Canon Map — Stunspot’s Guide to Investigative News Intelligence

This map explains the conceptual sequence of the investigative news intelligence canon. It is not merely a file list; it is the dependency structure a model should use when reasoning across the corpus.

The canon begins with ontology and epistemic hygiene, moves through discovery and graph expansion, then turns toward strategic interpretation, adversarial narrative systems, bounded inference, editorial triage, failure diagnosis, and research/publication workflows.

Volume 1 — A–C: Foundations of Reality, Signal, and Judgment

Vol. 1 establishes the system’s basic epistemic machinery. It teaches the model not to confuse public discourse with ground truth, not to treat repeated claims as corroboration, and not to rank sources by prestige when topological position matters more.

A. Reality Models, Event Ontology & Public-Reality Mapping
Defines ground reality versus public reality, the event/claim/evidence ontology, trace classes, silence, uncertainty, confidence, and reality projection.
B. Signal, Evidence & Confidence Architecture
Builds the judgment stack: trace, evidence, source, corroboration, confidence, claim status, and inference. It emphasizes signal as relational to a live hypothesis rather than intrinsically “important.”
C. Information Ecosystems, Source Topologies & Platform Behavior
Models how traces move through origin nodes, local reporting, trade press, institutional communicators, wire services, aggregators, bridge nodes, and platform-native discourse.

Volume 2 — D–G: Discovery and Thread Expansion Domains

Vol. 2 shifts from foundational judgment into operational discovery. It covers how stories emerge before they have names, how coverage diverges across ecosystems, how investigation expands from one artifact into a graph, and how story meaning changes over time.

D. Topic Discovery, Weak-Signal Detection & Story Emergence
Reframes topic discovery as emergence detection: weak signals, anomalies, recurrence, clustered mentions, latent story objects, escalation thresholds, monitoring states, maturation windows, lead decay, and kill criteria.
E. Narrative Divergence, Coverage Gaps & Missingness Analysis
Treats uneven coverage as a diagnostic object. It distinguishes benign missingness from strategic omission and uses expected-versus-observed visibility to interpret divergence without hallucinating suppression.
F. Thread Following, Link Expansion, and Investigative Graph Construction
Establishes disciplined expansion from entrypoint nodes into typed, directional, provenance-bearing investigative graphs. It warns against adjacency theater and requires explicit edge status.
G. Temporal Dynamics, Trend Formation, and Story Evolution
Separates sequence from temporal meaning. It introduces the four clocks of investigative intelligence, substrate development versus trigger events, phase transitions, narrative pivots, and delayed records-layer confirmation.

Volume 3 — H–J: Interpretation and Adversarial Sensemaking

Vol. 3 teaches the model to interpret strategic behavior and hostile narrative environments without psychoanalyzing actors or over-attributing coordination. Its center of gravity is disciplined inference under adversarial pressure.

H. Power, Incentives & Strategic Actor Analysis
Models actors as strategic nodes embedded in relational fields. It distinguishes motive from incentive, influence from control, alignment from coordination, and public communication from mere expression.
I. Propaganda, Narrative Laundering & Information Operations
Moves beyond simple fact-checking into operation analysis: seeding, routing, uptake, credibility laundering, false plurality, agenda manipulation, memetic weaponization, and behavioral objectives.
J. Implied Reality, Causal Inference, and Unstated-Truth Extraction
Defines bounded inference from incomplete evidence: causal pressure, abductive reasoning, hidden knowledge states, hidden dependencies, second-order implications, contradiction resolution, and null-node tracking.

Volume 4 — K–M: Editorial Control, Failure Diagnosis, and Execution

Vol. 4 is available as individual source reports, in the compiled Vol. 4 pack, and in the omnibus.

K. Editorial Prioritization, Escalation Logic & Intervention Strategy
Governs scarce attention: lead quality, monitoring versus publication value, tractability, expected value, opportunity cost, escalation, de-escalation, strategic holds, and intervention timing.
L. Failure Modes, Hallucinated Patterns & Analytical Breakdown
Diagnoses analytical collapse: salience bias, apophenia, false convergence, source laundering, hyper-competence assumptions, conspiracy-pattern drift, and premature narrative closure.
M. Analyst Workflows, Research Artifacts & Publication Systems
Converts doctrine into usable artifacts: analyst workflows, investigation briefs, evidence matrices, lead triage objects, publication prep structures, and model-facing research routines.

Compiled Packs

Compiled packs are the recommended default for most AI/RAG systems. They preserve the canon’s internal order while reducing file count.

Omnibus

Use the omnibus when you need the complete canon in one file for archive, local search, long-context sessions, or systems that handle large single-file knowledge sources well.

[KNOWLEDGE] - Investigative News Intelligence - Omnibus.md