Build the Source Policy and Watchlist

What you will complete

Complete the Source Policy and Watchlist for five to ten approved public sources across no more than five source lanes.

Decision rule: Discovery helps you find candidates. A material claim needs a retrievable source that actually supports it.

Separate source lanes from sources

A lane describes a kind of evidence: official newsroom, product changelog, reputable industry press, policy source, or reviewed community discussion. An individual feed or page belongs to a lane. This distinction makes coverage visible and prevents ten versions of the same press release from looking like ten independent signals.

Prefer the closest available evidence

Use official product pages, release notes, regulator publications, or original research for product and policy facts. Reputable reporting can add context or cover events without a primary publication. Community discussion can show that people expressed an opinion; it cannot by itself prove broad sentiment, demand, purchase intent, or commercial impact.

Record freshness and retrieval limits

Published date and collection date answer different questions. Preserve both. State the lookback, included domains, excluded domains, expected update cadence, and what happens when a page blocks retrieval. A blocked page is a source-specific failure, not evidence that the event did not happen.

Worked example: Northstar Workflow Studio

Fictional teaching fixture: Northstar approves eight sources in three lanes: official product and changelog pages, selected Canadian government or regulator pages, and two reputable technology publications. Search results may discover candidates, but the agent must open the supporting page before selecting a material fact. Social posts can enter a watch list only as unverified leads for later review.

Northstar is not a Flowgrammer client, and its sources, weights, records, scores, timing, and results are not live evidence. The example exists so you can inspect how one choice changes the same capstone from lesson to lesson.

Workbook exercise

Open section 2 of the Morning Intelligence Agent Launch Pack. Complete the following work for your own approved topic:

1. List five to ten approved public sources and assign each to a lane.
2. Mark sources that can support product, policy, or date claims directly.
3. Define included and excluded domains plus the lookback.
4. Write the response for blocked, missing, stale, or conflicting sources.

Write assumptions as assumptions. Keep any untested field marked untested. Ask another person to challenge one rule before you continue.

Common failure modes

• Counting syndication as independent corroboration.
• Promoting a search snippet without reading the page.
• Calling a small discussion a market-wide trend.
• Converting a retrieval failure into a negative finding.

Repair the smallest responsible layer: scope, source policy, collection control, evidence model, ranking rule, report, or operating gate. Do not hide a failed condition inside a more confident summary.

Capstone connection

Complete the Source Policy and Watchlist for five to ten approved public sources across no more than five source lanes. This section must be specific enough for another operator to inspect, test, and reject. A complete worksheet is not automatically a passing worksheet; the evidence and critical gates still control the decision.

Check your application