How Cowlpane Works
Full transparency on story selection, data sources, update cadence, and where AI is involved.
Story Selection
Cowlpane ingests headlines from more than 20 RSS feeds and web sources every hour, including BBC Business, MarketWatch, CNBC Markets, CNBC Economy, Yahoo Finance, Seeking Alpha, CoinDesk, CoinTelegraph, Decrypt, Bitcoin Magazine, CryptoSlate, Reddit (r/stocks, r/wallstreetbets, r/CryptoCurrency, r/Bitcoin, r/ethereum), and specialist macro outlets such as VoxEU, Zero Hedge, Project Syndicate, and Wolf Street.
Incoming articles are de-duplicated by URL and semantic similarity. A clustering step groups articles covering the same underlying story. Within each cluster, the most information-rich source is selected as the basis for summarisation. Stories must clear a minimum word-count threshold (approximately 300 words) before they are processed.
There is no editorial curation by humans. Story prominence on the homepage reflects publication time, not an editorial judgment about importance.
AI-Assisted Summarisation
Each selected article is summarised by a large language model (LLM) via the OpenRouter API. The model generates:
- A headline following the pattern [Hard fact] — [Reader consequence]
- A one-sentence excerpt using an active verb
- A full article body structured in nine sections: a TL;DR lead, a "Why It Matters" explanation, 2–4 body sections, a "What to Watch" list, a Bull/Bear table, a closing question, and a jargon glossary
Cowlpane applies a quality gate: summaries that do not meet a minimum word count or structural check are discarded. The underlying source article is linked in full. No original reporting is conducted.
AI caveat: LLM summaries can contain errors, omissions, or hallucinations. Always verify significant financial information with the original source before acting on it.
Live Market Data
Live prices, daily changes, and sparkline charts are fetched from two sources:
- Yahoo Finance — S&P 500 (SPX), Nasdaq (NDX), Gold (XAU), EUR/USD, Bitcoin (BTC-USD), and Ethereum (ETH-USD). Data is proxied through a Cloudflare edge function and cached at the edge for five minutes.
- CoinGecko — Top cryptocurrencies by market cap for the Crypto section ticker. Data is cached for five minutes. The free-tier API is used; rate limits may occasionally cause temporary gaps.
Market data is for informational display only. It may be delayed, rounded, or temporarily unavailable. Do not use it for trading decisions.
Update Frequency
- Articles: The pipeline runs hourly. New stories appear within approximately 60–90 minutes of publication by their original source.
- Market data: Prices refresh every five minutes via edge-cached API calls. The live ticker at the top of every page updates on page load.
- Quick Briefing rail: Reflects the second-most-recent article per section; updates each pipeline run.
Cover Images
Article images are sourced from Unsplash via their free API, matched to the article's keywords. Images are selected programmatically, not editorially. Cowlpane does not host original photography.
What Is Not AI-Generated
The site template, CSS design, and all navigational and legal copy are written by humans. Partner and sponsored content is written or approved by the sponsoring partner, not generated by the LLM pipeline.
Questions
If you have questions about our methodology, please contact us via the details in the Impressum.