Buried Signals × Indicator
Tom's channels, tools, and expertise become a Buried Signals layer around Indicator's publication and membership engine. Indicator centralises membership, sponsorship, and shared grant monetisation; Buried Signals keeps its creator/company identity.
01Thesis
Buried Signals — positioning
Investigations with AI and the tools to run your own. The AI and visual studio for Indicator media.
What each side does
Indicator
- Publication, masthead, editorial leadership
- Investigative reporting
- OSINT methodology, guides, workshops
- Trackers, dashboards, and explanatory formats
- Membership funnel + checkout + CRM (Beehiiv)
- Ad team / sponsor inventory
- Grant pipeline
Buried Signals
- AI tooling — Spotlight, Scoutpost, OSINT Navigator (with Indicator), Mycroft, Data Navigator
- AI methodology + monthly guides for members
- Monthly webinars
- Bootcamps (separate paid course; member discount)
- Creator video on investigations, published on owned channels with Indicator as collaborators
- Tom's channels — YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, newsletter
- Swiss grant pipeline for tool development and technology work
An LLM Wiki with access to a shared Hermes agent on Slack: a way to share investigative knowledge across countries, schedule recurring monitoring routines, and watch the web. Tom also contributes knowledge and workflows; this is a pilot for what he is building for other newsrooms.
Working economics
Why these numbers
The target and workload come out of a simple cost calculation — Tom's time + the tool stack the tier runs on:
| Monthly cost basis | Amount |
|---|---|
| Tool stack (Firecrawl, Supabase, Render, Cloudflare, Resend, OpenRouter, AI subs) | ~$500 / month |
| Tom's pay for tier work (1.5 days/week, 6 days/month) | ~CHF 2,000 / month |
| Total cost basis | ~CHF 2,500 / month |
At 300 members × $10 × 90% Tom share = ~$2,700/month, the tier just clears the basis. That's why 300 is the target, and why the workload is sized at 1.5 days/week, 6 days/month — the deliverables (webinar, office hours, guide, investigation slot) fit that time budget exactly.
02Channels, Brand & Traffic
Buried Signals remains Tom's public creator/company brand. The visible change is affiliation and routing: Tom's site, newsletter, and owned channels say he is part of Indicator, send membership intent into Indicator, and preserve sponsor/consulting inventory around Tom's audience.
What changes publicly
Website
buriedsignals.com stays Tom's creator/company site. It says Buried Signals is part of Indicator, routes membership CTAs to Indicator, and keeps consulting visible where appropriate.
Newsletter
Tom's newsletter stays Buried Signals in voice and audience relationship. The 800-journalist list is sponsor inventory and a recurring path into the member tier.
Owned channels
YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn stay Tom-led. Investigation videos publish on owned channels with Indicator as collaborator where relevant, with sponsor space in videos, descriptions, and social packages.
Membership funnel
Membership lives on Tom-facing surfaces but routes to Indicator's checkout and member stack. join.buriedsignals.com is the Tom-designed bridge page.
Traffic routing
| Surface | What visitors see | Where value goes |
|---|---|---|
buriedsignals.com | Tom / Buried Signals, part of Indicator; work archive, tools, consulting, membership CTA. | Membership intent to Indicator; consulting leads to Tom. |
join.buriedsignals.com | Benefits page for tools, classes, newsletter, and community. | Newsletter opt-ins, Indicator membership checkout, consulting capture. |
| Buried Signals newsletter | Monthly AI/investigation dispatch, sponsor slot, membership CTA. | Sponsorship inventory and member conversion. |
| YouTube / TikTok / LinkedIn | Creator-led investigations, methodology, tool demos, Indicator collaboration; social bios and banners say "part of Indicator." | Audience growth, sponsor inventory, traffic to the join page. |
| Indicator | Publication/membership context, checkout, member access. | CRM, membership revenue, sponsor packaging. |
03Copy
How the partnership appears across Tom-owned surfaces, Indicator member surfaces, and joint investigations. These are the working treatments, not option sets.
| Surface | Treatment |
|---|---|
| Short-form video TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts, social cuts |
Animated end slate: A Buried Signals × Indicator collaboration Description always reads: Video by Tom Vaillant Reporting by Craig Silverman and Alexios Mantzarlis |
| Long-form video YouTube investigations, documentaries, conference cuts |
End credits roll, with collaboration credit included in the credits sequence. Description always reads: Video by Tom Vaillant Reporting by Craig Silverman and Alexios Mantzarlis |
| Partnership framing Homepage, about page, newsletter membership page, tool pages |
Use this affiliation language across Buried Signals surfaces and related tool pages: in partnership with Indicator |
| LinkedIn role title Tom's Indicator affiliation |
Recommended title: AI Investigations Partner, Indicator |
| Default description Buried Signals meta description, social bios, speaker intros, tool websites |
Buried Signals is an investigative and technology studio in partnership with Indicator. Using AI to accelerate investigations, disclose methodologies, and build open tools for journalists and researchers. |
| AI Lab tier description Indicator member tier page, email card, checkout explainer |
AI Lab is Indicator's practical tier for AI-assisted investigation, built with Buried Signals. Members get a suite of tools, training, field guides, office hours, webinars, and walkthroughs from real reporting workflows or newsroom case studies. |
| Announcement copy Indicator email, pinned post, partnership announcement |
Indicator is partnering with Buried Signals to expand what members can do with AI in investigative work. Buried Signals is an investigative and technology studio built around a simple premise: AI can accelerate investigations, but the parts that matter most — sourcing, verification, judgment, and trust — stay with journalists. It was founded by Tom Vaillant, a visual journalist and technologist trained through Columbia's Lede Program and the CUNY AI Journalism Lab Builders Cohort. Through the partnership, Tom will use AI to support Indicator investigations with Craig and Alexios, then open the method so members can adapt the workflows to their own reporting. For members, that work becomes AI Lab: a practical tier of Buried Signals tools, training, field guides, office hours, webinars, and walkthroughs built from real reporting workflows and newsroom case studies. |
04Tools
The member tier is a practical AI investigations layer on top of Indicator Pro: monitoring credits, guided methodology, early feature access, and office hours around real workflows.
In this agreement, to be renegotiated after the 90-day review period, the tools remain Tom's IP licensed to Indicator as part of the agreement.
Spotlight
Open-source OSINT investigation pipeline: brief → methodology → autonomous research → adversarial fact-check → vault ingestion. Web app, agent-agnostic CLI, and self-hosted — runs on Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Goose, pi, or Hermes.
Built by Buried Signals with Indicator · spotlight.buriedsignals.com
Scoutpost
AI scouts for continuous monitoring — web pages, local news, search queries, social profiles, and data APIs. Scout runtime on Supabase Edge Functions; MuckRock or self-hosted auth.
Built by Buried Signals · scoutpost.ai
OSINT Navigator
10,000+ OSINT investigation tools, AI-recommended by investigation context. Web app + MCP server; included with Indicator Pro.
Built by Buried Signals with Indicator · navigator.indicator.media
Mycroft
Goose extension pack for journalists. Curated recipes (vault Q&A, SIFT, beat monitoring, story pitch) on Zero-Data-Retention providers only. Browser-based installer; Apache 2.0.
Built by Buried Signals · mycroft.buriedsignals.com
Data Navigator
Navigator's Data mode: 55-source catalogue of public registries and paid OSINT APIs, plus a natural-language query surface. Web UI, CLI, and installable agent skills. OpenSanctions integration for risk screening.
Built by Buried Signals with OpenSanctions and Indicator · launching July 1
Consulting stays visible excluding Navigator
Each tool page carries a consulting lead-gen form for Tom. That stays in place until Buried Signals reaches secure recurring revenue.
Newsletter capture is dual opt-in
Each tool page carries newsletter signup with explicit opt-in for both Indicator and Buried Signals newsletters.
Necessary. Tom needs it to stay afloat while recurring membership revenue is still being proven.
Launch benefits in the AI tier
Data Navigator
A natural-language data tool for OSINT — pull live records from public registries and paid APIs without writing code.
- AI-tier-only access to the Data Navigator (web + CLI + installable agent skills)
- Ask in plain language; the right source is picked and queried for you
- Public data — free public registries queryable out of the box, no setup
- Examples: Norway Brønnøysund, USAspending, GLEIF, and the rest of the open catalogue
- Paid data
- Hosted by Buried Signals (web + CLI): pooled paid OSINT APIs we run for members — 250 hosted queries / month (examples: vessel tracking, corporate-ownership graphs, leak databases)
- Bring your own keys (CLI users only): store paid-API keys safely once; the CLI runs queries on your machine using our skill-file integration (Companies House and the wider catalogue)
- OpenSanctions integration for entity risk screening — built into the Data Navigator adapter set
- Launching July 1
Spotlight — Member Integrations
The same data sources, available to the Spotlight agent mid-investigation — no copy-paste, no context switching.
- Data Navigator adapters wired into the Spotlight investigation flow
- The agent calls any source you’ve set up — free public registries, your own paid-API keys, and the pooled hosted sources
- OpenSanctions risk-screening on entities the investigation surfaces
- Demos, walkthroughs, and office hours on real investigations
Scoutpost Pro
AI scouts that monitor pages, social, councils, and beats — for you, all month.
- 1,000 internal credits / month across Page, Beat, Social, Civic/Council, and OSINT Scouts
- Member-only templates and examples
- OSINT Scout (coming soon): cheap repeatable monitoring of OSINT tools and APIs (~2–3 credits per run). Likely to integrate with Data Navigator in the backend.
OSINT Navigator
More headroom on the 10,000+ tool catalogue.
- 200 queries / day — 4× the standard Indicator Pro limit of 50/day
Mycroft
Guided setup for the Goose extension pack.
- Walkthroughs of the browser-based installer at mycroft.buriedsignals.com
- Office hours on the bundled recipes: vault Q&A, SIFT fact-check, beat monitoring, story pitch
- Help configuring Zero-Data-Retention providers and the Swiss inference option
Early access
- Early access to new features as they ship
- Member feedback prioritized as product input on the roadmap
Top-ups
Members can buy additional credits if they want to use more than the monthly allowance. Scoutpost top-ups are not available yet; Data Navigator should support top-ups for heavier usage.
05Member Tier
The member tier is tools + methodology + classes. Tools are in the section above. This is the monthly teaching plus the bootcamp.
The recurring drumbeat
| Deliverable | Promise |
|---|---|
| Webinar (monthly) | One 60-minute live session: talks with journalists using AI on investigations (can be any of my advisors), or sessions with Craig and Alexios on our own investigations. |
| AI Lab Research Digest (monthly) | Member-only brief on AI in journalism: new tools and APIs worth tracking, AI research relevant to investigative work, regulatory and industry shifts. Distinct from the free Buried Signals newsletter. |
| Office hours (bi-weekly) | Themed slots alternating between two tracks: OSINT Navigator + Data Navigator + Spotlight one week, Scoutpost + Mycroft the next. Group Q&A and practical troubleshooting; each tool gets coverage every two weeks. |
| AI Lab Practical Guide (monthly) | One field guide, template, or workflow note. |
| Augmented Investigation Walkthrough (quarterly) | 90-minute live walkthrough of a real investigation end-to-end: planning, source selection, tool calls, archiving, and write-up. Recordings retained in the member library. |
| Bootcamp access | Members get 50% off and priority access. Launch: first two cohorts free for paid Buried Signals tier members, capacity-limited. |
Bootcamp
- Separate paid course attached to the member tier.
- Format: four 60-minute sessions over two weeks, 25 seats per cohort.
- Public price $299; Indicator AI/tools members $149.
- Launch: first two cohorts free for paid Buried Signals tier members, capacity-limited, with a members-only waitlist.
- First edition: Claude Cowork / Codex.
- Promise: participants leave with a working investigative agent setup and an investigation in flight.
Founding Members
Founding Member bonus
Indicator Founding Members get free access to one bootcamp cohort and dedicated Founding Member office hours. Full recurring tool-tier access remains part of the paid Buried Signals tier.
06Owned Channels
Tom's owned channels are part of the commercial package: video/social for reach, newsletter for high-quality journalist attention, and membership CTAs back into Indicator.
Sponsorship is centralised through Indicator. Revenue share should be allocated by delivered visibility: videos, newsletter placements, social distribution, and member CTAs.
Video
@buriedsignals (Tom)
- Investigations (Tom-built video, Indicator credited as collaborator)
- Methodology + tool demos
- Field reports (Tom-led)
Indicator's channel
- Workshops + member library
- Interviews + conference talks
- Institutional explainers
Same model others run
Bellingcat × Search PartyInstitutional + creator partnership running as joint posts on Search Party's YouTube channel. Tracking the Kinahans, Inside Boxing's Criminal Connections, The Formation of the Super-Cartel — same pattern Indicator + Buried Signals will use on @buriedsignals.
NewPress federation, visible"Our other channels" surfaces directly from Search Party's channel page — Christophe, Max Fisher, and Search Party as a federated family. The parent makes the federation legible to viewers.
Native collab on Instagram/TikTokOne post, multiple creators tagged as collaborators. The post lands in every collaborator's feed at once. Native to Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts.
I will also publish on Newsreel and Noosphere, with the same crediting to Indicator. If useful later, the same model can scale to other creators around Indicator-backed investigations.
Jon Lawrence, VP Production at NewPress, is also one of Tom's advisors.
Newsletter
Audience
Buried Signals newsletter relationship with roughly 800 journalists.
Sponsor inventory
Sponsor space in the newsletter, with packages that can include video and social visibility.
Conversion path
Recurring CTAs to membership benefits, bootcamps, tools, and consulting, with explicit opt-in for Buried Signals and Indicator newsletters where signup happens.
07Business
Money and inbound — sponsorship, grants, and consulting. Collaborative and independent grant pipelines. Sponsorship routes through Indicator as the business point.
Business contact routing
Partnerships, sponsorships, press → business@indicator.media (or buriedsignals@indicator.media alias). Cleanest external signal that the partnership is integrated; sponsors and grant officers want a known address.
Sponsorship
All sponsorship routes through Indicator for packaging, sales, invoicing, and delivery. Revenue split is based on committed impressions across Indicator and Buried Signals channels. If Tom brings the sponsor, Tom receives a separate origination commission first.
Sponsor split example
| Channel group | Committed impressions | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Indicator newsletter / site / social / member placements | 32,000 | 80% |
| Buried Signals newsletter / video / social placements | 8,000 | 20% |
| Total | 40,000 | 100% |
On a $10,000 sponsorship, that means Indicator receives $8,000 and Buried Signals receives $2,000. If Tom originates the sponsor, apply a 15-20% origination commission to Tom first, then split the remainder by committed impressions.
Grants
Both parties keep independent grant capacity, but investigative grants default toward collaboration and shared budget allocation when the reporting is genuinely joint. Grants don't transfer tool ownership.
| Grant type | Lead | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| Swiss technology / tool grants | Tom | Funds tool development; Indicator can be partner, pilot, or distributor. |
| Investigative / reporting grants | Project-dependent |
|
Consulting
- Direct (Tom-sourced) → 100% Tom's, separate from member economics.
- Indirect (Indicator-sourced or helped to deliver) → 20-25% origination margin on gross.
08Spotlight Engine — separate, future
Spotlight V2 — sovereign Swiss AI investigation platform. $100K raise underway.
Outside Phase 1. If the partnership works, Tom can offer Indicator an eventual equity buy-in to the Engine — either through a separate entity or a Tom-held share carved off for the Engine. Decision deferred until Phase 1 proves out and the Engine is funded and under development.
Opportunity layers
- Technology — web app + agent-agnostic CLI + self-hosted, on a Swiss sovereign endpoint (Exoscale Zurich, no logging, Swiss law, open-weight models).
- Community — pledge-driven investigation queue: readers stake money toward investigations they want commissioned; threshold-triggered.
- Collaborative investigations — Forbidden Stories pattern; Indicator + Trustfnd-routed newsroom + Buried Signals as the 3-collaborator structure.
- GIJN partnership + member routing — distribution and member conversion through investigative journalism networks.
- Investigative journalism as a service — scoped investigation support for newsrooms, NGOs, and civic groups.
- Fact-checking as a service — evidence gathering, verification workflows, and report production as paid services.
- Monetisation — top-ups, sponsors, foundation grants, newsroom licenses, pledge fees, and service work.