reportage-structure — independently scanned and version-tracked by SaferSkills.
SaferSkills independently audited reportage-structure (Agent Skill) and scored it 100/100 (green). The audit ran 55 deterministic rules across Security, Supply Chain, Maintenance, Transparency, and Community; it found 0 high-severity and 0 lower-severity findings. The full rule-by-rule trace and per-finding evidence are below. Free, methodology-open.
Findings & checks · 0 flagged
Every scanned point with the score it earned and what moved between them.
First recorded scan — no prior version to compare against.
The primary manifest — the file an agent reads to learn what this artifact does.
Builds a complete narrative structure for a long-form reported piece — including opening scene, sourcing map, section-by-section arc, and closing — given the story's central argument, key findings, and available sources.
Required: The central argument or finding of the piece (the "so what" in one sentence); 3–6 key findings, scenes, or moments from your reporting; available sources (types of people you've interviewed — no real names needed); the publication's approximate word count range or format. Optional: The genre of the piece (profile, investigation, narrative essay, data journalism, travel reportage); the publication's house style or comparable pieces; your opening scene or strongest moment (if you already know it); any material you have that is visual or scene-driven versus analytical.
A structured document with: Opening Scene Proposal (1 paragraph of description, not actual prose), Section Map (numbered sections with a one-sentence purpose, assigned sources, and assigned findings), and Closing Strategy note. Ends with an "Editor Pitch Summary" — two sentences that describe what this piece is and why it matters, suitable for a pitch email or story meeting. Total length: 400–600 words. Output ends with a "Next Step" note: flag any structural gaps requiring additional reporting, specify whether to send the pitch summary to the editor now, and recommend the next skill to run (interview-transcript-editor or headline-generator).
Central argument: Urban heat islands are killing people in cities that have never invested in cooling infrastructure, and the populations most affected are renters who have no control over the properties they live in. Key findings:
Sources interviewed: Public health researcher who studies heat mortality, ER physician, two renters who've been hospitalized for heat illness, a landlord association representative, the director of the community cooling center, a city council member who is proposing rental heat standards legislation Format: Feature for a general-interest magazine, 2,500–3,500 words
Narrative Structure: Urban Heat and the Rental Gap
Opening Scene Proposal
Open inside the community cooling center on the hottest day of the last recorded summer — the cooling center director moving through a room of 80 people sitting in donated chairs. The room runs on extension cords. Nobody sent the city. Half the people are renters from the surrounding blocks; the other half are elderly. Ground this scene in specifics: the temperature outside, the number of people, the one detail that shows what the cooling center actually is (not what it should be). This scene establishes the story's central irony — the infrastructure for surviving extreme heat exists, but it is improvised and privately funded.
Section Map
Section 1 — The Data Problem (~500 words) Purpose: Establish that the heat gap is documented, measurable, and unequal — not a matter of subjective experience. Sources: Public health researcher (temperature and mortality data); ER physician (admissions pattern). Findings: 4–6°C average temperature gap; ER admission spike in rental-dense zip codes.
Section 2 — The Law's Gap (~600 words) Purpose: Show that the conditions described in Section 1 are not illegal — and why. Sources: Landlord association representative; city council member. Findings: Most rental codes have no cooling requirement; the legislative gap is recent and contested. Note: This is where the landlord association gets a fair hearing — their position on cost and property rights needs to be represented before it's complicated by the renter testimony in Section 3.
Section 3 — Two Renters (~700 words) Purpose: Ground the data and law in human experience. Two renters who were hospitalized — this section follows them through a heat event. Sources: Two renters. Findings: What happens to a person in an apartment that reaches 38°C with no recourse. What contacting the landlord looked like. What the ER bill cost. Note: Do not editorialize here — let the specifics carry the moral weight.
Section 4 — The Pilot Programs (~500 words) Purpose: Complicate the narrative — solutions exist and some are working. This prevents the piece from being purely critical without resolution. Sources: City council member; public health researcher (early results data). Findings: Free AC unit programs show measurable ER reduction; the model is replicable but not yet mandated.
Section 5 — What the Cooling Center Costs (~400 words) Purpose: Return to the opening scene and reveal its full significance — the cooling center works, but it's one power outage away from failure. Sources: Cooling center director. Findings: Budget, funding fragility, capacity limits during actual heat emergencies.
Closing Strategy
Return to the cooling center director — end the piece with a single moment or observation from your reporting that captures the gap between what exists and what would be needed. Do not explain the gap. Let the image do the work. Avoid the common trap of ending with a quote that summarizes the piece's argument. The strongest close is a final reported scene that the reader interprets, not a source telling them what to think.
Editor Pitch Summary
In most American cities, the law requires landlords to heat a property but not to cool it — leaving the poorest renters with no legal recourse during heat events that are now killing people at rates that rival winter cold. This piece reports the gap between what the data shows, what the law allows, and what one community cooling center run on donations is doing in the absence of policy.
~30 seconds. Free. No account. Every finding cites a rule and a line of evidence.