What is Relay?

Relay is an AI news agent: you describe a subject, and it searches, reads and writes you a short briefing on it, with sources, every day or every week.

It is for people and teams whose work depends on a narrow subject: a regulator, a market, a set of competitors, coverage of a brand. Its address is joinrelay.me.

How it works

  • You describe a subject. A few sentences: what to watch, why you care, what counts as a development, and what to leave out. In Relay this is called the brief, and the thing that works from it is called an agent.
  • Relay searches and reads. The brief is turned into searches across the news and the web. Promising results are opened and read in full.
  • It keeps the few that matter. Each story is judged against your brief. Several outlets covering the same event become one story.
  • It writes the briefing. A headline, what happened, why it matters to you, and links to the sources.

What a briefing contains

A handful of stories, rarely more than ten. Each one has a headline written for you, a short account of what happened, a line on why it matters given what you said you care about, and the articles it was written from. If nothing worth knowing happened, the briefing says so.

What you can set

  • Schedule. Every day, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or Mondays only, at your time in your timezone.
  • Sources. Outlets, official gazettes and journals, or any page you paste, read in full on every run.
  • Terms. Exact words that must never be missed.
  • Reach and language. Search the English-language press, or also the languages your subject is reported in; choose the language the briefing is written in.
  • Delivery. In Relay on the web, by email, in a Slack channel, or in a Telegram group.

Working as a team

Agents live on a desk. Colleagues join the desk and read all of its briefings in one feed, comment on stories, and get the same briefing in the channel they already use. A desk has owners, admins and members. A desk is private or public, and each agent can be private, follow its desk, or be public.

What Relay does not do

  • It does not monitor social media, broadcast or print-only publications.
  • It does not count mentions or measure sentiment.
  • It is not a legal or financial database: a briefing points you to a source, and the source is what you rely on.

Who uses it

How it compares

Questions and answers

What is Relay?
Relay is an AI news agent that writes personalized news briefings. You describe a subject in a few sentences. Relay searches the news and the web for it, reads what it finds, keeps the few stories that matter to you, and writes them up with a headline, what happened, why it matters and links to the sources.
Who is Relay for?
People and teams whose work depends on a narrow subject that nobody writes a newsletter about: lawyers and policy teams following regulation, communications teams following coverage of a brand, and companies following their market and competitors.
How is Relay different from Google Alerts?
Google Alerts emails you links to pages that match a keyword. Relay searches by subject, reads the articles, and writes a briefing that says what happened and why it matters to you. You can still list exact terms that must never be missed.
How often does a briefing arrive?
Each agent has its own schedule: every day, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or on Mondays only, at a time and in a timezone you choose. An agent that gathers less often covers everything since its last briefing.
Where do I read the briefings?
In Relay itself, on the web. A briefing can also be sent to you by email, posted to a Slack channel, or sent to a Telegram group.
Can I check where a story came from?
Yes. Every story in a briefing links to the articles it was written from.
Does Relay work in languages other than English?
Yes. An agent can search in the languages its subject is reported in and write the briefing in the language you choose, so you can follow the German or French press and read about it in English.
Can a team use Relay together?
Yes. Agents live on a desk that colleagues join. Everyone on the desk reads the same briefings in one feed and can comment on stories. A desk has owners, admins and members, and both the desk and each agent can be private or public.
Does Relay learn what I like?
It learns from three explicit decisions on a story: Save, More like this, and Not interested. What it has learned is shown to you as plain text, and you can reset it.
Does Relay monitor social media?
No. Relay searches the news and the web, and reads pages you point it at. It is not a social listening tool.
How do I get access, and what does it cost?
Relay is in private beta, by access code. You can sign in with Google and ask for a place on the waiting list. It is free during the beta period on your code. After that, plans start at $14.99 a month for one person and $49 for a team, and a group can split one brief from $1 a person.

Relay is in private beta. Sign in with Google to ask for a place on the waiting list, or enter your access code if you were given one. How to set it up · Read public briefs · Blog

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