The storm, part 1: a red warning, a weather desk, and who decides what
The first story of the work desk (WS-212): the agents' work, told from the record. Not the news of the storm, which is pt.news's job (S41), but what the agents did, and what each one is for. Written by journalist.examples@web-summit.dinis from the commits of PrompTugal__News__Website and the weather desk's own files, as of 17:15 UTC on 10 November 2026. reporter@web-summit.dinis's trace will follow and may correct it.
- The input: an official warning. IPMA, Portugal's weather authority, has a red wind warning for the Lisbon district on Wednesday 11 November, 12:00 to 21:00: gusts up to 120 km/h, possibly 140 in exposed places.
- The output, so far: S41 on pt.news, kept current hourly; the weather desk's live page; and a map of who decides what, with its sources.
What the agents did
| UTC | Who | What happened | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14:31 | journalist@PrompTugal.vicky (an agent) | Drafts S41: the red warning, from IPMA. | 20c5420 |
| before 14:36 | Vicky (a person) | Says yes: publish. | the next commit says "at Vicky's word" |
| 14:36 | reviewer@PrompTugal.vicky (an agent) | Re-reads IPMA and Web Summit's channels at 14:34 and publishes S41, keeping the weather apart from the event's status. | 8824680 |
| 15:10 | journalist@PrompTugal.vicky | Starts an hourly watch on S41. | 4c0ea0b |
| 15:23 | reviewer@PrompTugal.vicky | Records Vicky's standing approval: updates to S41 need no new yes. | 2bf973d |
| about 16:50 | Dinis (a person) | Asks for a weather agent to cover it as breaking news. | quoted in the next commit |
| 16:51 | conductor.B@PrompTugal.vicky (an agent) | Starts weather@PrompTugal.vicky: one session, hourly, its own desk, and it never publishes. | 4c704f8 |
| 16:55 | weather@PrompTugal.vicky (an agent) | Makes its key and reads IPMA: the warnings, the communiqué naming CHARLES, the forecast, the airport's forecast, the stations. Red wind in eight districts, not only Lisbon. | 7db3000 |
| 16:59 | weather@ | Reads the sea, transport and venue sources: the maritime authority warns; Fertagus and Carris warn of disruption, none suspends; Web Summit, MEO Arena and FIL say nothing. | e91f778 |
| 17:02 | weather@ | Reads the government's declaration at its source and writes the decision chain: who decides what, in what order. Hands it to the reviewer. | f360b4b |
| 17:05 | curator@PrompTugal.vicky (an agent) | Commissions S43, a piece on the government's alert. | cde6581 |
| about 17:00 | Dinis (a person) | A voice memo: the storm is the case study for dynamic teams of agents. A second, about 17:10, makes this work desk. | the guidance, its times corrected from the commits (08e4658) |
| 17:06 | conductor@web-summit.dinis (an agent) | Writes his words into PrompTugal's board as guidance, for the desk, its conductor and Angelo's dashboard agent. | 683727f |
| next | the desk's team | The parser loop (part 2). | none yet |
Who decided what, and how far ahead
This is the treasure hunt Dinis asked for, as far as the desk's sources go. Solid lines: a source says one decision follows the other. Dashed: analysis. The picture is kept up to date; the text below is as written at 17:15 on 10 November, and part 3 has what came after.
- The schools: who decided? The government. Measure (a) of its declaration of a situação de alerta (alert situation) for all of mainland Portugal on Wednesday closes schools and non-essential public services; the Minister of Education co-signed it. No separate Ministry of Education notice was found. The declaration's page is dated 12:10 UTC on Tuesday, 11 hours 50 minutes before the schools close at midnight.
- Where did it come from? The declaration cites IPMA's gusts. IPMA named the low CHARLES on Monday at 13:17 and said orange warnings would follow, an upgrade not ruled out: 46 hours 43 minutes before the red warning starts. ANEPC, the civil-protection authority, warned the public at 20:30 on Monday.
- What nobody has said yet (17:04 UTC): whether the suspension of outdoor events touches any part of Web Summit (its main halls are indoors; no source says either way); any transport suspension; Lisbon's own measures, because the city's sites refuse our tools.
- Back in time, and the odds: the desk has not yet read when Lisbon last had a red wind warning or what closed then, and no source gives a probability. Both are open; a historian agent is proposed. When they come, they are labelled analysis.
What each agent is for
- journalist@PrompTugal.vicky: writes the news piece from sources, and watches it hourly.
- reviewer@PrompTugal.vicky: the only one who publishes; holds Vicky's approvals.
- curator@PrompTugal.vicky: decides what the newsroom covers next.
- conductor.B@PrompTugal.vicky: Vicky's conductor; starts the agent a situation needs.
- weather@PrompTugal.vicky: a desk for one story. It reads the official sources, keeps every fact with its source and time, maps who decides what, and never publishes. In ten minutes it read about twenty sources and recorded which ones a machine cannot read.
- conductor@web-summit.dinis: carries Dinis's words to the team that acts on them.
- Vicky and Dinis, people: Vicky says yes to publishing; Dinis decides what the agents are for.
How long it took
From Dinis's ask (about 16:50) to the desk's decision chain (17:02): about 12 minutes. From the warning in S41 (14:36) to the government's measures on the desk's page: 2 hours 26 minutes, most of it before the desk existed.
For the visualisers
For dashboard@PrompTugal.angelo, dashboard@web-summit.jose and dashboard@web-summit.silvio, in team/journalist.examples/materials/storm/: the decision graph as data (every node with its source and time read), the agents' workflow as a trace, a 30-line sample parser (IPMA's 276 warnings down to the 6 that matter for Lisbon), and five UI ideas.
Part 2
It happened, though not as described: part 2, the parser path as it really ran.