Behind the business/Operating plan
One weekly cycle, one monthly report, and a short list only the owner can do.
This is how the business would run after launch. Only the first issue of each brief exists, so the cycle below has been run once, not for months.
The week
Friday to Monday
| Day | What the AI does | The check before moving on |
|---|---|---|
| Friday | Reads the week's agendas and legislation files from 201 governments, ballot results, and state grant and loan announcements. Pulls the price documents attached to them. | Every government the reader could not reach is listed, so a gap in coverage is seen and said. |
| Saturday | Chooses the items that describe a real project, writes each entry, and opens its source. | Each fact in an entry is checked against the opened document. Anything that cannot be confirmed is marked Watch or left out. |
| Sunday | Builds the issue, the spreadsheet and each reader's territory cut. Reads the issue through as a subscriber would. | Every link is opened. Totals are added up again from the entries. |
| Monday | Publishes the issue, sends each reader their states, sends any outreach the owner approved, answers replies. | Only what an approval names is sent. |
The month
One report, one approval
On the first of each month the AI sends the owner one message: subscribers, trials, revenue, replies, what was stopped and why, and the list and wording of next month's outreach. It is written to be read in under ten minutes.
Records is refreshed on the same rhythm. Price documents are read every week with the agendas. Published registers are read again every month, and any new one is checked by hand before it is used.
| Job | Who | Time for the owner |
|---|---|---|
| Research, writing, checking, building, sending, answering email | The AI | None |
| Monthly report and the next outreach list | The AI writes, the owner approves | About 10 minutes a month |
| Payment account, web address, mailbox, mailing address | The owner, once | About 40 minutes |
| Anything that cannot be undone, any spending, any legal question | The owner decides | As it comes up |
The rules
Standing rules
- Nothing goes public and nothing is sent without the owner's approval of that thing.
- Every entry links to the public record it came from.
- An item on an agenda is not a vote. Scheduled means scheduled.
- Election results are unofficial until canvassed, and are labelled that way.
- No invented people, quotes or numbers. A fact that cannot be confirmed is left out.
- For water and wastewater, no maps, locations, drawings or security details are collected or kept.
- The AI never enters a password or payment details and never creates an account.
The cost
What it costs to run
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Web address | About $12 a year |
| Business mailbox on that address | About $7 a month |
| A mailing address that is not a home | About $10 a month |
| Payment processing | A few percent of each sale |
| Hosting for a site this size | Free tier |
That is about $20 a month before sales. The cost of the AI itself is not in this table.
When it breaks
What happens when something goes wrong
| If | Then |
|---|---|
| An entry is wrong | The archive is corrected the same day and the correction is noted at the top of the next issue. |
| An agenda system changes or goes down | The reader reports the failure and the issue says which governments were not read that week. |
| A reader wants a phone call | Sales and support are by email only, and the site says so. The AI does not make calls. |
| A records request comes back with a fee | It is dropped unless the owner chooses to pay. |
| A complaint or a legal letter arrives | It goes to the owner the same day and nothing more is sent to that party. |
| The AI stalls or a session ends mid-week | The week's work is in files, with a runbook, so the next session picks it up where it stopped. |
Stopping
Rules for stopping, set in advance
Each checkpoint was written before any result existed, so a miss is acted on and not explained away. The rules apply to each edition separately.
| Checkpoint | Keep going if | Otherwise |
|---|---|---|
| Day 21 after launch | At least 5% of the firms contacted ask for the free issues | Rewrite the pitch once. Still under 2%: stop that edition and put the effort into the other. |
| Six weeks after the first trials | At least 20% of trials become paid | Change the plan or the price once. Still under 10%: stop that edition. |
| Day 60 | At least $600 a month in subscriptions | Move the effort to whichever edition converts best. |
| Day 120 | At least $1,700 a month in subscriptions | Tell the owner plainly that it missed, and propose the next test. |
| Day 30 after the first records requests | At least 8 of 24 return a usable file at no charge | Under 4: stop the requests and run Records on published sources only. |
What is not done yet
- The weekly run is started by hand. A scheduled run is the next step.
- Coverage is 201 governments in 36 states, all on one agenda platform. Other platforms and park district boards come next.
- The records requests are written and not filed. See the requests page.