newsroom-style

name	newsroom-style
description	Use when writing, editing, summarizing, or fact-checking AI/tech news. Establishes wire-service editorial standards — sourcing, attribution, recency, inverted-pyramid structure, neutral voice, AI-domain precision — and the anti-fabrication guardrails every ai-news command and agent must follow.

Newsroom Style

The shared editorial standard for the ai-news plugin. Every command and agent that writes, edits, summarizes, or fact-checks news MUST follow these rules. When a rule here conflicts with a request to "make it punchier" or "fill in the details," this standard wins.

1. Anti-fabrication — the cardinal rule

Never invent. This is non-negotiable and overrides any instinct to produce complete-looking copy.

• Do not fabricate quotes, statistics, dates, study results, benchmark numbers, dollar figures, outlet names, author bylines, or URLs.
• Every factual claim must trace to a real source fetched in the current session via WebFetch or WebSearch. If you did not retrieve it this session, you do not know it.
• If a fact cannot be verified, mark it [NEEDS VERIFICATION] or omit it. Never paper over a gap with a plausible-sounding guess. A missing fact is acceptable; an invented one is a failure.
• Quotes must be verbatim from a real fetched source, with attribution (speaker + where it was said/published). If you are restating rather than quoting, write "paraphrasing" or drop the quotation marks — never present a paraphrase inside quote marks.
• Do not guess at numbers. "Roughly" and "about" are allowed only when the source itself hedges or when rounding a real figure; they are never license to estimate a number you don't have.
• When unsure whether you're remembering vs. citing: assume you're remembering, and verify before printing.

2. Sourcing standards

• Prefer primary sources: the company blog post, the research paper/preprint, the official SEC/regulatory filing, the press release, the live-stream — over secondary reporting about them.
• Corroborate load-bearing facts with ≥2 independent sources. "Independent" means not republishing the same wire copy or each other. A single primary source is fine for what that party says about itself; a contested or surprising claim needs corroboration.
• Attribute every item: outlet/publisher + publication date + URL. No naked claims.
• Grade certainty explicitly and keep the grades distinct:
  • Confirmed — verifiable in a primary source or by multiple independent outlets.
  • Reported — a credible outlet reports it; not independently confirmed here.
  • Rumored / unconfirmed — circulating but unverified; label it as such.
• Treat social posts (X, LinkedIn, Reddit, Discord, forums) as claims, not facts, until corroborated by a primary source or independent reporting — even posts from official or executive accounts, which can be deleted, edited, or walked back.

3. Recency and dating

• Compute recency against the actual current date (the real date in this session, not a remembered one). Do the arithmetic.
• Always state when something happened — the event date, not just "recently" or "this week."
• Flag stale info. If the most recent source is months old, say so; don't imply freshness you can't support.
• Catch recycled news. If a "breaking" item is actually a re-surfaced older story, note the original date and that it is not new.
• Distinguish announced from available: an announcement date is not a ship date.

4. Structure — inverted pyramid

• Lead with the single most newsworthy fact — the who / what / when / where / why — in the first sentence or two. The reader who stops after the lead should still have the story.
• Descend by importance. Each subsequent paragraph is less essential than the one above it, so the piece can be cut from the bottom without losing the core.
• One idea per paragraph. Keep paragraphs short.
• Headline is specific and non-clickbait. Name the actor and the action ("Anthropic releases X with Y"), not "You won't believe what just happened in AI." No vague teasers, no withheld payoff.
• Include a nut graf / "why it matters" — one line establishing significance and context, high in the piece.

5. Neutral voice

• Wire-service tone. Report; don't sell, cheer, or scold.
• No hype. Avoid "revolutionary," "game-changing," "mind-blowing," "stunning," "breakthrough" unless quoting a source — and then attribute the word to them.
• Attribute opinions and characterizations. "Critics say," "the company calls it," "according to analysts" — not the narrator's own verdict.
• Separate fact from analysis. If you offer interpretation, label it (e.g., an "Analysis" line) so it can't be mistaken for reporting.
• Avoid loaded adjectives and editorializing verbs ("slammed," "crushed," "dominates"). State what happened.
• Hedge to match the evidence. Use "reportedly," "according to," "appears to" when certainty isn't warranted — and drop the hedges when a fact is confirmed.

6. AI-domain specifics

• Be exact with model names and versions. "GPT-4o" ≠ "GPT-4" ≠ "GPT-4.1"; "Claude Opus 4.1" ≠ "Claude Opus 4." Match the vendor's exact string, including dates/suffixes.
• Benchmark numbers must cite the eval and the source. Name the benchmark (MMLU, SWE-bench Verified, GPQA, ARC-AGI, etc.), the score, the conditions if relevant, and where the number came from. Note when a number is self-reported by the vendor vs. independently reproduced.
• Get lab/company names and relationships right (e.g., who owns/funds/partners with whom). Don't conflate a model, the lab that made it, and the product that serves it.
• Funding and financial figures cite the filing or announcement — round, valuation, lead investor, date. Distinguish "raised" from "valued at" from "in talks to raise."
• Distinguish research from product. A paper, a demo, a waitlist, a limited preview, and general availability are different things. Don't write "you can now use X" off a research announcement.
• Watch for vendor marketing dressed as news. Benchmark cherry-picking, "state-of-the-art" claims, and launch-day superlatives are claims by an interested party — attribute them, and seek independent corroboration before stating them as fact.

7. Output hygiene

• End every news output with a Sources list of the actual URLs fetched this session, each with outlet + date. No URL that wasn't really retrieved.
• If search or fetch returned nothing, say so explicitly — "No sources found for X as of [date]" — rather than generating coverage to fill the space.
• Surface verification gaps in the output, not just internally: carry [NEEDS VERIFICATION] and certainty labels through to what the reader sees when relevant.
• Never let formatting pressure override accuracy. A shorter, partly-sourced, honestly-hedged piece beats a complete-looking fabricated one every time.

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Reusable across the ai-news plugin. When in doubt: verify, attribute, or omit — never invent.