Interests
The unit of monitoring — one focus area, one standing scout.
An interest is one focus area you've told ScoutFox to watch. India robotics. Climate-tech VC. Markets desk — India regulatory. Each one runs on its own schedule and files its own dispatches to the Wire.
Your interests live on the home page at /dashboard as a flat list. Open the
By tag view to group them; click a tag chip to filter. Add, edit, pause and
archive them either inline on that page or via
cmd+k slash commands.
What's in an interest
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name | How it shows up in filters and dispatches (free-form). |
| Query | The free-text question the scout is hunting against. |
| Tags | Free-form labels for grouping and filtering. See Tags. |
| Lifecycle | standing (always on) or event (auto-archives when cooled). |
| Status | running, idle, paused, or archived. |
| Frequency | How often it runs (hourly, daily, weekly, on-demand). |
| Strategy mode | The investigation posture — e.g. primary-only, broad. |
| Risk tone | How aggressive the engine should be on borderline findings. |
| Channels | Which delivery channels this interest's dispatches flow to. |
| Signals | Typed things to hunt — see Signals. |
| Source priors | Domains/outlets to favor or exclude. |
| Rubric config | Per-interest quality bar (min sources, primary-only, etc.). |
Most of these inherit sensible defaults from your brief on creation. Override per-interest when you want.
The edit surface
/dashboard/interests/[id]/edit opens the interest in a tabbed form:
- Basics — name, query, tags, lifecycle, frequency, channels.
- Signals — inline CRUD for the typed things the scout hunts (event vs metric signals; metric signals carry a baseline + deviation threshold).
- Investigation — the InvestigationPlan: thesis, exclusion rules, primary domains, persona. Saving replaces the plan in full.
- Strategy — strategy mode, risk tone, rubric overrides.
Each tab owns its own Save button — you can't accidentally publish a stale
draft from a sibling tab. /dashboard/interests/new uses the same form
structure for create.
Status states
- running — actively scheduled, currently mid-run.
- idle — scheduled, waiting for its next slot.
- paused — you (or a slash command) stopped the schedule. Resume any time.
- archived — retired. Event-lifecycle interests land here automatically when the story cools.
Standing vs event
- Standing — "India robotics dealflow" runs forever. The interest tracks a domain you'll always care about.
- Event — "Track the OpenAI restructuring story" runs until the story cools, then auto-archives. Useful for finite arcs.
Where interests come from
Two ways:
- From your brief. Each focus area you name becomes an interest automatically.
- Scouts. A scout is a parameterized interest template — e.g. the
vc_dealflowscout takes athesisparameter and stamps out a tuned interest per sector. The output lands on your Interests list like any other.
Run history
Each interest carries its full run history. Click into an interest from the home list to see its dispatches; ask a question in a Notebook anchored to the interest to dig into a particular run.
Thesis match (VC briefs)
When your brief's vertical is vc, every dispatch carries a thesis-match
score — 0 to 100 — and a short, plain-language rationale.
The score is not a generic "good startup" rank. It is computed by reading the deal against your fund's investment thesis — the paragraph you wrote at setup. Sector fit, stage fit, founder profile, the specifics of what you back and what you avoid all feed it.
Two funds see the same company. ScoutFox scores it differently for each — because it scores against each fund's actual thesis, not a shared ranking.
A number alone isn't decision support. Each card explains the score in a sentence or two — "Bullseye — India robotics, world-class hardware founder, pre-everything" or "Adjacent — strong founder, but consumer sits outside a pure infra thesis; opportunistic." The rationale is honest about weak fit too; a 0.78 will tell you what's off, not paper over it.
Your thesis is editable under Profile → Deal sourcing. A sharp, specific thesis produces a sharp feed. The feed re-ranks on the next run.
Beats (news briefs)
When your brief's vertical is news, an interest is called a beat. India
markets — regulatory angle. Climate policy — APAC. Enterprise AI
infrastructure. The wording is yours; ScoutFox does not impose a fixed
taxonomy — "India markets — regulatory" and "India markets — IPO pipeline"
are different beats, and free-form text is the only way to tell them apart.
Each beat is just an interest under the hood: same schedule, same dispatches, same edit surface. The engine reads the beat's intent from your brief's context paragraph and tunes the signal hunt — story-lead candidates, regulatory/filing watchers, rival-outlet coverage checks. Start narrow (2–3 sharp beats produce a sharper feed than 10 vague ones) and add more once you see what surfaces.