Processing Profiles

Processing profiles define how Horizon matches, analyzes, enriches, and renders different kinds of content. User preferences such as score thresholds and topic deduplication live in the runtime configuration so profiles remain stable.

Directory Layout

Profiles live under profiles/<id>/:

profiles/
|-- finance-news/
|   |-- profile.json
|   |-- match.md
|   |-- analysis.md
|   `-- enrichment.md
|-- tech-news/
|   |-- profile.json
|   |-- match.md
|   |-- analysis.md
|   `-- enrichment.md
`-- tech-blog/
    |-- profile.json
    |-- match.md
    |-- analysis.md
    `-- enrichment.md

profile.json defines the profile contract.
match.md tells automatic routing what content belongs to the profile.
analysis.md defines the first-pass analysis and scoring rubric.
enrichment.md defines how to write the localized output blocks.

Built-in Profiles

Profile	Purpose	Output
`finance-news`	Macroeconomics, markets, company finance, and economically material policy	Concise summary, necessary background, and optional direct impact
`tech-news`	Timely releases, incidents, research results, and technology-industry developments	Compact summary and background with optional impact and community discussion
`tech-blog`	Long-form engineering deep dives, tutorials, investigations, retrospectives, and technical arguments	Required background, solution, and takeaway sections

The blog profile uses larger input budgets and head-middle-tail sampling. For RSS feeds, pair it with a full-text extractor so the profile receives the article rather than only the feed excerpt:

{
  "name": "NVIDIA CUDA Technical Blog",
  "url": "https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/tag/cuda/feed/",
  "profile": "tech-blog",
  "content_extractor": "trafilatura"
}

Install the optional extractor locally with uv sync --extra trafilatura, or build Docker with --build-arg EXTRAS=trafilatura. Extraction failures fall back to the feed-provided content.

Contributing a Profile

A profile is a reusable editorial policy for a content domain, not a user account, source list, or collection of personal interests. It tells Horizon:

which items belong to the domain (match.md),
how to evaluate and score them (analysis.md), and
which content blocks to produce and how to write them (profile.json and enrichment.md).

To contribute a built-in profile, add profiles/<id>/ with those four files and open a focused pull request. No Python changes are normally required.

Before submitting, check that the profile:

covers a clear content domain that is useful to more than one source list or individual user,
has a meaningful routing, evaluation, or output difference from existing profiles,
states both what belongs and what does not belong in match.md,
defines a concrete 0-10 rubric in analysis.md,
keeps generated blocks specific, non-overlapping, and grounded in supplied content or declared tools,
contains no credentials, private sources, or user-specific thresholds, and
passes uv run pytest tests/test_profiles.py tests/test_prompting.py -q.

Built-in profiles are loaded as automatic-routing candidates, so maintainers may ask contributors to narrow ambiguous matching rules or clarify overlap before a profile is merged.

Configure discovery in data/config.json:

{
  "processing": {
    "profiles_dir": "profiles",
    "default_profile": "tech-news",
    "profile_settings": {
      "tech-news": {
        "threshold": 7.0,
        "topic_dedup": true
      },
      "tech-blog": {
        "threshold": 4.0,
        "topic_dedup": false
      }
    }
  }
}

default_profile must name a loaded profile. Horizon fails to start if no profiles are found or the default does not exist.

Profile Schema

{
  "id": "tech-news",
  "name": "Technology News",
  "display_names": {
    "zh": "科技新闻"
  },
  "match": "match.md",
  "analysis": "analysis.md",
  "content": {
    "analysis_max_chars": 1000,
    "enrichment_max_chars": 8000,
    "sampling": "prefix"
  },
  "enrichment": {
    "prompt": "enrichment.md",
    "blocks": [
      {
        "id": "summary",
        "type": "section",
        "tools": [],
        "primary": true
      },
      {
        "id": "background",
        "type": "section",
        "tools": ["web_search"]
      },
      {
        "id": "community_discussion",
        "type": "section",
        "tools": [],
        "optional": true
      }
    ]
  }
}

Field	Description
`id`	Unique profile ID. It starts with a lowercase letter and may contain lowercase letters, digits, `_`, and `-`.
`name`	Human-readable name used in the matching catalog.
`display_names`	Optional language-keyed names used as digest section headings.
`match`	Profile-relative path to the matching prompt.
`analysis`	Profile-relative path to the analysis prompt.
`content`	Input budgets and long-content sampling strategy for AI stages.
`enrichment.prompt`	Profile-relative path to the enrichment prompt.
`enrichment.blocks`	Contract for localized output blocks. At least one block is required.

Block IDs use the same format as profile IDs and must be unique within a profile. The only supported block type is "section". Blocks are required by default; set optional to true when they may be omitted.

Block field	Description
`id`	Unique block ID within the profile.
`type`	Must be `"section"`.
`tools`	Tools allowed for this block. Declare it on every block; use `[]` when none are allowed.
`optional`	Whether output may omit the block. Defaults to `false`.
`primary`	Render this required block directly below the item title without a block heading. At most one block may be primary. Defaults to `false`.

Prompt paths cannot escape their profile directory. Unknown fields are rejected in profile JSON.

Source Routing

Set profile on a source entry to route its items directly:

{
  "sources": {
    "rss": [
      {
        "name": "Example",
        "url": "https://example.com/feed.xml",
        "profile": "tech-news"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Set profile to an array to restrict automatic matching to a candidate subset:

{
  "channel": "zaihuapd",
  "profile": ["tech-news", "finance-news"]
}

Routing follows these rules:

An explicit profile ID uses that profile and skips AI matching.
A missing profile or "auto" invokes AI matching against every loaded profile’s match.md.
A non-empty profile array invokes AI matching only against those candidates.
Unknown, duplicate, blank, or "auto" entries in a candidate array are errors.
If candidate matching fails, Horizon uses processing.default_profile when it is a candidate, otherwise the first candidate. Unrestricted matching falls back to processing.default_profile.

All source types support profile routing. For sources with nested entries, put profile on the item-producing configuration, such as a GitHub entry, RSS feed, Reddit subreddit or user, or OpenBB watchlist. Top-level single configurations, such as Hacker News, Twitter, OSS Insight, GDELT, and Google News, carry the field directly.

Analysis

After routing, Horizon sends the item to the selected profile’s analysis.md prompt. The analysis result contains a nullable 0-10 score, a reason, a one-sentence summary, and tags. The profile owns the rubric, so profiles can evaluate different content forms by different standards.

Filtering

Filtering is a user preference configured by profile ID under processing.profile_settings:

{
  "processing": {
    "profile_settings": {
      "tech-news": {
        "threshold": 8.0
      }
    }
  }
}

threshold must be between 0 and 10. Horizon keeps items whose analysis score is greater than or equal to that threshold. Set it to null or omit settings for a profile to bypass score filtering. An MCP threshold supplied for a single operation takes precedence over these configured values.

The top-level collection configuration controls time_window_hours. Optional balanced digest limits such as category_groups and max_items belong to the top-level digest configuration and run after profile filtering and topic deduplication.

Enrichment Blocks And Tools

enrichment.blocks defines the exact block IDs available to output. Required blocks must be present; optional blocks can be omitted when they add no useful content. Generated output cannot contain unknown or duplicate blocks.

Tools are allowed per block through its tools array. The only built-in tool is web_search, and a block may use it only when that block explicitly declares "tools": ["web_search"]. Use an empty array for blocks that need no tools. Unknown tools are rejected when profiles are initialized.

Tool planning receives each block’s required or optional status. For required blocks with tools, it uses a tool unless the source already provides enough evidence; tool failures do not make the block optional.

Content Selection

Profiles can control how much source content each AI stage receives:

{
  "content": {
    "analysis_max_chars": 16000,
    "enrichment_max_chars": 24000,
    "sampling": "head-middle-tail"
  }
}

sampling accepts "prefix" or "head-middle-tail". Prefix sampling preserves the compact behavior used by news profiles. Head-middle-tail sampling keeps the opening, a middle excerpt, and the conclusion of long-form content. Both limits must be between 500 and 100000 characters.

Topic Deduplication

AI topic deduplication is also a runtime preference. Disable it for profiles where different treatments of the same subject should remain separate:

{
  "processing": {
    "profile_settings": {
      "tech-blog": {
        "topic_dedup": false
      }
    }
  }
}

topic_dedup defaults to true when it or the profile’s settings are omitted.

This does not disable conservative cross-source URL deduplication. Items with the same normalized URL and requested Profile are still merged before analysis; the same URL routed to different Profiles remains separate.

Search-backed statements cite tool results through source references. Horizon rejects references that were not returned by a tool call.

Localized Output

For each language in ai.languages, enrichment produces a localized artifact with:

a title;
the profile’s required and applicable optional section blocks; and
cited external sources referenced by those blocks.

Artifacts generated for zh are normalized to Simplified Chinese before they are stored and rendered, including older artifacts read during rendering.

The Markdown briefing renders a block marked primary directly below the item title and before the source line, without a redundant block heading. Profiles without a primary block show the source first and then render every block under its bold localized title on the same line as its content. External references follow the blocks when used. Items are grouped by Profile: the briefing title is H1, localized Profile names are H2 sections, and items are H3 headings. Set digest.profile_order to control the H2 section order; a non-empty list must contain every loaded Profile exactly once.