Intelligence
Initial briefings and follow-ups
Intelligence separates the first analytical baseline from later update-only follow-ups, so users get useful updates without repeated versions of the same story.
Concepts
Why this matters
Rolling news clusters can collect many related alerts over time. Without careful handling, every small addition could create another broad report about the same event. Intelligence avoids that by deciding whether there is enough new evidence to publish and, when there is, by writing follow-ups from the new alerts rather than repeating the whole cluster.
Initial briefing
An initial briefing is the first analytical baseline for a sufficiently mature cluster. It explains what is happening, what is established, what remains uncertain, why the development matters, and which actions or checks should come next.
Follow-up briefing
A follow-up briefing is an analytical update on a recent related story. It uses previous briefing context only to orient the reader, then focuses on alerts that were not already covered. Its job is to answer what changed since the last briefing.
New briefing cycle
A later report becomes a new full briefing when there is no recent relevant prior briefing, when overlap with recent coverage is low, or when the watchlist has shifted to a different story. This prevents unrelated topics inside the same watchlist from being forced into the wrong follow-up chain.
Analytical report
Both initial briefings and follow-ups are analytical reports. The difference is scope: the initial briefing gives the baseline assessment, while the follow-up analyzes the new development and whether it changes the prior assessment.
Workflow
- 1Intelligence collects alerts from active watchlists and groups related alerts into a candidate cluster.
- 2If there is no recent relevant prior briefing, the cluster must meet first-briefing readiness: enough alerts, enough independent sources, and enough time to collect context.
- 3If the first-briefing criteria are met, Intelligence generates an initial analytical briefing from the full cluster.
- 4If a recent same-watchlist briefing exists and alert overlap is meaningful, the next candidate is treated as a possible follow-up.
- 5The follow-up is published only when there is enough new material, currently at least 5 new alerts and at least 40% new alert coverage.
- 6When a follow-up is generated, Intelligence writes from the new alerts only and uses the previous briefing title or summary as context.
- 7If the recent overlap is too low or the previous briefing is outside the follow-up window, Intelligence starts a new full briefing cycle instead.
Done when
Users understand why Intelligence sends fewer duplicate briefings while still preserving meaningful updates inside a developing story.