Old-school reporting.
New-school machinery

§ recipe · morning-brief

The morning brief

Overnight, stories pile up. When you sit down, one command builds the brief: Mycroft reads the posts you bookmarked, the newsletters in your inbox, and what happened on your beats while you slept. It picks the eight items most worth your time — ranked by news value, not volume — and files a short, readable digest into your notes. Every line says where it came from, so checking a claim is one click, not a hunt.

• Ranked by what matters to your beat, not what's loudest
• Every item links back to its source
• Optional: read aloud while you make the coffee

the recipe file →

§ skill · foia-requests

Records requests

Public-records requests are won on paperwork. Tell Mycroft what you're after and it drafts the letter — addressed to the right agency, citing the right statute, phrased so there's nothing to reject on a technicality. It keeps a tracker note beside it, so the filing date and the agency's legal deadline don't have to live in your head. And when an agency goes quiet or says no, the follow-up and the appeal are already written.

• The letter, drafted in the agency's own terms
• Filing dates and legal deadlines, tracked in your notes
• Appeals and follow-ups, ready when the clock runs out

Skill adapted from claude-skills-journalism by Joe Amditis · Center for Cooperative Media · MIT

the skill file →

§ skill · fact-check

The fact-check

Paste a draft, a quote, or a claim doing the rounds. Mycroft splits it into individual claims and checks each one the way a verification desk would, using SIFT — the method Mike Caulfield teaches fact-checkers: stop, check who's behind the source, look for better coverage, trace everything back to its original context. Each claim comes back with a verdict and the evidence behind it. When something needs more than a desk check, the case hands off to Spotlight, the investigation tool.

• Four honest verdicts: verified · unverified · contradicted · mischaracterized
• Every verdict links to the evidence behind it
• Optional: a tamper-evident record of the check (C2PA)

the skill file →

§ skill · interview-prep

Interview prep

Give it a name and your story angle. Mycroft gathers what your own notes already hold on the person, adds fresh research from the open web, and hands you a one-page dossier. It then drafts question frames to fit the conversation you're actually having — an accountability sit-down reads differently from an expert explainer — and keeps the ground rules straight before you hit record.

• A dossier from your notes plus fresh research
• Question frames matched to the interview type
• On record, on background, off — kept explicit

Skill adapted from claude-skills-journalism by Joe Amditis · Center for Cooperative Media · MIT

the skill file →

§ skill · knowledge-workspace

The vault

The workspace is the point. Everything Mycroft produces — briefs, source records, claims, findings — is journaled through OpenKnowledge on your own computer. Notes link to each other the way reporting actually connects: this source gave that quote, that claim rests on this document. Over weeks it grows into the graph you see above — your beat, mapped. Nothing syncs anywhere unless you decide it should, and the underlying Markdown remains portable.

• Plain text files — readable in anything, forever
• Notes link sources ↔ claims ↔ stories
• Search it offline · grep it, sync it, archive it — it's yours

the vault structure →