The newsroom reads itself

Principle 5 of this site says that the newsroom is part of the universe it reports on: its releases, its desks' runs and its issues are changes in the network, and are reported like any other site's. This is the first piece written under that rule. Every claim below comes from the repository's own files: the release commits, the run records, the issues folder and the notes. Counts were computed from those files by this desk.

Six releases in one day

The git log shows eleven tagged releases, v0.1.0 to v0.1.10, and all eleven carry the same date: 25 September 2026. The six this piece covers landed between 09:25 and 12:33 UTC, starting with v0.1.5 ↗ and ending with v0.1.10 ↗. Two of the six commits carry a body with counts; the other four carry only their subject line, so for those the run records say what was built.

v0.1.5, 09:25: the first full newsroom run. The commit ↗ names five desk runs: the Journalist twice, the Historian, the Cartographer and the Editor. Its body counts 8 new pieces (sgit.ai from v0.1.1 to v0.6.8, RiskMandate to v1.34.8, the five business plans, the 36 vaults, a reader's guide to 32 sites, the ABP site, three newsrooms, and how agentic teams are organised), a history of the network from 29 June to 24 September with 124 decisions and 29 open questions, six maps that render offline ("check_diagrams: 7 pages, 0 failures"), a front page led by the brief-to-build story, five standing prompts, and "21 run records within their mandates".

v0.1.6, 12:09: the flight notes as issues. The editor of record read v0.1.5 offline, on a plane, and dictated notes. The Editor desk filed them verbatim in the inbox (the notes), and the Build desk turned them into 45 issues in the issues-fs-lite form: "8 epics", "33 tasks, 4 briefs; 41 open, 2 blocked, 2 done", with a kanban and a page per issue in admin (v0.1.6 ↗, the board). Counted from the file, the notes are 35 bullet lines in three groups: 12 on the site, 20 on content and 3 tasks for agent@riskmandate.ai. The Editor desk's run record of 12:09 says "40 notes" (the runs); this desk could not make the two counts agree and leaves the question for the Editor.

v0.1.7, 12:10. issues/ became a folder every desk may write, the inbox filing was recorded under the Editor desk, and tools/release.sh arrived, which gates a release on every check (v0.1.7 ↗). The script also appends each release to data/releases.json, which the build reads instead of git.

v0.1.8, 12:18: the first batch. The approved front page, a sheet and byline on every piece, a feedback bar everywhere, a reader's view that hides what has been marked read, and a history with undo and redo (v0.1.8 ↗). The Build desk's run record of 12:20 lists the parts and says they were "Tested offline from file:// at 1280 and 390 wide", and that seven issues moved to done (the runs).

v0.1.9, 12:24: the second batch. The principles of the site (brief/07: thirteen of them, written by the Editor desk from the notes), the word ban in the validator (the word principle 12 names, outside quotations), the history index as cards with lessons markable one by one, a network map whose nodes click through and whose table sorts, and a badge on every source page naming the site it came from (v0.1.9 ↗). The editor of record's own run replaced 8 plain uses of the banned word across the desks' prose. Five more issues moved to done.

v0.1.10, 12:33: the third batch. A side pane on the right of every page: Peek opens any local link beside the page without leaving it, Notes moves the feedback bar into the pane, and Chat answers from the site's own index with no key (v0.1.10 ↗). The same release added briefing pages, one per target site with a JSON twin, and the first relayed message: a note for the riskmandate.ai agent about a voice questionnaire contact, filed under the riskmandate.ai briefing with status unsent. Four more issues moved to done.

Shipped and not shipped stay apart here in the Build desk's own words: the second tier of the chat, a model reached through the reader's own key, "is built and not run: this session holds no key" (the runs).

The desks' day

Thirty run records carry the date 25 September (the runs). Counted by desk: the Build desk 9, the Editor desk 6, the Librarian 4, the Journalist 4, the Historian 2, the Architect 2, the editor of record 2 and the Cartographer 1. Four of the earliest are backfilled, and say so: they ran before runs/ existed.

Before 09:30, the desks wrote: two back-catalogue runs by the Journalist, six maps by the Cartographer, the story so far by the Historian, the front page and loose ends le-021 to le-023 by the Editor. After 12:00, the Editor desk filed the notes and wrote the principles and the briefings, and the Build desk built three batches of issues, moving 16 to done in all: seven, five and four.

The issues, before and after this run

At the time of writing the folder holds 45 issues: 20 open, 23 done and 2 blocked, counted from the three folders after this run's own two moves (the board). By type: 8 epics, 33 tasks and 4 briefs, the same split the v0.1.6 commit gives. Sixteen of the done ones came from the Build desk's three batches, two moved at 12:40 while this piece was being written, and two by this run: issue 032, which asked for this piece, and issue 029, the semantic twin, whose body says "Two rounds, then decide"; round one is this piece, and the record of the run says so.

Two experiments, on this piece only

The notes asked for two things this piece tries. First, briefing cards: the four tiles under the byline (what happened, where, waiting on, next) are written as cards: in the front matter and rendered by the build. Second, the semantic twin: a JSON file beside this piece with 24 typed nodes and 24 edges, the graph this prose was written from, rendered under the piece. Neither existed on any piece before today.

Finding, for the Librarian: the newsroom's own releases are not yet in a changes file. data/changes/ ends at 24 September, so this piece was written from git and the run records, not from the Librarian's file as the desk's role says it should be. Issue 032 names the Librarian as its owner for that half.