newsjack-detector

name	newsjack-detector
description	Monitor current news and reaction signals, then decide which are credible newsjacking opportunities for a client. Uses the local monitoring engine for evidence, but the skill owns PR judgment, brand safety, standing, decay, angle fit, and handoff.
when_to_use	User wants to monitor news for pitchable hooks, find newsjacking opportunities, react to breaking industry news, watch competitors/topics, or decide whether a current signal is worth turning into an angle or reactive comment.

Newsjack Detector

Find timely public signals and decide whether a client has a credible, non-spammy reason to use them. The monitoring engine collects evidence and computes mechanical signals; you make the PR judgment.

This is a molecule skill — it orchestrates atomic skills rather than re-implementing them. Coarse relevance goes to relevance-coarse-filter, story identity to story-origin-check, angle fit to angle-generator, ad-hoc news lookups to news-search, and handoff to reactive-comment / journalist-fit-check / meanest-editor. Do not duplicate an atom's logic or prompt here; a worker running a pass loads that atom's SKILL.md directly, so the atom stays the single source of truth.

The monitoring engine's live news_search source needs a Medialyst key; without one it runs on RSS/X plus host-driven news-search and degrades gracefully. Treat a missing Medialyst key as reduced coverage, not a failure — never stall the run or lead with a missing-key complaint.

Runtime Mode

Newsjack Detector has two runtime modes:

• Full Mode: Use this in Claude Code, Codex, OpenClaw, Hermes, or another capable agent harness with shell, filesystem, network, and local CLI access. Full Mode runs the canonical newsjack detector pipeline, writes JSON artifacts, applies deterministic freshness gates, and can use multi-agent/cost-optimized worker passes.
• Limited Mode: Use this in Claude.ai chat, ChatGPT chat, Claude Cowork, or any restricted runtime without shell/filesystem/CLI access. Do not attempt curl, npm, or on-demand CLI installation. Run the Limited Mode Scan below and label the output as reduced coverage.

Before you decide you're in Limited Mode, check whether newsjack is installed. It ships as a prebuilt, bundled binary — you do not need Go, a compiler, or any build/install step to run it. Never look for a Go toolchain, and never declare the CLI "missing" or tell the user they need a "Go environment" without running this check first:

1. Run newsjack --version. If it prints a version, you're in Full Mode — use plain newsjack ... for every command.
2. If newsjack isn't on PATH, try the bundled location ~/.newsjack/bin/newsjack --version. If that prints a version, use that full path in place of newsjack everywhere below.
3. Only if both fail (and you genuinely have no shell) are you in Limited Mode.

The bundled binary is almost always already installed — assume Full Mode and verify, don't assume it's missing.

Required Workflow (follow in order)

Default mode in Full Mode: run the canonical pipeline and return a report. This skill exists to produce a freshness-gated newsjack report, including for scheduled/cron runs. Execute by default — only drop into discussion/planning when Step 2 is blocked. In Limited Mode, run a disclosed reduced-coverage scan instead.

1. CHECK DOCTRINE. If skills/ETHICS.md or skills/WHY-NOT-SPAM.md exist, follow them. This skill refuses tragedy hooks, fabricated standing, fake urgency, and spray-and-pray output. These blocks are absolute and override every later step.

2. ANCHOR THE CLIENT — ASK FIRST ONLY IF BLOCKED. Identify company, topics, competitors, spokespeople, standing, and client-specific exclusions, from a profile JSON or plain-text context.

   • No profile and no usable client context → ask for it before running. Never invent profile facts.
   • Genuinely ambiguous (which client? which topic? one-off vs recurring?) → ask one clarifying question, then proceed. Otherwise do not stall the run.
   • Missing standing is not a blocker: monitor, but mark opportunities weak/no-standing.
   • Load the client brief. Read the monitor's brief.md (its path is surfaced as brief_path by monitor run/monitor status, or it sits next to the profile). It is the source of truth for what this client will and won't pitch and how to present the scan — see Client Brief below. An empty/template brief carries no rules.

3. PICK THE RUN SHAPE.

   • Restricted chat / no CLI / no filesystem → Limited Mode Scan below.
   • One-off / "what's moving on X" → Quick Run below.
   • Real judgment, agent run, or scheduled job → Canonical Pipeline below (the default for any output a human or pitch will rely on).
   • Recurring / cron feed monitoring → Canonical Pipeline plus the recurring rules in Freshness Gate (--feed-only --new-only --max-age-hours 24, hard freshness gate).

4. RUN THE PIPELINE. Execute the chosen path end to end. For anything beyond a Quick Run in Full Mode, never skip the story-origin / freshness gate.

5. JUDGE — NEVER TRUST MECHANICS AS PERMISSION. routing.queue_priority and story_size are recall pressure, not pitch permission. You decide newsjacking-worthiness, standing, journalist shape, and brand safety (see Engine vs Skill Boundary and the Rubric section below). Gate angle fit through angle-generator.

Engine vs Skill Boundary

The Go CLI owns (mechanical, deterministic):

• ingestion, dedupe, clustering, novelty tracking
• mechanical scores only: freshness, source agreement, novelty, profile match, source quality, momentum, major-news weight
• deterministic story-size scoring from news-search metadata: log-scaled estimated monthly traffic + domain authority, with coverage spread across independently surfaced domains. When authority metadata is missing for a recognized major outlet, the engine may use a low-confidence known-outlet fallback. When publication metadata is otherwise sparse, the engine may attach a low-confidence story_size.attention_hint from deterministic source signals such as X News clusters, major public actors, and high-stakes event terms; this is recall pressure, not proof of magnitude.
• deterministic hygiene filtering for docs/help/product/SEO pages
• coarse-relevance application via newsjack filter-apply, plus two recall guards: a big-story guard that upgrades any reject of a high/major story_size signal to monitor_only (big_story_recall) — the cheap pass can never hard-drop a big story — and a profile-match guard that upgrades reject/no_profile_bridge to monitor_only when detector/profile evidence already matched the client, a competitor, or a profile term
• deterministic freshness gating via newsjack origin-apply
• operational routing: lane, queue priority, threshold-demotion flag
• deterministic safety flags

You own (PR judgment):

• whether the signal is newsjacking-worthy and whether the client has standing
• same-story / original-coverage judgment (via story-origin-check)
• final decay explanation from freshness_gate
• journalist shape, brand-safety judgment, and handoff to the next skill

Never treat routing.queue_priority as permission to pitch — it is only operational queue order.

Client Brief

Each monitor may carry a brief.md — a prose, user-owned statement of what this client will and won't pitch and how they want the scan presented. It is the source of truth for client pitch/output policy; the profile JSON governs collection, the brief governs what gets pitched and shown. The CLI only creates and surfaces the file (monitor init scaffolds it; brief_path is reported by monitor run/monitor status); it never parses it — reading and applying it is yours.

• Where it binds: triage and report rendering — never collection. Keep retrieval and the coarse pass brief-agnostic so nothing is dropped before judgment; the brief only decides what an already-collected, already-fresh item is allowed to be and how it's shown.
• Never pitch rules are hard: an item matching one can never be pitch_ready. A non-big item drops to watch (client_policy_exclusion); a fresh high/major item stays big_story with off_policy: true (the never-drop doctrine still holds — surface it, don't hide it). newsjack-triage enforces this.
• Audience / We pitch set the standing altitude: topical overlap is not pitchability. A story can be on-topic and still off-brief.
• How to surface is presentation only: collapse a section to a disclosed count, never silence it. Disclose what the brief held back (count + reason) so nothing is hidden.
• Feedback updates the brief. When the user reacts to a run — "too policy-heavy," "stop showing me X," "this is exactly right" — propose an edit to brief.md (a new We never pitch rule, a How to surface line, or a dated Example) so the policy is captured durably, not just for this run. Confirm the edit. An empty/template brief means run with defaults.

Profile Setup File

The monitor profile JSON is the source of truth for collection setup: a focused set of short broad beat topics, search terms, competitors, feeds, standing, spokespeople, and exclusions. Prefer 6-8 core 2-3 word topics, with one-word topics allowed when natural. If the user wants to change what the monitor looks for, edit the profile JSON rather than generating one-off retrieval terms during a detector run.

• Installed monitors keep the setup file at ~/.newsjack/monitors/<slug>/profile.json; brief.md sits next to it.
• Direct detector runs use the file passed with --profile.
• Fixture profiles live under fixtures/newsjack-detector-agent/profile.<slug>.json.

Use newsjack-monitor-setup when the user wants to create or materially revise a profile. Collection feedback such as "watch broader accounting firm news" belongs in profile.json (topics / search_terms / feed_urls): put 6-8 core broad beats in topics, and put broad retrieval terms plus named platforms/products/regulators/competitors in search_terms. Pitch-policy feedback such as "don't pitch policy stories" belongs in brief.md. After editing profile.json, rerun a mock or fixture smoke before trusting the next live run.

Limited Mode Scan

Use this path when running in Claude.ai chat, ChatGPT chat, Claude Cowork, or any runtime without shell/filesystem/CLI access.

Limited Mode is useful for PR judgment, not canonical monitoring. It does not create saved monitors, write JSON artifacts, keep seen-state, run source ingestion, apply the Go freshness gate, or use cost-optimized worker passes.

1. Anchor the client. Use a pasted profile, user context, website summary, or plain-text description. If there is no usable client context, ask for it.
2. Collect a small evidence set. Use pasted links first. If the runtime has web/search tools, search recent news for the profile topics, competitors, named regulators/platforms, and any explicit user topic. Keep the query list short and disclose it.
3. Build candidates manually. For each candidate, keep title, source, URL, apparent publication time, why it matched the client, and any safety concerns. Do not invent publication dates, outlet names, source counts, or traffic/authority scores.
4. Verify freshness where possible. Prefer primary/source-of-record pages and independent coverage. Treat unverified dates as freshness_unverified; do not pitch them as time-sensitive.
5. Apply PR judgment. Use this skill's doctrine, story-origin-check reasoning where possible, newsjack-triage for standing/routing, and angle-generator for any pitchable item.
6. Return an inline report. Use the same sections as Full Mode: Pitch-Ready, Big Stories Worth a Look, Watch / Context, plus a short Limited Mode Caveat that names missing capabilities and searches/evidence used.

Never call this a canonical detector run. If the user wants saved monitors, scheduled scans, deterministic freshness gates, local artifacts, or recurring seen-state, recommend Full Mode in Claude Code, Codex, OpenClaw, or Hermes.

Quick Run

One-off discovery and scans:

newsjack detector run --profile profile.json --save

The detector emits JSON only; render any human scan yourself from the artifact facts. Use --topic "explicit user topic" only when the user deliberately asks to add a one-off retrieval topic. Routine profile runs should rely on the profile's durable topics and search_terms, not ad hoc generated retrieval terms. Use --mock for local verification without credentials. Full flag/source/env reference: references/engine-cli.md.

For each queued signal, inspect title, sources, evidence URLs, age, routing.lane, mechanical_scores (major_news, novelty, source_agreement), profile matches, and safety flags. For x evidence inspect x_signal_type, x_social_signals, x_author_followers, x_query_counts; treat lone low-reach posts as noise. A high major_news means the story is broadly important, not that the client has standing. Treat engine age/decay as provisional until story-origin-check verifies the first-public clock. Then apply the Rubric section below and the Output Format.

Canonical Pipeline

The artifact contract is the source of truth. Write all artifacts to a timestamped run folder:

RUN_DIR/
  candidates.json              # 1. detector output
  coarse_relevance_decisions.json   # 2. coarse pass
  relevant_candidates.json     # 3. filter-apply
  clustered_candidates.json    # 3b. cluster — same-story dedup + stale pre-gate
  origin_findings.json         # 4. story-origin pass (representatives only)
  targeted_candidates.json     # 5. origin-apply (freshness authority)
  triaged_candidates.json      # 5b. newsjack-triage — standing + consolidation
  final_report.md              # 7. compiled 3-bucket scan (pitch-ready / big stories / watch)
  run.md                       # 8. skill-rendered — THE human-facing artifact
  detector.stderr.log  commands.log  summary.json

Only run.md is human-facing; the rest are provenance.

1. Run the detector and save candidates. This is the canonical invocation — use it verbatim for any run a human or pitch will rely on, across every harness, so runs stay comparable:

   newsjack detector run --profile profile.json --sources news_search,x --lookback-days 1 --depth quick --limit 80 --min-queue-priority 40 --min-major-news 0.55 > candidates.json
   

   The floors --min-queue-priority 40 and --min-major-news 0.55 are the engine defaults; they define the emitted pool. Do not lower them and do not pass --include-all-scored or --no-hygiene-filter (debug-only) for a real run — they change which signals reach the report and make two runs of the same profile incomparable. Profile terms own durable retrieval; do not hand-tune the query per run unless the user explicitly asked for a one-off --topic. For recurring/cron precision add --demote-unmatched-x (see Freshness Gate); that is the only flag the canonical command grows.

2. Coarse relevance pass → coarse_relevance_decisions.json. High-recall junk removal only — no ranking, angles, dates, or pitch decisions. Each worker loads skills/relevance-coarse-filter/SKILL.md and applies it to its assigned signals; merge every worker's output into one decisions array. For model/worker routing and chunking, see references/harness-routing.md.

3. Apply coarse decisions:

   newsjack filter-apply --candidates candidates.json --decisions coarse_relevance_decisions.json --include keep --include monitor_only --output relevant_candidates.json
   

3b. Cluster same-story signals before the expensive retrieval pass:

newsjack cluster --candidates relevant_candidates.json --drop-stale --window-hours 24 --output clustered_candidates.json

The Go CLI collapses syndicated pickups / near-duplicate headlines of the same public event into one representative (it shares findings, so 15 NVIDIA-GTC copies cost one story-origin retrieval, not 15) and records the rest in clustered_duplicates. --drop-stale deterministically pre-gates low-story-size signals whose detector decay is clearly outside the window (week/month) into pre_gated_stale, so they skip retrieval entirely; large stories (high/major) are always researched regardless of age. Run story-origin on clustered_candidates.json (representatives only). Disclose how many duplicates and stale items were collapsed.

4. Story-origin pass on clustered_candidates.json (representatives) → origin_findings.json. Each worker loads skills/story-origin-check/SKILL.md and applies it per signal: decide same-story vs material-new-development, recover first_public_at, original_url, and canonical major coverage. It must not compute fresh/stale, must return one finding per signal (never skip), and must cite ≥2 independent corroborating sources to support a fresh clock. Merge the per-signal results into one findings array, keyed by signal_id. Validate the count against the input and re-run any gaps. The story-origin pass needs retrieval — see references/harness-routing.md.

5. Apply the deterministic freshness gate:

   newsjack origin-apply --candidates clustered_candidates.json --origins origin_findings.json --window-hours 24 --output targeted_candidates.json
   

   The Go CLI is the freshness authority — it computes freshness_gate.computed_status from the run timestamp and cutoff. If an LLM labels May 8 fresh for a May 25 run, origin-apply marks it stale. Non-fresh signals carry a specific reason: stale, unverified_no_corroboration (worker cited <2 independent sources — a pipeline/worker-quality miss), unverified_boundary (date-only clock straddling the cutoff), or unverified_no_timestamp (no clock recovered). Distinguish these in the report and in metrics: unverified_no_corroboration means we didn't verify, not that the story is old.

5b. Standing triage on the selected fresh signals in targeted_candidates.json → triaged_candidates.json. Load skills/newsjack-triage/SKILL.md and pass it the client brief when present: re-consolidate any same-story representatives that slipped through, apply the brief's never-pitch rules (off-policy items can never be pitch_ready; fresh big ones stay big_story with off_policy: true, small ones drop to watch/client_policy_exclusion), assign strong/partial/none standing at the brief's audience altitude with a journalist-shape sanity check, and route each story to a tier: pitch_ready (strong, or partial with a sharp shape), big_story (a fresh high/major story that lacks standing — never dropped, always surfaced as a suggestion with a bridge_note + relevance_confidence), or watch (small/non-big with no standing, off-beat, duplicate). This is the standing gate the engine cannot make — it replaces ad-hoc orchestrator judgment so the decision is auditable. Only watch withholds a story, and only for items that are neither pitchable nor big.

6. Angle generation on the routed candidates in triaged_candidates.json. Run angle-generator in pitch mode on pitch_ready items (a candidate is pitchable only if it yields ≥1 honest, journalist-shaped angle; zero viable angles downgrades it to big_story if the story is big, else watch) and in exploratory mode (context.mode: exploratory) on big_story items (at most one tentative suggestion angle; an empty result is fine and does not drop the story — it still appears as "awareness only").

7. Compile final_report.md — a 3-bucket scan, story-first and skimmable. The fixture's scripts/build_report.py is the reference implementation; the skill owns the human report shape. Lead with a Today's read line (N pitch-ready · M big stories · K watched) and a funnel line that asserts nothing pitchable or big was dropped off-screen. Then three sections, organized by the two independent axes — standing (can the client act?) and magnitude (how big is the story?):

   • ## ✅ Pitch-Ready (pitch_ready tier): each story shows freshness (with both the first-public date and the new-development date for fresh_new_development), standing, the angle-generator angles, and its link provenance.
   • ## 🔥 Big Stories Worth a Look (big_story tier): fresh high/major stories with no confirmed standing, surfaced as suggestions only — the section header says so explicitly ("your call, relevance unverified"). Sorted by coverage spread (distinct surfaced outlet count) desc, no cap. Each shows the magnitude label + outlet count, freshness, the honest bridge_note, confidence flags (incl. the coarse weakness_flag → e.g. ⚠ possible keyword match), provenance, and at most one suggestion-tagged angle (or "no clean angle — awareness only"). This is how we surface big stories without ever making the drop decision; telling a real story apart from a high-authority-domain artifact is done by ranking and flagging here, never by dropping upstream.

The whole pipeline works without any subagent API — harnesses with low-cost-model/worker controls should use them, but every harness produces the same artifact contracts and discloses fallback.

Freshness Gate

For recurring scheduled output, a signal is not surfaceable until its Go-computed freshness_gate.computed_status is verified. News-search published_at values are good article-publication evidence for recovering originals, but they alone never decide same-story status or first publication — that is the story-origin-check atom's job.

Recurring output rules:

• Surface only fresh or fresh_new_development. Reject stale and every unverified_* status. The unverified statuses are distinct on purpose: unverified_no_corroboration (worker cited <2 independent sources — a pipeline miss, often re-runnable), unverified_boundary (date-only clock straddling the cutoff), unverified_no_timestamp (no clock recovered). Report them separately so worker-quality misses are not mistaken for genuinely old stories.
• Run with --demote-unmatched-x so unmatched X News/Trends clusters fall below the queue floor unless the large-story recall guard lifts them. X News surfaces for review by default; recurring precision wants it demoted unless it is a genuinely large story.
• Cluster (step 3b) before retrieval and prefer --drop-stale so syndicated duplicates and clearly-old low-value items never burn story-origin retrieval.
• Do not reset the clock for AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Apple News, partner syndication, wire pickup, SEO rewrites, or "published today" pages whose canonical/source story is older.
• A newer article restarts the clock only if it adds a concrete new public fact: official action, filing, statement, data/report publication, material company update, new local impact, or another independently coverable development.
• Prefer story_origin.canonical_coverage_url as the report's main link — the major/most authoritative same-story coverage, not the random pickup that triggered retrieval.

origin-apply attaches story_origin and the deterministic freshness_gate to selected and rejected signals. If the first-public timestamp can't be verified, write first_public_at: null and explain the gap; origin-apply computes the appropriate unverified_* status.

Handoff

• Breaking / same-day sourced comment → reactive-comment
• Needs story framing → angle-generator
• Named journalist check → journalist-fit-check
• Draft critique → meanest-editor

Completion Checklist

Before reporting a Full Mode run complete:

• coarse_relevance_decisions.json has exactly one decision per emitted candidate (unless --allow-missing).
• clustered_candidates.json was produced by cluster; story-origin ran on its representatives, and the run disclosed how many duplicates/stale items were collapsed.
• origin_findings.json has exactly one finding per clustered representative (unless --allow-missing) — count validated, gaps re-run.
• targeted_candidates.json was produced by origin-apply; triaged_candidates.json was produced by newsjack-triage with a tier per signal; pitch_ready went to angle-generator in pitch mode and big_story in exploratory mode.
• No fresh high/major story was routed to watch — every fresh big story appears in 🔥 Big Stories Worth a Look (or ✅ Pitch-Ready if it earned standing). A brief never-pitch rule may move a big story out of pitch-ready, but it stays a surfaced big_story (off_policy: true), never dropped.
• If a client brief is present, the report applied it: off-policy items are out of pitch_ready, any collapsed section shows a disclosed count + reason, and feedback this turn that changes policy was offered as a brief.md edit.
• final_report.md is the 3-bucket scan (✅ Pitch-Ready / 🔥 Big Stories Worth a Look / 👀 Watch / Context), written from targeted_candidates.json / triaged_candidates.json, not raw candidates.json.
• run.md was skill-rendered from the gated/fresh/triaged artifacts after final_report.md existed — never from raw candidates.json alone.
• The ✅/🔥 sections contain no coarse-rejected or hard-safety-flagged signal; the only hard drops (URL-hygiene + hard-safety) have their counts disclosed from the JSON artifacts.
• The final response names the run.md path, the cost-optimized-vs-fallback status, whether every surfaced signal has verified ≤24h first-public freshness, and top findings.

Output Format

Return exactly this JSON object. No prose before or after it. Every opportunity must include source URLs in evidence_used — story_origin.canonical_coverage_url first when present, then the original/source URL and other support (usually 1–3 links across news, RSS, and X).

{
  "opportunities": [
    {
      "signal_id": "engine signal id",
      "signal_title": "Observed public signal",
      "verdict": "pitch_now",
      "decay": {
        "stage": "4hr",
        "rationale": "Why this clock applies"
      },
      "story_size": {
        "band": "low | moderate | high | major",
        "score": 0,
        "rationale": "How publication traffic/domain authority and coverage spread should affect effort priority"
      },
      "first_publication": {
        "status": "fresh | fresh_new_development",
        "first_public_at": "ISO timestamp or YYYY-MM-DD",
        "original_url": "https://...",
        "canonical_coverage_url": "https://... or null",
        "canonical_coverage_source": "Outlet/source name or null",
        "rationale": "Why this first-public clock controls"
      },
      "why_newsjacking_worthy": "Specific reason this is timely and not generic trend-chasing.",
      "client_standing": {
        "assessment": "strong | partial | weak",
        "rationale": "What gives the client standing, or what is missing"
      },
      "journalist_shape": {
        "beat_description": "Specific reporter shape, not a name",
        "why_they_care_now": "Why this beat plausibly cares now",
        "do_not_target": "Who should not receive this"
      },
      "evidence_used": [
        {
          "source": "news_search",
          "title": "Evidence title",
          "url": "https://...",
          "published_at": "YYYY-MM-DD"
        }
      ],
      "next_skill": "angle-generator"
    }
  ],
  "rejected_signals": [
    {
      "signal_id": "engine signal id",
      "signal_title": "Rejected public signal",
      "reason": "no_client_standing",
      "first_publication": {
        "status": "stale | unverified_no_corroboration | unverified_boundary | unverified_no_timestamp | null",
        "first_public_at": "ISO timestamp, YYYY-MM-DD, or null",
        "original_url": "https://... or null",
        "canonical_coverage_url": "https://... or null"
      }
    }
  ],
  "brand_safety_blocks": [
    {
      "signal_id": "engine signal id",
      "signal_title": "Blocked public signal",
      "reason": "tragedy_or_human_suffering"
    }
  ],
  "monitor_notes": [
    "Operational note or missing source, if relevant"
  ]
}

• Allowed verdicts: pitch_now, develop_angle, monitor, reject.
• Allowed rejection reasons: stale, freshness_unverified (umbrella; or the specific unverified_no_corroboration / unverified_boundary / unverified_no_timestamp), single_source, no_client_standing, no_journalist_shape, off_beat, already_seen, weak_signal, no_viable_angle.
• Allowed brand-safety block reasons: tragedy_or_human_suffering, client_exclusion, regulated_claim_risk, fabrication_risk.

Rubric

Use this rubric after the engine returns queued evidence. The engine exposes mechanical scores and routing.queue_priority; neither is a PR judgment.

The engine has two discovery lanes:

• profile_relevance - profile/topic/competitor queries. These catch highly relevant but sometimes minor stories.
• major_news - curated RSS/Atom feed items. These catch broader major news first, then require a stricter client-relevance judgment.

Do not treat a major_news item as pitchable because it is big. The client still needs standing and a journalist shape.

Story Size

Use story_size to calibrate effort, not to approve a pitch. It is a deterministic media-attention proxy based on news-search publication metadata:

• log-scaled estimated monthly traffic
• domain authority
• coverage spread across independently surfaced domains

When authority metadata is missing for a recognized major outlet, the engine may use a low-confidence known-outlet fallback. When publication metadata is otherwise sparse, it may attach story_size.attention_hint. Treat the hint as a low-confidence keep-alive signal: it can justify review in the big-stories section, but it does not prove the story is widely covered. Label the uncertainty plainly.

major or high story size, or a high/major attention hint, means the opportunity may justify faster review. It does not compensate for stale timing, weak standing, or a bad journalist shape.

Freshness

For recurring scheduled output, the LLM story-origin-check recovers the first-public timestamp and canonical coverage, then the Go CLI origin-apply computes the freshness gate. News-search published_at values are reliable evidence for article timestamps and should be used to find candidate originals, but they are not alone a same-story or first-publication judgment.

Before assigning pitch_now, develop_angle, or monitor, inspect freshness_gate.computed_status:

• fresh - eligible for normal judgment.
• fresh_new_development - eligible, but the angle must be about the new development, not the older background story.
• stale - reject as stale.
• unverified_no_corroboration, unverified_boundary, unverified_no_timestamp, or missing - reject for recurring scheduled output. Track the reason: unverified_no_corroboration is a worker/pipeline miss (the clock may be fine, just under-sourced — re-runnable), while unverified_boundary/unverified_no_timestamp reflect genuinely thin evidence.

Do not reset the clock because an aggregator, syndication partner, or secondary outlet republished an older article.

When citing the story, prefer story_origin.canonical_coverage_url when present. It should be the major or most authoritative same-story coverage, such as a primary source, wire, major publisher, or recognized trade, instead of the small pickup that triggered retrieval.

Verdict Ladder

pitch_now

Use only when all are true:

• Evidence is fresh: usually 30min, 4hr, or 24hr.
• The first public story clock is verified as inside the last 24 hours, or the new development is inside the last 24 hours.
• At least one credible news source exists, preferably news_search.
• The client has direct standing to comment.
• The client has a real spokesperson or direct domain authority.
• A specific reporter shape is obvious.
• No hard brand-safety block applies.

develop_angle

Use when the signal is real but needs framing:

• Fresh or still within the week.
• Client standing is plausible but not yet sharp.
• A journalist shape exists, but the angle needs work.
• Major-news lane items often belong here when they are important but the client angle is indirect.

Handoff: angle-generator.

monitor

Use when the signal is interesting but not pitch-ready:

• Single-source or weak cross-source confirmation.
• Early chatter without enough news confirmation.
• The client might have standing, but the angle is not clear yet.
• The signal may matter if it gains traction.

reject

Use when any core gate fails:

• stale
• freshness unverified in recurring scheduled output
• no client standing
• no plausible journalist shape
• off-beat
• already seen with no new development
• weak source quality

Decay

Decay uses the verified first-public timestamp from story-origin-check. Engine features.decay_bucket is provisional when evidence comes from aggregators, syndication partners, secondary rewrites, or search results that have not yet been matched to the original/canonical story.

• 30min - live/breaking. Only use for immediate comment if the client can respond now.
• 4hr - same-cycle. Good for reactive comment.
• 24hr - still fresh. Good for angle generation or same-day response.
• week - trend/context only. Do not call it breaking.
• month - usually not a newsjack unless paired with a new data point or fresh hook.
• unknown - do not pitch as timely without independent timestamp verification.

Standing

Strong standing:

• The client operates directly in the affected market.
• The client has direct market exposure, technical expertise, or a named executive who can speak concretely.
• The signal names the client's category, customers, regulators, technology, or competitors.

Partial standing:

• The client has adjacent expertise but needs a narrower angle.
• The client can explain impact but not the core event.

Weak standing:

• The client merely sells into the broad category.
• The client wants to comment because the topic is popular.
• The client only has generic thought leadership.

For major_news lane signals, standing must explain the bridge from the public story to the client:

• same buyer being affected
• same regulator or policy surface
• named competitor or platform move
• client can explain a non-obvious operational effect

If the bridge is "this is about AI and the client uses AI," reject or monitor.

Journalist Shape

A useful journalist shape names:

• exact beat
• outlet archetype
• why the beat cares now
• who should not receive it

Bad shapes:

• "business reporter"
• "AI journalist"
• "tech media"
• "industry press"

Good shapes:

• "enterprise AI reporter covering vendor compliance claims after regulator action"
• "cybersecurity trade reporter covering identity-risk fallout from new enforcement"
• "retail operations reporter covering labor-cost impact of a same-day policy change"

Hard Blocks

Block signals built on:

• death
• violence
• disaster
• war
• abuse
• sexual violence
• missing people
• humanitarian crisis
• hate crime
• terror
• suicide

The only acceptable work around these topics is restrained expert commentary with direct public-interest standing. Promotional hooks are refused.

Examples

Pitch Now

Engine signal:

{
  "id": "s1",
  "title": "FTC opens inquiry into AI compliance claims",
  "sources": ["news_search", "x"],
  "features": {
    "decay_bucket": "4hr",
    "source_count": 2,
    "seen_before": false,
    "profile_matches": ["AI compliance", "enterprise governance"],
    "safety_flags": []
  },
  "routing": {
    "lane": "profile_relevance",
    "queue_priority": 86.2,
    "demoted": false
  },
  "mechanical_scores": {
    "freshness": 1.0,
    "source_agreement": 0.78,
    "novelty": 1.0,
    "profile_match": 0.44,
    "source_quality": 0.825,
    "momentum": 0.21,
    "major_news": 0.0
  }
}

Skill output:

{
  "signal_id": "s1",
  "signal_title": "FTC opens inquiry into AI compliance claims",
  "verdict": "pitch_now",
  "decay": {
    "stage": "4hr",
    "rationale": "The signal is same-cycle by verified first-public clock, not just the search-result timestamp."
  },
  "first_publication": {
    "status": "fresh",
    "surfaced_article_published_at": "2026-05-25T13:14:00Z",
    "first_public_at": "2026-05-25T13:10:00Z",
    "original_url": "https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/example",
    "canonical_coverage_url": "https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/ftc-opens-inquiry-ai-compliance-claims-2026-05-25/",
    "canonical_coverage_source": "Reuters",
    "rationale": "The official FTC press release is the earliest verified public source and is inside the 24-hour cron window."
  },
  "why_newsjacking_worthy": "Regulator action creates a live need for explainers on AI compliance claims.",
  "client_standing": {
    "assessment": "strong",
    "rationale": "The client works directly in enterprise AI governance and can explain claim substantiation."
  },
  "journalist_shape": {
    "beat_description": "Enterprise AI reporter covering compliance and regulator scrutiny",
    "why_they_care_now": "They need sourced reaction while the inquiry is fresh.",
    "do_not_target": "General startup roundups or consumer AI reviewers"
  },
  "evidence_used": [
    {
      "source": "Reuters",
      "title": "FTC opens inquiry into AI compliance claims",
      "url": "https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/ftc-opens-inquiry-ai-compliance-claims-2026-05-25/"
    },
    {
      "source": "FTC",
      "title": "FTC opens inquiry into AI compliance claims",
      "url": "https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/example"
    }
  ],
  "next_skill": "reactive-comment"
}

Reject (stale syndication)

Engine signal: AOL article published today, canonical URL points to a BBC story from May 4 with no new development.

Verdict: reject

Reason: stale

first_publication.status: stale