steps: research categories, create them one by one, add listings, define custom attributes, hunt for logos, write descriptions. Not anymore.

The AI Assistant can now build an entire directory from a single idea. Here's how it works:

• Tell the assistant what kind of directory you want — "a directory of climate tech startups" or "a local guide to vegan bakeries in Austin"
• It uses web search to research the space and website import to pull real data from public sources
• It proposes a full category structure, populates listings with real information, suggests relevant custom attributes, extracts logos, and fills in rich text descriptions
• You review, tweak, and publish

What used to take hours now takes minutes. The assistant handles the research and the grunt work; you stay in the driver's seat.

Per-Page OG Image & Background Controls

A smaller but highly requested improvement: you can now set a static or dynamic Open Graph image and background on a per-page-template basis. Want your blog posts to have one OG image style while your category pages use another? Done. Prefer a static branded image for your homepage but dynamically generated ones for listings? Also done. This gives you fine-grained control over how your pages look when shared on social media and in link previews.

Performance: 2–3× Faster Server-Side Rendering

We've been quietly profiling and optimizing the server-side rendering pipeline, and the results are significant. Page loading speed on the server side has improved by a factor of 2 to 3 times across the platform. This means faster Time to First Byte (TTFB), quicker page paints, and a better experience for both visitors and search engine crawlers.

No configuration needed — every directory on MakeADir benefits from these gains automatically.

What's Next

We're continuing to invest heavily in the AI Assistant — these new tools are foundational, and we have more capabilities planned that build on web search and post awareness. On the performance front, we're not done either; there's more low-hanging fruit we're eager to tackle.

A note on AI Credits pricing: despite all these new AI-powered features, our credit pricing remains at its current beta rates. No changes, no surprises. You get to enjoy the expanded capabilities under the same generous allocation your plan already includes. When pricing does eventually graduate from beta, we'll give you plenty of notice.

As always, we'd love to hear what you think. Drop your feedback on the roadmap or join the conversation on Discord.

If you haven't yet experienced the v2.0 AI chat and rebuilt page builder, or you're curious about the recently launched Paid Membership Tiers, now's a great time to explore what MakeADir can do for your directory.