The offer
At most 5 evidence-backed items a day.
What changed, why it matters to your organization, what to consider next, and the evidence behind every material claim. On a morning when nothing needs you, the brief says so, and says what was read.
- Who it is for
Built for a small team with recurring exposure. Associations and policy-exposed organizations with a communications or public affairs team of one to eight, recurring regulatory or legislative exposure, and an executive who needs a brief before nine.
It is not built for organizations with their own round-the-clock intelligence function, or for consumer marketing.
- When
Delivered each morning the program runs.
- In what form
One of four words, with a document behind every claim.
- Who reviews
Every Respond and Prepare item is reviewed by a named Byline reviewer before it reaches you. Note and Monitor items are set by the rules and say whether a person reviewed them. Your approver’s decision on Respond and Prepare items is separate, and Byline’s staff cannot give it. The brief carries the reviewer’s name and the exact version reviewed; delivery never implies review.
How to buy
One free brief. Then the Constitution Sprint. Then a program.
A first brief, complimentary
You send one issue. A person reads the request and replies within twenty-four hours with a yes or a no and a date for your first brief.
If the answer is yes, you receive the first brief, with its evidence and its coverage note. It is one bounded brief from public sources, on one issue you already follow.
Sending the request starts nothing else.
The Constitution Sprint
In about two weeks, you and Byline write and sign your Intelligence Constitution, and five mornings run against it. You keep the Constitution whether or not you continue.
Fixed price, quoted on request, credited in full against a program.
A program
One issue area, with its own Constitution and its own named approver, delivered each morning the program runs, under a written agreement.
It starts on the first morning after a named Byline reviewer signs the Constitution.
Quoted per program.
If the first brief is useful, you can hear about a paid continuation: select the optional box on the request form.
See an example brief: one morning for a fictional association, three real public documents.
The call and its evidence
One of four words, with a document behind every claim.
- Every item
One of four words - Monitor, Note, Prepare or Respond. Set by fixed rules from the evidence and never raised by a model. When the item is drafted it can only be lowered: sources that disagree cannot carry a Respond, a single source that does not speak for itself is capped at Note, and a Respond or Prepare needs a next step the evidence supports.
- Every claim
Resolves to a document - Primary records where they exist. A reader can open what supports a material statement. A summary of summaries is never the endpoint.
The Intelligence Constitution
Matched against what you wrote, not inferred by a model.
Before a program runs, you and Byline write down what matters: priorities, audiences, the entities and competitors to follow, the signals that are urgent, and what is out of scope. It is versioned, and a version cannot be published until a named Byline reviewer signs it. An item reaches you because it names something in that document, checked by fixed rule against what you wrote, not because a model judged it similar. The match shown on every item records what triggered it. Whether it matters is a separate judgment, made by the same fixed rules that set the call: Monitor, Note, Prepare or Respond.
- Priorities
- What matters to the organization, and the developments it would want to hear about.
- Audiences
- Whose reaction matters most.
- Entities
- The organizations, people and programs to follow, under every name they are known by.
- Competitors
- The organizations you are compared with. A peer in the news is context, not a decision, unless it touches a priority.
- Urgent signals
- The phrases that raise an item’s standing when they appear in the record.
- Out of scope
- What is deliberately not watched, written down so that its absence is a decision and not a gap.
The full morning, the AI boundary and the decision record are on How it works.
How coverage is built
Sources chosen for your organization, beyond the obvious ones.
Experienced people with varied backgrounds define the questions with each organization, then build its source map past the obvious official and major-media channels, and revisit it. Each source is registered with a permission profile before anything is read from it.
- Beyond the national outlets
Trade, regional and first-party - Alongside national reporting, a program can read trade and sector press, state and regional outlets, and the feeds that agencies and associations publish themselves.
- Official channels first
No impersonation - When a site refuses automated reading, Byline uses its official feed or API where one exists, or pauses the source and records why. It does not impersonate a browser to get around a refusal.
- Sources that fail
Named, not hidden - A source that fails several mornings in a row raises an alert, and every brief names the sources that were unavailable.
Four things you can check
Checkable, and each links where it is checked.
| The claim | Where it is checked |
|---|---|
| 1 program per issue area, with its own Constitution and its own named approver. | How one is made |
| 5 items a morning at most. When nothing needs you, the brief says so. | The record |
| 0 third-party scripts on this site. No cookie banner, no tracker, no visitor identifiers. | How that is verified |
| One issue is all a first brief needs, and nothing ongoing starts from it. | Ask for it |
A quiet morning, defended
“Nothing met your priorities” is a result, not a blank.
Every Desk brief carries a coverage note: what was read, what was set aside and why, and which of the sources you follow returned nothing or were unavailable. Two quiet mornings are told apart on purpose.
- Nothing met the priorities
Every source was read - Nothing read in the sources you follow met this program’s priorities. The note counts the sources checked and the items set aside.
- The aperture was quiet
Material came in, and did not match - Items named your entities but did not connect to a current priority. They are on the screening ledger with the reason, so a priority that should have caught them can be amended.
A quiet morning is written down the same way a busy one is: what Byline read, and what it set aside, with the reason.
What Desk includes
Built around one organization.
- The desk
- A client-authored, versioned Intelligence Constitution
A registered source universe with a permission profile for every source
A screening ledger with accountable set-asides
Source-level evidence on every material claim
Rule-bound urgency, capped by the evidence - The record
- Review, approval and delivery as three separate states
A named reviewer’s evidence attestation on every Respond and Prepare item, bound to the version reviewed
Your approver’s decision approval where the program’s rules require it
Version sealing and a delivery record
An append-only decision record: what was known, who decided, and why
A coverage note on every brief, naming unavailable sources and items not assessed
Request a first brief
Send one issue.
One bounded brief from public sources, on one issue you already follow.
An individual who wants a fixed-scope morning brief rather than a desk: Byline Daily, which is planned.