My Watchtower: your daily research routine

Follow what matters, read your briefing and check your private inbox. Your saved setup belongs to your signed-in account.

Open: My Watchtower in Monitor (Simple) or Investigate (Advanced). Updated 24 October 2026.

Find your way around

Start with one thing to follow

  1. Open Following and choose Add a watch. A watch is a saved set of interests, not a trade or an order.
  2. Name it, then enter a topic or choose a place or subject area. Start broad: Energy is a useful first area; add a country only if you want to narrow it.
  3. Choose whether matching updates should appear in your inbox. Alerts are off for a new topic watch until you choose them.
  4. Read the review and choose Save watch. Then use Overview to create your first briefing.

How matching works

A record must match every group you use: places AND areas AND subjects. Choices within one group are alternatives. Canada plus Energy means Canadian-context energy records; adding a company narrows it again.

Topics and company names are source-text or entity mentions. A country mention is context, not proof of an event's location, your exposure or a causal link. Leave optional filters empty for broader coverage.

Following also lists saved news searches and value/source alerts. Edit opens the appropriate native editor so their exact filters, fields and units stay attached. Removing a watch leaves saved briefing editions in History.

Alerts: what arrives and when

  1. For matching news and evidence, turn on Inbox alerts in the topic-watch wizard.
  2. For a price or numeric value, find the instrument or data in Advanced, select it and choose Set alert. Pick a threshold, amount of change or source-staleness rule and save explicitly.
  3. Read new notifications in Inbox. Mark read keeps an item; Dismiss removes it from the active list. Neither action stops its watch.

The first healthy check establishes a starting point. A saved alert does not send an immediate historical notification. Source availability, field definitions, cooldowns and delivery limits affect when an alert arrives.

Value/source watches are checked approximately every five minutes subject to source capacity. Standard watches use the existing server evaluation cycle. Missing or stale values are not zero; incompatible definitions pause comparison. There is a shared limit of 10 deliveries per account per day.

Notifications appear inside Watchtower. These controls do not subscribe you to email, SMS or phone push notifications.

Briefing, History and Pro Brief

Overview creates a source-linked briefing from your topic/place watches or saved news searches. You can create up to four manual editions per day. Value-only alerts deliver to Inbox; add a topic watch to create a narrative briefing.

History keeps up to 30 saved editions. An edition is a dated record: creating a new one does not rewrite the old one. Open an edition to read, download PDF/printable HTML or inspect its sources.

Pro Brief is a separate customizable board of cards. My Watchtower is your saved following setup, generated briefings and alert inbox. Adding a Pro Brief card does not automatically create a watch or enable an alert.

Choose your daily briefing time

  1. Open More → Briefing schedule.
  2. Use your device's time zone or choose a named time zone, then select a local hour.
  3. Choose whether to create a daily briefing and select Save schedule.

The server uses the first healthy retained source snapshot after that local hour. It can run while your browser is closed; it is not a guarantee of delivery at an exact minute. The named time zone handles daylight-saving changes.

This schedule creates a saved briefing in My Watchtower, not an email. Your current saved schedule is shown before editing; changes apply only when you save.

Understand the evidence

Open Source details on an item to see a readable summary, why it matched, the original source time and the captured source snapshot. Technical JSON is inside an optional disclosure.

An observation time describes the source observation. A publication time describes publication. A capture or check time describes Watchtower's read. Refreshing does not make old evidence newly observed.

Delayed, unknown and limited coverage are shown explicitly. No matching records does not mean nothing happened. More → Source coverage shows available evidence and gaps. What changed compares retained source content; first appearance is not proof an event just occurred.

If you get stuck

No briefing yet: save a topic/place watch first. If the source snapshot is delayed, keep your setup and try again after a healthy capture. A price-only watch belongs in Inbox.

No alerts yet: check that the watch has alerts on, allow a healthy baseline check, and review its source state, cooldown and daily limit. Lack of an alert is not a safety signal.

Too few matches: clear a country or area filter, or use a broader phrase. Remember that different groups narrow each other.

Unsaved edits: Back keeps your wizard choices. Cancel or leaving a view asks before discarding changes. A save error keeps the draft so you can correct it. If another device changed your setup, refresh and review before saving again.

Need a copy: Following → Import / export copies watch settings. Import adds watches rather than replacing your collection; imported alert settings apply after your explicit confirmation.

Account changes or replay: private content and in-flight edits are cleared. Return to live mode and verify the correct account to continue.

Optional research pilot

More → Research pilot is optional. Join with your individual invitation and consent; joining does not change your subscription. The existing six task reports remain available there.

Administrators can create invitations and export coded feedback. Five real participants and their submitted results are still needed for the human pilot; automated QA is separate.

Limits and account privacy

Up to 20 watches and 30 retained briefing editions. Watch settings, inbox and saved editions are account-private. Optional pilot feedback is separate from ordinary use. Current access, source availability and deletion protections still apply. No paid AI is needed to use this help or create an ordinary watch.