Study 02 / Research & briefing systemsLive product
Niche
Focus on what the product does best.
An editorial intelligence platform evolved into a focused briefing service: follow a field, identify what changed, explain why it matters, and keep the sources attached.
Current productNiche briefings
Agent interface8-tool MCP surface
Product lessonFocus on what the product does best
Live Niche homepage, captured October 2026. The current product is briefing-first.
My contribution
Product conception, workflow and interface design, agent integration, and agent-assisted development.
Keeping up is work before the writing even starts.
A person following a specialized field needs to know which developments deserve attention, how much evidence supports them, and what changed since yesterday. A generic feed leaves the synthesis to the reader.
Niche originally combined research, story and angle selection, content creation, rendering, review, and publishing. That produced a substantial working system, but also a long journey through decisions and controls.
Product discovery
Move the value closer to the reader.
The October product change made the recurring need the front door: describe a niche, preview the briefing, and choose delivery. The website and email deliver the result. An assistant is another way to explore the same findings.
This changed the product contract. Niche now provides briefings, research, source links, and optional angles. It no longer handles the writing that language models have largely commoditized.
The system
Research once. Carry the sources to every surface.
Discovery, source reading, story grouping, synthesis, and delivery form a durable workflow. Website, email, and MCP consume the same briefing records. Corroboration and freshness labels need to remain consistent across those surfaces.
Product rules:
Count copies of the same report as one source.
Lead with new reporting or substantive updates.
Keep source links attached to the findings.
System studyOne briefing, three surfacesSelect a stage ↙
01 / Follow a field
A reader describes the field they need to follow or chooses a ready-made briefing. The job is a recurring information need.
02 / Read and group
Read reporting, group related developments, and fold copies together. Preserve source links and the basis for corroboration.
03 / Establish change
Decide what is new, what substantively changed, and what is only continuing. Readers can distinguish new developments, substantive updates, and continuing stories.
04 / Deliver and explore
Serve saved findings through the website, delivery email, and the briefing-focused assistant tools. Optional angles begin with the same evidence.
Source links persist across every surface
Engineering judgment
Enforce the promise outside the model.
01
Make freshness a shared rule
I made freshness a shared product rule, so readers see substantive changes consistently across web and email.
02
Narrow the agent contract
The current MCP catalog has eight briefing and research tools.
03
Keep the evidence visible
Source links and distinctions between new, updated, continuing, and early reporting help a reader judge what deserves attention.
04
Design for operating cost
I designed the briefing workflow to reuse research and control operating cost.
Current results
A deployed system, sharpened by actual operation.
The current website, briefing editions, delivery workflow, pricing, and assistant integration are live.
What I learned
Make the product’s strength its focus.
Niche’s strength is helping a reader understand what changed and why it matters. Focusing on that preserved the source and orchestration work while removing steps between the reader and a useful result. It also made evaluation more concrete: is this new, is it supported, and does it matter to this field?
