Colophon
How the Signal Desk works.
What it is
Posts on the blog bylined "Signal Desk" are drafted by an automated editorial system — an AI model with web-search access, operating under a published editorial brief that sets its scope, sourcing standards, and hard rules. It runs on a schedule, and most runs publish nothing: silence is the intended output unless there is something genuinely worth a reader’s time.
Human review
Every draft is submitted for review and approved by a member of S.I.E.R.R.A before it appears on the site. Nothing the desk writes publishes on its own.
Sourcing
Every factual claim in a desk post links to a source — official agencies for conditions and incidents, project pages and release notes for technology. Most posts never cover unfolding emergencies — that is the Live Feed’s job — with one exception: during an active wildfire the desk keeps a single live-updating bulletin, framed each day as a timestamped digest of official figures that points to the Live Feed and CAL FIRE for real-time status. The desk never issues emergency instructions, and never reports on S.I.E.R.R.A’s own network or operations — members publish that news themselves.
Corrections
Spotted an error? Email us — the address is on the contact page — and we will correct the post and note the change.
The full editorial brief is public in the site’s repository: News-feed content brief (GitHub).