How Digital Plumber works

What we monitor

Each morning the build searches the web across ten coverage areas, weighted toward networking: network automation, AIOps and network observability, data center and AI networking, routing and the internet, network security, agentic AI in operations, telco and cable, and research and standards, with a small allowance for AI model and AI industry news. It weights practitioner sources: research papers such as arXiv, standards bodies and projects such as the IETF, NANOG, OpenConfig and OpenTelemetry, practitioner publications such as Packet Pushers, Network World and The New Stack, and engineering blogs with real technical depth.

How stories are selected

Networking topics accept stories from the last 7 days, since that news moves more slowly; general AI topics accept only the last 72 hours. Anything older or undated is dropped automatically. The editor favours concrete developments and technical substance over marketing, and skips search-engine filler and pure sales content. An AI editor then ranks the day's stories to pick the three that matter most, and writes the short headlines.

How duplicates are handled

A story that already appeared in an earlier edition is dropped, and so is the same link turning up under two topics on the same day. Duplicates are matched by link, so the same event reported by two different outlets can occasionally appear twice.

How vendor announcements are treated

Vendor news is included when it has technical substance, and labelled Vendor release so you can weigh it accordingly. Press releases without technical detail are deprioritized. Vendor Radar counts every story that names a tracked vendor, whoever published it.

Source labels

Each story carries a source type: Primary source (the originator explaining its own work: standards, release notes, engineering blogs, official documentation), Research (papers, surveys and studies), Vendor release (a company's own announcement), Industry news (reporting by a publication) or Analysis (commentary and opinion). Older stories are labelled from their original category.

How AI is used

Anthropic's Claude models run every step: searching and reading sources, writing each story's summary of what happened, its "why it matters" line and the longer briefing, then picking the day's top stories and the week's highlights. Summaries are based on what the source says; they can still contain mistakes.

Human review

There is none before publishing. The briefing is fully automated and published each morning as the AI produced it, so check the original source before acting on anything here.

Corrections

If something is wrong, email hello@digitalplumber.ca with a link to the story and what needs fixing.