Draft vs published

A story in Storyblok holds two states at once: the published version that visitors see, and the draft an editor is working on. Exacta mirrors both — but only on the preview branch, and only for a preview token.

What each token sees

Asking for a draft where none can exist is not an error. The request succeeds and returns published content, so a preview-enabled codebase can be deployed to production unchanged.

# Editor preview — drafts included
curl "https://api.exacta.im/v2/cdn/stories?token=$EXACTA_PREVIEW_TOKEN&version=draft"

# Production — published only, whatever you ask for
curl "https://api.exacta.im/v2/cdn/stories?token=$EXACTA_PUBLIC_TOKEN&version=draft"

Unpublished stories

A story that has never been published exists only on the preview branch. It is returned when you ask for drafts with a preview token, and is invisible otherwise — a public token gets 404 for it, and it is filtered out of list responses.

The _editable marker

Storyblok injects _editable markers into draft responses so its visual editor can map a rendered element back to a field. Exacta passes them through unchanged, because the editor bridge needs them.

• They are excluded from change detection, so a marker regenerating does not make a story look edited.
• Some spaces have markers baked into their published content as well. Those are copied faithfully — Exacta does not add or strip them.

Keeping preview fresh