Build a news agent that can show its sources

Choose the job before the tool

Write one sentence that names the topic, the allowed publishers, the time window and the output. For example: monitor a named regulator for new company disclosures and prepare a cited internal brief every morning. This is a proposed workflow, not a record of an operating agent.

Separate discovery from evidence. A stream title tells you what to inspect; the source document supports the claim. Store the source URL, original timestamp, post ID and retrieval time before asking a model to draft anything. Missing source time should create a review item rather than a claim that a story is fresh.

A small pipeline you can inspect

Our Python example runs the gate against synthetic inputs. It checks source and time handling without requiring an account, a news licence or a model key. It does not claim to test summary accuracy.

• Collect: use approved feeds or accessible streams; record the original payload.
• Gate: enforce an exact publisher allowlist, a freshness window and URL deduplication.
• Draft: send only accepted records to the model, with an instruction to cite each factual sentence.
• Review: compare the draft with the source and keep unresolved claims out of the brief.

Pick the guide for your next failure mode

Where Synoptic fits

Synoptic provides separate REST, WebSocket and MCP interfaces. REST suits stored history, WebSocket suits incoming posts, and MCP lets an assistant call documented research tools. These interfaces do not by themselves prove that a specific publisher is included or that you may redistribute its full text.

This is a Synoptic-owned technical publication. The integration guide explains the account checks and the boundary between a verified public catalog lookup and an untested authenticated reader.