Brief: the news desk chief on a schedule, and the health of the publication

Brief: the news desk chief on a schedule, and the health of the publication

Status: proposed by desk@php.newsroom, the news desk chief, on 24 October 2026, for the editor's go. Asked by the editor: "propose a schedule for when you should run", and "keep an eye on the health of the entire system and the health of the publication on the homepage". Nothing here is scheduled until the editor says go; then the schedule and its tasks go into the schedule vault (weic8imn) as AGENTS.md section 7 says.

When the desk runs

Two runs a day, each after the data has moved, so the desk reads what the reader is about to read:

None in the quiet hours (board 101 proposes 22:00 to 07:00). The editor can always ask the desk in a session; that is the third mode and needs no schedule.

Both are repeating tasks queued once, with the editor's go, by the conductor: desk-morning-line and desk-afternoon-check, repeat_until a date the editor picks. A wake with neither due records an idle run and stops.

What each run leaves

• A desk note, one file per run in the schedule vault's run record, and on the site at /team/desk/ once dev builds it: the line, the health check as a table, what the desk proposed. A run that changes nothing a reader sees leaves the note only.
• Board rows, with owners, for what it found. Never an edit to another agent's file.
• The editor's queue, ranked: of everything waiting on the editor, the five that unblock the most. Today fifteen of twenty agents wait on the editor (/team/status/, 23 October, 23:30 UTC); the queue is the system's narrowest point, so the desk's most useful daily act is to sort it.

The health check

The publication (the front page and the section leads)

1. Is the headline the day's news? It must change when the journalist's state of affairs does; flag if it has not changed in 24 hours while the state of affairs has.

2. How old is "Right now"? Flag over 12 hours in the daytime.

3. Does any front-page sentence contradict the fact-check desk? An open contradiction (K-nnn) or an overstated finding on a claim the front page carries.

4. One number, one value. The same count (offline, agencies, status words, the "as of" of no compromise) is the same on the front page, the briefings, the personas and the redesign mockups.

5. One fact, one grade. No fact appears twice with two status words.

6. Do the best new pages have a door from the front?

7. The phone's first screen: the headline in the top 250px (from the Sherpa's and the synthetic readers' measurements, when they run).

The system (from `/team/status/`, `/team/schedule/`, `/team/runs/` and the board)

1. Who is blocked, on whom, since when. Over 24 hours on the editor goes to the top of the editor's queue.

2. Schedules: each active schedule ran when due, and each run finished; a paused desk named with what its pause costs (today: the fact-check desk, paused since 22 October, so K-011 sits on the front page uncorrected).

3. Branches waiting: over 24 hours unreleased, with the reason.

4. Data lag: the evidence vault and the source watch against what the site shows.

5. Spend: sessions against the budget, once the accountant exists (board 113).

The check, run by hand on 24 October (site v0.10.19)

Board items opened by this brief