Glossary

ErmisAI reuses a few ordinary newsroom words for very specific things, and several of them look interchangeable when they are not. Every entry below matches what is actually on screen. Where a term is easy to confuse with another, the entry says which one you probably meant.

The distinctions that cause the most trouble:

• Pipeline phase and editorial state are two separate labels on the same card, and they move independently.
• Interface language and article language are two separate settings.
• Role decides access. Title decides nothing.
• My queue, the editorial board, and the delivery cap queue are three unrelated queues.
• Monthly AI capacity and the delivery cap are two different limits that run out for different reasons.
• A monitored source and a selected source are kept in two separate lists.

Admin

The middle of the three roles. An admin can change newsroom settings, manage the team, use Monitoring, open the editorial board and approve or reject articles, edit any draft, and see Usage. An admin cannot open Billing or Integrations — those are owner-only. See Team, roles and permissions.

Alert

A notification raised when one of your monitoring rules matches a story. Alerts only evaluate stories that ErmisAI's own scoring marked as published, or that an editor approved. Severity is set for you: a breaking story is critical, a sensitive story or one scoring below 80 is a warning, everything else is informational.

Mode has exactly one usable value, Instant. The rules screen states the limit itself: "Email digests are not available yet. Digest-mode rules deliver in-app until email delivery ships." Alerts land in your notifications inbox, and are posted to a webhook if you have configured one. The Free plan cannot create any rule. See Alert rules and notifications.

Article

The text a person writes and saves on a story. Until somebody runs compose, a story has no article at all: the feed card reads "Needs first article in {language}" and the pipeline label reads "Ready to compose". Nothing else in ErmisAI writes article text.

One gotcha worth knowing: the feed's "Search headlines…" box matches the saved article headline, while the card displays the source headline. Searching for words you can see on a card can therefore return nothing.

Article language

The language your articles are written in. Set in Settings → Newsroom, in the panel headed "Language defaults", under Article language. Ten languages are available. Source material is translated into it — the article language never follows the language of the sources.

It is snapshotted onto each story when that story first appears, so changing the setting later does not switch a story already in progress. See Interface language and article language.

Breaking

A marker on a story, shown as a small red breaking pill on the feed card. It is set when a source headline contains "breaking" or "live", or simply when the article is less than 90 minutes old — so it is common on fresh coverage rather than rare. A breaking story is given High priority automatically. The pill text stays in English in every interface language.

Category

One subject label per story, shown as a badge on the card. The feed has a single category filter with "All categories" as the default — one category at a time, not a set. Your newsroom's own beat is a separate setting chosen during onboarding.

Claim provenance

The panel in editorial review that lists the article's first paragraphs, each with a support badge: Supported, Partial support, or Disputed. The badges are derived from counts, not from checking anything:

• Supported — the story carries two or more distinct source names.
• Partial support — the story carries exactly one.
• Disputed — the story has at least one conflict recorded. If it has one, every paragraph is marked Disputed and shows the same conflict text.

The evidence listed under each paragraph is assigned by position, not by content. Claim provenance appears only on the review screen — never in the story workspace, and never in a CMS export. See Confidence, sources and conflicts.

Clean feed

The destructive button on the feed, visible to owners and admins only. The confirmation reads "Clear the current local feed state and placeholder articles from this workspace?" It does not delete anything: it hides existing drafts behind a watermark, clears every member's my queue, and does not refund the day's delivery cap. Pressing Refresh sources afterwards brings the hidden drafts back onto the screen. See The feed.

Cluster

The group of source articles about a single event that ErmisAI assembles before writing anything. Grouping is done by comparing headline and body wording; the model refines the summary and category but never decides which articles belong together. One cluster becomes one story. You never see a cluster as an object in the newsroom — you see the story it produced and its source count.

Compose

The action that writes the first article for a story, from the story workspace. The button reads Generate article, and Regenerate article once an article exists. Above it, "Compose settings" offers Format (Quick brief, Full story, Broadcast script, Digest block), Tone (Neutral, Concise, Newsroom), and Length (Short, Medium, Long).

The first compose runs whatever the editorial state is, as long as no article has been saved yet — which is why a card reading "Ready to compose" and "In review" can still be composed. Only regeneration of an already-saved article is restricted to editorial state Draft; once it has been submitted, the workspace shows "Regeneration is locked because the saved article has already entered editorial workflow." See Composing and refining a story.

Confidence

The number behind the signal label. Shown as {n}/100 on the feed card and in the story header, and as a percentage on the review screen. Same number, two formats.

Conflict

A note from the model saying the sources report something differently. Conflicts show up as an "{n} open issues" pill and an "Open issues" block in the story workspace's reporting brief, and as a "Conflict signal" box under each paragraph in editorial review. They are free text, not a structured comparison: there is no outlet-by-outlet diff and no side-by-side view, and if the model records nothing, no conflict exists for that story.

Content locale

The engineering name for article language. You will see it in the platform docs; it never appears in the newsroom interface.

Custom source

An RSS or Atom feed you add yourself, by URL, from Settings → Newsroom. Custom feeds count against your plan's source cap together with catalog sources, and they are always weighted at the lowest source tier. They cannot be added during onboarding. See Choosing and adding sources.

Delivery

An approved article leaving ErmisAI. There are two real routes: release into the in-app feed, which every plan gets, and a pull by your own system through the CMS or WordPress export API, which needs a plan carrying API keys — Pro, Business Pro, or Enterprise. ErmisAI never pushes into WordPress: your side asks for the stories.

Both routes consume the same delivery cap. A webhook is not a delivery route; it carries alerts, not articles. See Getting approved stories out.

Delivery cap

The number of approved articles your plan allows out per day, counted per UTC day. The feed shows two metrics against it: Delivered (released today) and Queued (over the cap).

Over-cap stories are removed from the feed list entirely rather than greyed out — the only signs they exist are the Queued figure and an amber banner reading "queued for delivery (daily cap resets at midnight UTC)" with a "Manage subscription" link. Opening one directly returns "Story is currently queued." Only composed and approved articles consume the cap; work in progress is uncapped. See Plan and quota reference.

Desk

Vocabulary, not a feature. "Desk" appears in the default workspace name (ErmisAI Desk), the "Desk or team name" field in Settings, a "Desk" tab in the story workspace sidebar, and the suggested title "Desk Editor". There is no desk feature underneath any of it: you cannot create a desk, assign people or stories to one, or filter by one.

Draft

Two meanings, both in use.

1. The editorial record ErmisAI keeps for a story in your newsroom — its headline, article body, state, priority, and owner. Every story gets one the moment it arrives, pre-filled with the placeholder headline "Draft in composition" and placeholder body text.
2. Draft is also the name of the first editorial state.

There is exactly one draft per story per newsroom. You cannot keep a second version of the same story alongside it.

Editorial board

The screen at Editorial, headed "Editorial board" / "Articles waiting for editorial review". Open to owners and admins only. It lists articles that have been composed and submitted, ordered urgent first, then high, then standard, and newest first within each. Counters across the top read "Queued", "Urgent / High", "Unassigned", and "Sensitive". There are no filters, no search, no sort control, and no bulk actions. Empty state: "No submitted stories are currently waiting for review."

Not to be confused with my queue, which is personal, or the delivery cap queue, which is about plan limits.

Editorial state

Where a story stands in your newsroom's workflow: Draft, In review, Rejected, or Published. Every state change after arrival is made by a person — except the starting state: a story whose pipeline phase is Review arrives already marked In review even though nobody has written or submitted anything. Published is terminal and is only ever set by a human approving the article.

Independent of pipeline phase — a card can legitimately read "Ready to compose" and "In review" at the same time. See Pipeline phases and editorial states.

Interface language

The language of the buttons, labels, and navigation. Set in Settings → Newsroom under "Language defaults", separately from article language. Ten languages are available. A handful of strings stay in English regardless: the signal labels, the breaking pill, the assistant's name on chat replies, and billing or capacity error messages.

Lyra

The name of ErmisAI's AI editor persona. It is on the public website — a nav link and a profile page — and it is written into the instructions the models are given. It is not a label anywhere in the newsroom: replies in the article workspace are attributed to "ErmisAI". If you are looking for "Lyra" in the product, you are looking for compose and the refinement chat.

Member

The most limited of the three roles, and the one every invited colleague gets by default. A member can open the feed, open stories, compose, refine, and submit their own drafts or ones nobody has claimed. A member cannot review or approve, does not see Editorial or Monitoring in the navigation, cannot list the team, and sees only Notifications and Account in Settings.

Monitored source

A source you added on the Monitoring screen, under "Monitored sources". Each row shows its alert settings as "Breaking: On/Off · All alerts: On/Off" and its fetch health — "Fetching OK · {n} articles in 24h", "Feed returned no items", or "Last fetch failed".

The monitored list is what narrows alerts. While it is empty, every story is eligible for your rules; the moment you add one source, only stories from monitored sources qualify — and since sources are added with Breaking on and All alerts off, in practice only breaking stories from them qualify. It is a different list from your selected sources, and removing a source from one does not remove it from the other.

Monthly AI capacity

The amount of AI work included in your plan each billing period, in euros. It is the only usage meter in the product. You get in-app notices at 50%, 80%, and 100%. At 100% AI requests stop working until the next period — the workspace is blocked, not billed extra, because overage is off by default and cannot be switched on from inside the product.

The engineering docs call this the envelope. Do not confuse it with the delivery cap: capacity is monthly and measures AI cost, the delivery cap is daily and measures articles released. See Billing and AI capacity.

My queue

Your personal reading list on the feed, opened with View queue. Titled "My queue" / "Stories you've lined up in your personal editing queue." Ordering is pinned items first, then oldest added first — there is no drag-to-reorder. It is per person: nobody else sees yours, and yours has no bearing on editorial workflow.

My queue is behind a feature flag. If it has been switched off for the platform, "Select multiple", "View queue", and the per-card queue buttons simply are not there.

Notification

An in-app message in the bell inbox, headed "Notifications" / "In-app alert and operational notifications". It carries triggered alerts, review activity, capacity warnings, and integration events. Read state is per person, but the inbox mixes messages addressed to you with messages addressed to the whole newsroom.

There are no notification preferences of any kind — no mute, no digest schedule, no per-type toggle. The only controls are "Mark read" and "Mark all read".

Owner

The senior of the three roles. An owner can do everything an admin can, plus open Billing and Integrations. In a personal workspace you are always the owner. The last owner of a team workspace cannot be demoted or removed, and nobody can change their own membership — that has to be done from another owner or admin account.

Pipeline phase

Where a story sits in ErmisAI's own processing, shown on the right of every feed card: Collecting, Clustering, Ready to compose, Review, or Published.

In practice you will only ever see the last three. Filtering the feed by Collecting or Clustering returns "No stories match your current filters." And Published here does not mean the story was published — it means the story scored 85 or above and was not flagged sensitive. It is a confidence signal. Whether an article was actually published is the editorial state.

Priority

Standard, High, or Urgent, shown as a badge on the card and used to order the editorial board. The badge is hidden when priority is Standard. High is applied automatically to breaking or sensitive stories, which makes it common. Nothing applies Urgent automatically — a person has to.

Refresh sources

The feed button that rebuilds your newsroom's story set on demand. It is safe: nothing is deleted. One side effect to know about — a refresh re-shows drafts that clean feed had hidden. The next ordinary page load hides them again.

Reporting brief

The panel on the Brief tab of the story workspace, headed "Reporting brief" / "Use this as source context for the article, not as publication copy." It holds the event summary, the source and angle counts, "Angles to preserve", "Open issues" when there are conflicts, and a collapsed "Source attribution" list. It is background for writing, not text to publish.

Review decision

One of the four buttons on the review screen: Save, Approve, Reject, and Send back to compose, alongside a "Decision note" box ("Optional note for the editorial team").

Approve and Reject silently save your pending edits first; Send back to compose discards them. Send back to compose is the only action that unlocks recomposition after an article has entered review. See Editorial review and approval.

Role

One of exactly three: Owner, Admin, Member. Roles decide what you can open and do. There is no viewer role, no editor role, and no per-story or per-desk permission. Do not confuse a role with a title.

Selected source

A source ticked in Settings → Newsroom. Your selection is what ErmisAI builds your feed from. If you have no selection, your monitored sources are used instead.

Country presets add sources to the selection but never remove them: unselecting a country leaves its sources in place, and a country still selected re-adds them on the next save.

Sensitive

A flag the model sets on stories involving casualties, legal proceedings, political figures, or armed conflict. What it does: raises priority to High, raises alert severity to warning, and shows a "Sensitive" badge in editorial review plus a "Sensitive" counter on the editorial board.

What it does not do: it does not add an approver, does not require a second sign-off, does not stop delivery, and is not shown on the feed card. Every story already needs a human to compose, submit, and approve it, sensitive or not. See Sensitive coverage and editorial limits.

Signal

The label attached to a story's confidence score. Four bands, in English in every interface language:

The score is built from four things: how many distinct sources are in the cluster, how strong their tiers are, how much their headlines overlap in wording, and how recent the newest article is. It never goes below 40 or above 99. It is calculated once and frozen after the first compose, and it cannot be edited. It gates nothing — no delivery, no plan feature, no review requirement.

Headline overlap is a comparison of words, not of facts. A high signal means several outlets are saying something similar, not that anything has been verified.

Source tier

Wire, Tier 1, Tier 2, or Tier 3, visible when you browse the source catalog. A tier is a weight — it feeds the signal score and decides which sources are shown to the model first. It is not a fetch priority, despite the catalog describing Wire as "Highest intake priority". Feeds you add yourself are always Tier 3. Tiers are not shown on a story or on a feed card.

Story

One event, assembled from every source article about it. The unit of nearly everything: one feed card, one draft, one review row. The headline on the feed card is the source outlet's headline; ErmisAI's own headline only exists once someone has composed an article.

Tenant scope

The engineering name for a workspace's identity. It appears in the platform docs and in operator tooling, never in the newsroom interface.

Title

Free text on your membership, up to 80 characters, offered with nine suggestions: Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, Desk Editor, Reporter, Producer, Analyst, Publisher, Contributor, Freelancer.

A title grants nothing. Someone titled "Editor-in-Chief" whose role is Member cannot open the editorial board. The one thing a title does do is gate onboarding: you cannot finish setup without one.

UI locale

The engineering name for interface language.

Webhook

An HTTPS endpoint you configure in Settings → Integrations that ErmisAI posts to. Exactly two things are ever sent: a test event you trigger yourself, and an alert when a monitoring rule matches. Articles are never posted to a webhook.

There is no retry queue and no backoff. A failed alert delivery is re-attempted only if the same rule matches again later; a failed test is never retried. See API keys, webhooks and WordPress.

Workspace

Your newsroom. It is either a personal workspace or a team workspace, decided once, on the first screen of onboarding: "Is this desk yours alone, or a shared newsroom?" with the options "A desk of one" and "A team newsroom".

They are separate newsrooms with separate sources, settings, stories, team, and billing. Nothing moves between them, and there is no in-app way to convert one into the other afterwards. Team features additionally need a Business or Enterprise plan in good standing. See Set up your newsroom.