How this works
Concise Signal reads the tech press so you don’t have to. Every story here is assembled from several publications’ reporting, written fresh, and linked back to the originals. This page explains exactly how that happens, including the parts we’re still getting wrong.
We’re a reading layer, not a publisher
We don’t employ reporters and we don’t break news. Everything on this site started as someone else’s work. Our job is to notice when forty outlets are covering the same event, tell you what actually happened in about sixty words, and then get out of the way and send you to the people who did the reporting.
That’s why every story carries its full source list, why we never reproduce an article’s text, and why we don’t use publishers’ photography.
How a story gets made
These steps run in order, every few minutes, all day.
- We read. We pull new articles from the publications listed on each story, using their public feeds.
- We group. Articles about the same real-world event get gathered together. Fifteen stories about one product launch become one story with fifteen sources. This is the hard part, and it’s where our mistakes usually happen.
- We write. An AI model reads the grouped articles and writes an original brief: what happened, why it matters, and a few key points.
- We check. The brief is scanned automatically against every source article. If it has reused any distinctive phrasing, it’s rejected and rewritten. Twice-failed briefs don’t publish at all — they go to a person.
- We rank. Stories are scored on how many publications picked them up, how trusted those publications are, how fast coverage is spreading, and how recent it is. Only the top of that list reaches the front page.
What the AI does, and what it isn’t allowed to do
The summaries are written by an AI model. We think you should know precisely what that means here.
It does: read several articles about one event and explain the facts they agree on, in plain words, without jargon.
It is not allowed to: add background from its own knowledge, fill a gap with something plausible, copy distinctive phrasing from a source, average two conflicting numbers into a third one nobody reported, or turn a rumour into a fact by dropping the hedge. When sources disagree, we say the detail is disputed.
It also switches register. Most stories are written the way a friend would explain them. Stories about breaches, layoffs, lawsuits and deaths are written plainly and without warmth, because a chatty tone about people losing their jobs is grotesque. That switch is made by a rule, not by the model’s judgement.
What “confirmed” means
Every story carries a confidence label. It measures one thing only: how many independent publications reported it. It is not a judgement about whether something is true.
- ConfirmedThree or more publications, at least one highly trusted.
- ReportedTwo or more publications.
- Single sourceOne publication, or every source is hedging. Treat with care.
Sources and paywalls
Some publications put their reporting behind a paywall, which we respect. We use their headlines to know an event happened and we credit them in the source list, but their writing never feeds a summary. Those sources are marked headline only.
Sources marked primary are the company or organisation the story is about, announcing it themselves. They’re usually the most reliable account of what was said, and the least reliable account of what it means.
When we get it wrong
We will. The most likely failure is grouping: two separate events merged into one story, or one event split into two. If a story looks wrong, the source links are right there — the originals always win.
If you’re a publisher and you’d rather not appear here, write to us and we’ll remove your publication within one reading cycle. No argument, no forms.