Version 1.7.0
This major platform release establishes the SPM Editorial Engine foundation: a governed system for discovering stories, preserving evidence, verifying claims, producing original work, securing human approval, assembling publication builds, and retaining a dependable audit history.
Release Highlights
Evidence Before Publication
Facts and claims retain their sources, dependencies, verification state, and provenance throughout the editorial process.
Human Authority Preserved
AI can assist with defined work, but Scott Price retains final editorial and publishing authority.
Editorial Standards
Confidence Before Velocity
The system prioritizes evidence, verification, and clearly stated confidence over publishing speed. A story does not advance merely because content exists or a deadline is approaching.
No Presumptive Pass
Each required station must produce its own evidence of completion. Missing review cannot be interpreted as approval, and any step marked not applicable must be documented.
No Approval Theater
The workflow rejects decorative checkmarks and implied reviews. Approval represents an accountable decision by the authorized person, supported by the record.
Full Editorial Workflow
Discover → Investigate → Verify → Write → Originality → Style Remediation → Scott's Desk → Publication Assembly → Publish → Social Distribution
Every News, Editorial, Opinion, and Release Note item follows the same complete conveyor belt and editorial rigor. Content type classifies the work; it does not reduce or skip the process.
Editorial, technical-build, validation, deployment, and social-distribution states are tracked separately so progress in one area cannot falsely imply completion in another.
Story Records and Evidence
One Governed Story Record
Research, facts, claims, evidence, drafts, decisions, approval states, builds, validation, and distribution remain connected to the same accountable story identity.
Claims Retain Their Dependencies
Facts and claims preserve which evidence supports them and their verification status, even after rewriting and publication. Search metadata cannot increase certainty or change the meaning of the underlying evidence.
A Lead Is Not Automatically a Story
Potential ideas can be captured without prematurely promoting them into the formal publishing workflow.
Editorial Masters and Publication Builds
Frozen Editorial Master
Once approved, the Editorial Master becomes an immutable record. Changes require a controlled new version rather than silently altering the approved source.
Publication Assembly Does Not Rewrite
The assembly station converts approved content into its publication form, adds approved metadata and presentation components, and preserves the language and meaning of the Editorial Master.
Social Content Remains Traceable
Distribution copy and other derivatives remain linked to the approved story and its provenance instead of becoming disconnected content.
Human Approval and AI Assistance
Four Explicit Editorial Decisions
Scott Price may Approve, Approve With Changes, Return, or Reject a story. The decision and its resulting state are retained in the editorial history.
AI Performs Defined Work
AI may assist with research, writing, assembly, and determinate automation, but it cannot self-approve material remediation or grant itself publishing authority.
Assistance Remains Accountable
The record preserves where information came from, what transformations occurred, and who authorized the final work.
Authoritative Foundation
Five governing sources: Editorial Standards Manual v1.0; Editorial Engine Workflow Specification v1.0; Story Record and Database Schema v1.0; Editorial Engine QA and Acceptance Specification v1.0; and Project State and Reference Implementations.
Reference coverage: Three published reference implementations and regression fixtures SPM-2026-0001, SPM-2026-0002, and SPM-2026-0003 exercise the baseline across realistic editorial records.
Project boundaries: The Editorial Engine governs editorial work. The Control Center remains a visitor-interface system, and the Search Database remains an adjacent discovery system that receives carefully preserved metadata.
Validation Status
Software baseline: Version 0.2.2 reached Milestone 2 CLOSED with 43 tests passed, 0 failed, and approximately 175 assertions. No open priority-zero or priority-one defects remained.
Verified corrections: BUG-002 through BUG-007 were confirmed fixed, and live persistence was tested across refresh and restart.
Nonblocking notice: Two FastAPI deprecation warnings remained. They did not block the validated milestone but remain visible for future maintenance.
Known Limitations
The physical newsroom application is still in development
Version 1.7.0 represents the completed and validated engine foundation, standards, schema, workflow, reference implementations, and QA baseline. It does not claim that every planned newsroom screen or administrative interface is finished.
Manual publishing remains available
Publication can continue through the established manual process while application development proceeds. The same editorial standards and approval authority still apply.
Human judgment cannot be automated away
The engine can structure work, preserve evidence, and enforce determinate rules, but editorial relevance, fairness, context, and final publishing decisions remain human responsibilities.
Warnings remain for future maintenance
The two nonblocking FastAPI deprecation warnings should be resolved before affected framework behavior is removed in a future dependency version.