# Newsjack Detector > 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. - **Type:** Skill - **Install:** `agentstack add skill-elvisun-newsjack-newsjack-detector` - **Verified:** Yes — security-reviewed for prompt injection and unsafe behavior - **Seller:** [elvisun](https://agentstack.voostack.com/s/elvisun) - **Installs:** 0 - **Category:** [Agent Skills](https://agentstack.voostack.com/c/agent-skills) - **Latest version:** 0.1.0 - **License:** MIT - **Upstream author:** [elvisun](https://github.com/elvisun) - **Source:** https://github.com/elvisun/newsjack/tree/main/skills/newsjack-detector - **Website:** https://newsjack.sh ## Install ```sh agentstack add skill-elvisun-newsjack-newsjack-detector ``` Requires the [AgentStack CLI](https://agentstack.voostack.com/docs/cli). Works with Claude Code, Cursor, and any MCP-compatible agent. ## About # 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`. 6. **VERIFY & CONCLUDE.** In Full Mode, run the **Completion Checklist**, then report: the `run.md` path, whether coarse passes were cost-optimized or fallback, whether every surfaced signal has verified ≤24h first-public freshness, and top findings. In Limited Mode, state that no local artifacts, saved monitor state, or deterministic freshness gate were available. ## 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//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..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: ```bash 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: ```text 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: ```bash 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:** ```bash 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:** ```bash 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 **s … ## Source & license This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code. - **Author:** [elvisun](https://github.com/elvisun) - **Source:** [elvisun/newsjack](https://github.com/elvisun/newsjack) - **License:** MIT - **Homepage:** https://newsjack.sh Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above. ## Pricing - **Free** — Free ## Security capabilities Automated source analysis of v0.1.0 — what this tool can access: - **Network access:** yes - **Filesystem access:** no - **Shell / process execution:** no - **Environment & secrets:** no - **Dynamic code execution:** no *"Yes" means the capability is present in the source — more access means more to trust, not that it is unsafe.* ## Versions - **0.1.0** — security scan: passed — Imported from the upstream source. ## Links - Listing page: https://agentstack.voostack.com/l/skill-elvisun-newsjack-newsjack-detector - Seller: https://agentstack.voostack.com/s/elvisun - Browse the marketplace: https://agentstack.voostack.com/browse --- Listed on AgentStack — the marketplace for AI agent skills and MCP servers. 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