How Herald Express Works

From raw source to published story, step by step.

Herald Express runs a structured pipeline rather than a single black-box prompt. Each stage exists to catch a specific failure mode before it reaches a reader.

1. Source ingestion

RSS feeds, regional and non-conventional Indian sources, and manually submitted links/tips are pulled in on a schedule, then deduplicated against recently processed stories to avoid repeat coverage.

2. AI research and rewrite

An AI writer drafts an original article from the source material – not a copy, a rewrite – using a fallback chain across multiple AI providers so a single provider outage does not stop publishing.

3. Verification and evidence framing

Drafts are required to separate reported fact from claim, attribute sources, and flag genuine uncertainty rather than presenting speculation as settled.

4. Category assignment

The finished article’s actual text – not just the source feed’s metadata – is scored against keyword rules for each section (India, World, Politics, Business, Economy, Technology, Environment, Health, Science, Sports, Opinion) before publish.

5. Editorial direction

A standing set of editorial-direction statements (tone, priorities, scrutiny targets, banned/preferred framing) is injected into every generation prompt, and can be updated continuously by Herald Express editors.

6. Quality gates

Articles that look like AI refusals, are too short, contain unresolved formatting artifacts, or land in a category their own text does not support are rejected from the homepage and, where possible, from publishing at all.

7. Image generation

A real, article-specific image is attempted first. If generation is unavailable or the topic is flagged as sensitive, a clean editorial fallback image is used instead – and the article is queued for a real image once conditions allow.

8. Publishing

Approved articles publish automatically. Breaking items can be flagged for 24-hour homepage prominence.

9. Corrections

Readers can flag errors at any time through our corrections page; verified errors are corrected with a visible note.