Townbrief Monitor
Proof
What we have measured, when we measured it, and what is still being scored. Each figure comes from our own recorded timestamps and records. For what we receive and process town by town, see the coverage statement.
Freshness
Our target is a checked story within 24 hours for 90 percent of changes. We are working toward it, and these are the measurements today, for public meetings held October 13 to 26, 2026. The clock starts at the end of the meeting day and stops when the checked story is published. A story still to come counts against the figure. Measured October 31, 2026.
| Meetings held October 13 to 26, 2026 | Our eight most-read towns | All of Massachusetts |
|---|---|---|
| Public meetings with a video | 98 | 1,128 in 198 towns |
| Story published by October 31 | 97 | 635 |
| Published within 24 hours | 12 (12%) | 14 (1%) |
| Published within 48 hours | 30 (31%) | 69 (6%) |
| Published within 72 hours | 39 (40%) | 134 (12%) |
| Median, counting stories still to come | 4.3 days | 11.5 days |
The eight towns are Wayland, Sudbury, Natick, Lincoln, Weston, Wellesley, Acton, Concord.
Where the time goes in those eight towns (median of each step)
| Town posts the video (towns on the Castus player, 58 meetings) | 15.3 hours after the meeting day |
|---|---|
| We download it | 5.0 hours after posting |
| We transcribe it | 4.2 hours |
| We write the story | 7.7 hours |
| It passes the check and publishes | 0.7 hours |
Where we can see when a town posted its video, half of stories were published within 19.5 hours of posting, and 32 of 57 within 24 hours.
A Monitor alert follows the checked story. Monitor picks the story up in an hourly run, and each person gets one email a day at the time they choose.
Evidence
We compared each passage in Monitor's evidence for the last 30 days with the meeting transcript and its timed captions, ignoring case and punctuation. Measured October 31, 2026. The check is against our transcripts, so the original recording remains the record to rely on.
| Passages checked, eight most-read towns | 908, of which 815 are from meetings and 93 from town releases |
|---|---|
| The transcript's words | 733 of 815 (90%) |
| Condensed: the same words in order, some left out | 46 of 815 (6%) |
| Not found as said | 32 of 815 (4%) |
| Transcript not available to the check | 4 of 815 |
| Within 30 seconds of the second we name | 710 of those 733 (97%) |
Across Massachusetts, in the evidence for meetings of the last 14 days, 2,027 of 2,349 passages (86%) link the meeting video and 1,783 (76%) open it at that second.
Names, numbers and votes
We compared our vote records and stories with the towns' own minutes and board rosters, on 446 public meetings in seven Massachusetts towns, January 1 to October 26, 2026. Measured October 27, 2026.
| Member votes in both the transcript and the minutes that agree | 774 of 779 |
|---|---|
| Votes paired with the right moment in the meeting, sample of 40 read against the minutes and transcript | 36 of 40; 32 of 32 outside one city whose minutes do not follow meeting order |
| Votes heard in a transcript that carry their second in the video | 1,886 of 1,941 (97%) |
| Dates and dollar amounts in the minutes not found in the transcript, sample of 12 read | None of the 12 was misheard: 8 were never said aloud, 4 were said outside the search window |
| Stories with a serious name problem found by the first check, 151 stories in the eight towns | 4, each corrected before publication |
The minutes are the official record, and our transcripts are checked against them. Where two records differ, the vote record flags it with the video second so you can settle it.
Alert accuracy
Being scored. The first result is planned for the week of November 16 and will appear here.
Security
- Townbrief.com addresses use HTTPS, and browsers are told to accept nothing else.
- The database is backed up daily. Backups are encrypted, and a second copy is kept off the server.
- Monitor is paid by invoice. Where a card is used, Stripe handles it and we never store the number.
- Services we use: OVHcloud for hosting, Mailgun for email, Anthropic's Claude for reading the record, and Stripe for card payments.
A full written overview and a data processing agreement are planned for January. Ask us for what you need sooner.