Key concepts
Glossary of IANews-specific terms — sites, briefs, trends, root events, scoring, and more.
Key concepts
This page explains the core concepts you'll encounter throughout IANews.
Site
A site is an isolated workspace within IANews. Each site has its own configuration, API keys, style guide, connected CMS, and team members.
Think of it as a separate publication. If you manage a tech blog and a finance newsletter, you'd create two sites.
- Each site has a unique site ID used in API calls
- Sites are isolated — articles, briefs, and settings don't leak between sites
- A default site is created automatically during onboarding
In the API, you may see site_id in headers. This identifies your site for all API requests.
Brief
A brief is a content plan that tells IANews what to write about. It contains:
- Topic / Subject — What the article should cover
- Sources — URLs, documents, or trends to use as input
- Tone & Style — Formal, casual, analytical, etc.
- Structure — Desired length, heading structure, SEO keywords
- Schedule — Optional schedule for automated generation
Briefs can be created manually via the 5-step wizard, or automatically from detected trends.
Trend
A trend is a signal detected by IANews from des centaines de sources. Each trend has:
- Score (0-100) — Composite score from the scoring engine
- Category — One of 22 categories (tech, finance, health, science, sports, crypto, etc.)
- Country — Origin country from 50 supported countries
- Language — One of 28 supported languages
- Lifecycle stage — Where the trend is in its life:
| Stage | Description |
|---|---|
emerging | Just detected, low volume but accelerating |
trending | Growing rapidly, increasing cross-platform presence |
peaking | At maximum velocity, highest score |
saturating | Still active but growth has plateaued |
declining | Losing momentum, fewer new signals |
archived | No longer active, stored for reference |
Root Event
A root event is an aggregation of related trends across languages and countries. It represents a single real-world story tracked globally.
For example, a major earthquake in Japan would generate trends in Japanese, English, French, Korean, and more. IANews clusters these into a single root event and tracks:
- Geographic propagation — Which countries are reporting and when
- Sub-clusters — Individual trends grouped under the root event
- Propagation speed — Time between first and fifth country reporting
Les root events utilisent la recherche semantique et la desambiguisation par entites pour regrouper les tendances avec precision.
Scoring Engine
The scoring engine evaluates every trend using 5 factors:
| Factor | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Velocity | How fast the trend is accelerating |
| Diversity | Cross-platform presence — more platforms means stronger signal |
| Recency | How fresh the signal is |
| Cohesion | Semantic consistency across sources |
| SEO | Search volume and keyword potential |
Toutes les sources ont un poids egal — aucune n'est intrinsequement plus valorisee qu'une autre. La differenciation provient des facteurs de scoring ci-dessus.
Generation modes
IANews offers two generation modes:
- Gateway mode — Synchronous, simpler and faster. Ideal for quick generation.
- Agent mode — Asynchronous, with real-time streaming. More thorough, with source discovery. Recommended for detailed articles.
Connector
A connector is a data source integration within IANews. Des centaines de connecteurs sont organises par type :
| Type | Examples |
|---|---|
| Search & Social | Google Trends, Reddit, HackerNews, Bluesky, Mastodon |
| News | Bing News, GDELT, GNews, Google News RSS |
| Academic | arXiv, PubMed, Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, DBLP |
| Finance | CoinGecko, Alpha Vantage, Finnhub, World Bank, ECB |
| Government | Data.gov, EU Parliament, UK Parliament, ProPublica, LOC |
| Science & Health | WHO, CDC, NASA, NOAA, USGS, Open Meteo, OpenFDA |
| Culture | TMDb, RAWG, Spotify, Open Library, NYT Books |
| Environment | GBIF, IUCN Red List, ReliefWeb, OSM Events |
| Reference | Wikipedia, Wikidata, Internet Archive, Crossref, ORCID |
Recherche intelligente
IANews utilise une technique avancee pour ancrer les articles generes par l'IA dans des sources reelles. Au lieu de generer uniquement a partir des connaissances internes de l'IA :
- Recherche — les passages pertinents sont recuperes depuis la base de connaissances indexee
- Enrichissement — ces passages sont fournis a l'IA comme contexte
- Generation — l'IA produit un article original qui cite des sources specifiques
Cela garantit que chaque article est factuellement ancre et verifiable.
API Key
An API key is a token that authenticates requests to the IANews API. Each site can have multiple API keys. Keys are used in the X-API-Key header.
See API keys guide for details.
Webhook
A webhook is an HTTP callback that IANews sends to your server when an event occurs (article published, trend detected, etc.). Webhooks are signed with HMAC-SHA256 for security.
See Webhooks guide for setup instructions.