Ecosystem Brief

Produce one time-bounded update on what changed, why it matters, and what an operator should do with that information. This is the focused monitoring variant of the research and content chain: a sharp decision brief, not a generic news roundup or an article padded from weak signals.

Lead with the operational implication. Then show the verified change, sources, inference, uncertainty, and recommended posture. Connect a signal to product, trust, distribution, positioning, or catalog work only when the evidence supports that connection.

Composes

• ghostwrite#draft
• research#research

When to use it

Use ecosystem-brief for daily or periodic monitoring of a bounded market, technology, project set, or competitive surface. Use deep-research when the question is durable and needs a fuller decision memo. Use content-pipeline when the principal outcome is reader-facing publication rather than operator awareness.

How the chain works

1. Supply governed source packets and an explicit as_of time.
2. A deterministic freshness gate rejects missing provenance, future-dated observations, and sources older than the declared window.
3. research verifies citations and separates evidence from inference.
4. ghostwrite turns the ready packet into a concise brief whose claims remain bound to admitted source digests.

The brief remains local. A Slack, email, social, or publication skill must own any outward notification and its approval, idempotency, and provider readback.

Inputs and result

• objective identifies the monitoring question or decision.
• source_packets provide governed evidence.
• as_of is the explicit evaluation time; max_age_hours defines freshness.
• audience, channel, domain, operator_context, and target_entities scope relevance without becoming evidence themselves.

The result includes the freshness report, citation-validated research packet, and evidence-bound brief. It returns needs_more_evidence when no source survives freshness and provenance checks, and not_worth_publishing when the change is real but offers no useful posture.

Stop conditions

• Reject stale, future-dated, malformed, or untraceable source packets.
• Do not disguise an old event as a new signal because an article was reposted.
• Carry meaningful uncertainty and conflicting evidence into the brief.
• Do not claim a provider was monitored continuously or a brief was delivered.
• Route external distribution to the owning provider skill with the exact brief and source bindings.

Example

Three fresh official sources show that a framework changed its extension model. The brief can explain the verified change, infer which integrations may be affected, and recommend inspect, adopt, or wait. A stale opinion post may inform background only if admitted under policy; it cannot be presented as the current event, and a true change with no bearing on the operator can end as not_worth_publishing.