Understand what you’re reading.
A useful news answer should tell you what was reported, who reported it, and how recent the information is. Here is what NewsBeat gives your agent.
Which companies can I ask about?
NewsBeat currently supports 1,528 US-listed equities and 502 crypto assets. Search by company name or ticker. A ticker is a short market symbol, such as NVDA for Nvidia.
A “topic” or “beat” means one supported company or crypto asset. Some names and tickers overlap, so your agent should confirm it found the right asset. If there is no match, it should say the company is not covered. General news search and broader coverage are in development.
Where does the news come from?
NewsBeat collects English-language headline metadata through Google News RSS. Each item carries a headline, publisher, publication time and a link that leads to the reporting. Current links may redirect through Google News.
NewsBeat does not include the full article. Your assistant can explain the headlines it receives, but it should not claim to have read the complete reporting. Open the sources for detail; publisher subscriptions may apply.
How fresh is “latest”?
Source checks are scheduled every fifteen minutes. A check may be delayed or fail, and some companies receive little coverage. NewsBeat reports the time of the last successful check alongside the news. This is different from the time a publisher released an article.
| Status | What it means for your answer |
|---|---|
| Fresh | A source check succeeded recently. The headlines themselves may be older. |
| Stale | The last successful check is older than expected. Treat the coverage as potentially out of date. |
| Unavailable | No successful coverage check is available. The agent should explain the gap. |
What does “nothing new” mean?
It means no new items were found in the window checked. It does not prove that nothing happened. Your agent should distinguish quiet coverage from a delayed or unavailable source.
How does “since last time” work?
Think of it as a bookmark. After reading the news, your agent can save where it stopped. On the next check, NewsBeat uses that bookmark to return newly indexed items. Developers call the bookmark a cursor; you do not need to handle it yourself.
The bookmark belongs to one asset and expires after thirty days. If your assistant loses it, switches to another chat without saved context, or waits too long, it needs a new starting point. It should tell you when it cannot reconstruct the full gap.
Why are similar headlines grouped?
Several publishers may cover the same development. The stories view groups similar headlines to make that coverage easier to scan. This is approximate: different events can look similar, and multiple reports do not independently prove a claim is true.
Can I ask for older news?
The API has a thirty-day window for available indexed articles. It is not a complete historical archive, and coverage within that window varies by asset. The latest-news view starts with recent items; older pages are available through the API’s history controls.
What should a good answer include?
- The correct company or crypto asset.
- The reported headlines or a cautious explanation grounded in them.
- Publisher names, dates and links you can open.
- A clear note when coverage is stale, missing or too limited to answer the question.