Research first, then write

A writing kernel writes from what it's handed and never searches on its own. When a post needs to be grounded, a comparison, a guide with numbers, anything a reader might check, run an arena first: an adversarial cluster of research agents, which the post editor calls the Research panel. It reads the URLs you give it, searches the live web, reads the pages behind what it finds, weighs your positioning, and writes a sourced outline into the draft. Then it fact-checks that outline against those pages, and a claim they can't settle gets a live web search of its own. Then the kernel writes from the outline.

With an agent

Research "payroll software for ten-person companies" into a new draft in Field notes. Read https://example.com/payroll-report first, make sure Pricing gets its own section, and pause to let me choose the angle. Once I've chosen, have my default kernel write it and tell me when it's done.

The agent will ingest_article, then run_arena with that article_id, source_urls, must_include: ["Pricing"] and direction_gate: true, poll get_arena_run until it reads awaiting_direction, show you the two or three angles it found, call submit_arena_direction with your pick, wait for done, then run_kernel with the article_id and no input (so the kernel writes from the outline) and poll to the end.

Leave out "pause to let me choose" and the agent's own recommended angle is used; the run goes straight through.

By hand, with the CLI

letterstory arena run --article <id> --topic "payroll software for ten-person companies" \
  --source https://example.com/payroll-report --must-include "Pricing" --gate
letterstory arena run-status <run-id>                 # status: awaiting_direction, with numbered options
letterstory arena direction <run-id> --choice 2
letterstory arena run-status <run-id>                 # …until status: done; the outline is in the post

letterstory kernel write <endpoint-id> --article <id> --kernel <kernel-id>   # no --file: writes from the outline
letterstory kernel status <job-id>

What research gives the kernel

• An outline with headings and detail under each, covering every must_include section.
• The pages it read, with the ones you passed pinned as primary, plus whatever the fact-check's web searches turned up.
• A ledger of the figures it found, so the kernel can cite them and its read-back can check them.
• The fact-check's corrections, already applied to the outline. Anything it couldn't safely fix is left as a comment on the post for you to settle.

You can read all of it in the Research panel of the post before the kernel runs, and edit the outline by hand if you want.

Timing and locks

An arena run takes 3 to 10 minutes; a full write 15 to 20. A run bound to a post is refused while Auto-Pen owns it. That run and a kernel run aren't locked against each other, but starting the kernel mid-research makes it write from a half-finished outline, so wait for research to finish first. Different posts run in parallel.