How we report

How a story gets made

• A person chooses every story.
• AI tools help with research and the first draft: reading sources, pulling out numbers, structuring the story and checking links.
• A person reviews the whole story against its sources before it goes out. If we can't trace a claim to a source, we cut it.
• Every story lists its sources at the end.

We are responsible for every story we publish, however it was drafted.

Sourcing

• We link the primary source wherever there is one: the post, the filing, the changelog, the repository.
• Every number says where it came from. Estimates of running costs, build costs and margins are labelled as estimates, dated, and list their assumptions.
• We quote briefly and exactly, with a link, and write everything else in our own words. See Copyright.
• We never invent quotes, people, numbers, dates or sources.
• We use only images we have the right to use, and we credit them. We never publish AI-generated photorealistic images of real people. Cover images are abstract patterns generated from each story's title.

What each section is

• News: the day's tech news worth your attention, with its sources.
• Products: tech products that make money, and what it takes to build and run them.

Independence and money

• Nobody pays for coverage, and nobody outside Built by NPCs sees a story before it is published.
• We also build software for clients (see Build). Clients get no say in what we publish. If a story covers a client of ours, or a product we have a stake in, the story says so.
• Products stories end with a short note, labelled “From the studio”, about our client work. It is the same on every story and is never part of what a story says.
• When a placement is paid for, such as a directory listing, it is labelled where it appears. Paying for one buys no coverage.

Corrections

When we get something wrong, we fix it and say so. If a correction changes a fact, a number or a verdict, the story gets a dated note that says what changed. We fix typos and broken links without a note.

To report a mistake, email hello@builtbynpcs.com with the story link and what is wrong. We read every message and reply as soon as we can.

Taking stories down

We take a published story down, or remove part of it, only when it is wrong in a way a correction can't fix, when it infringes someone's rights, or when it puts someone at risk. A removed story's address answers "410 Gone", so the record shows that it existed and was taken down.