Brief: the conductor takes the updates, and the site gets an Updates section
Status: accepted, by being sent. Author: Dinis Cruz, editor. A voice message to the journalist on 22 October 2026, transcribed and reproduced verbatim, hesitations included. What was built against it, and what was not, is listed at the end.
The message
So this is actually another brief for the journalist, and I guess even historian, but mainly journalist. Although it's a meta request, because, you know, because of the amount of content we're creating, actually, I think the best way to do this is to think about this is actually to create a new agent. Maybe you start here, but I'll move it to a different section. But why don't you onboard the agent here, which is the conductor agent, and we basically give the conductor agent the responsibility to write daily, hour, whenever it's relevant, updates on what's going on and what's actually happening, right? Because this is now so fast pacing and moving that, for example, like I'm working with a whole bunch of agents now, I need to literally be briefed on what was added to the website, what's going on, are there any new developments, what's going on. So in a way, I'm already a massive consumer of everything that we're creating here. So yeah, I think the conductor, and then that agent could also take responsibility on the coordination of this. So in a way, we need a RSS feed and a whole website section just for the updates of what we're doing here.
How it fits what exists
- The conductor already exists. conductor@php.newsroom joined on 22 October (v0.5.1): it owns the team map, the three coordination vaults, and the run, opened with a plan and closed with a digest. Its board item 075 asks for exactly this: a digest on the site at every close. So this brief does not make a second agent. It gives the conductor the updates beat, and builds the section its digests can be published in.
- Three jobs, three owners. The news desk chief, named on the editor's call, holds the line of the story: what the story is today. The conductor coordinates: who owns what, what is blocked and on whom. The updates, held by the conductor, say what moved: on the site, in the story, across the team, and what is waiting on the editor.
What was built against it
- /updates/, newest first, one page per update, in its own zone at the front of the menu, and /feeds/updates.xml, an RSS feed beside the site's other five.
- How an update is written,
admin/content/updates/README.md, published at /updates/readme/: what an update is, when (hourly when something moves, daily, flash), where the facts come from, its shape, its rules. It is written so that any session can be pointed at it, wherever the editor moves the beat. admin/build/updates_digest.py: drafts the facts for an update from git alone (releases, commits by agent, board rows, pages, briefs, stories, corrections, the evidence counts, and the branches dev has not carried in).- The first update, the daily of 22 October, written by the journalist for the conductor.
- The conductor's role on the roles page now names the updates.
What was not, and needs the editor
- A schedule. Hourly updates without a session need a scheduled run, and
CLAUDE.mdsays nothing that outlives a session starts without the editor's go. Board 071 (the run's cadence) already asks; this brief adds the updates to it. - The conductor's own session has not taken the beat yet: it reads this brief and the README and says so, on its branch.
- Not pushed to dev. Under
AGENTS.md, this is on the journalist's branch for dev@php.newsroom to carry in.