Tier definitions

Tier definitions are in src/llm-judge.ts#VECTOR_SYSTEM_PROMPT. If you edit them, the whole classifier changes.

The 9 tiers

regulated_primary

Official regulatory / government publications, court records, central bank releases, standards-body documents.

Examples: SEC filings on sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar, FDA guidance at fda.gov/regulatory-information/, court records, Eurostat / BLS / e-Stat Japan statistics, ISO / NIST / W3C specs, ico.org.uk GDPR guidance.

peer_reviewed

Journal articles and working papers with editorial review.

Examples: arXiv, PubMed / PMC, JSTOR, ScienceDirect, SAGE, Taylor & Francis, Frontiers, Nature, Springer, Emerald, INFORMS journal articles. Working papers / preprints hosted on university repositories when the URL path indicates a research paper (/publications/, /papers/, /article/, /doi/, paper-identifier PDFs).

independent_editorial

Established publications with named editors, corrections policy, and fact-checking. Applies to their main editorial output — not sponsored / contributor / council paths.

Examples: BBC, Reuters, The Guardian, Ars Technica, The Atlantic, NYT news, Nikkei news, Wikipedia, university news pages (eller.arizona.edu/news), popular explainers on .edu domains that aren’t peer-reviewed papers.

vendor_primary

A vendor’s own product homepage, product page, documentation, API reference, or official changelog. The content is about the vendor’s own product on the vendor’s own canonical surface.

Examples: MDN (Mozilla docs), rfc-editor.org, a SaaS company’s pricing page, a product’s API reference, davidjteece.com (author’s own site for his work).

vendor_content_marketing

A vendor’s blog or strategic-advice content that teaches concepts adjacent to the vendor’s product. The article is NOT on a dedicated product page; it educates toward the vendor’s domain as a lead-generation mechanism.

Examples: HubSpot blog on marketing, Stripe blog on payments concepts, VC firm thought leadership (a16z, SaaStr, First Round Review), consulting firm “insights” (Bain, Deloitte, KPMG, McKinsey), for-profit university program pages (waldenu.edu/programs/business/resource/...), trade associations publishing “research” about their own industry (see boundary rule 4).

affiliate

“Best X”, “Top N”, “Best X for YEAR”, head-to-head comparisons, roundups, buying guides — when the content pattern is a commercial listicle. Apply regardless of publisher reputation. PCMag / CNet / TechRadar / Wired “Best X 2026” articles ARE affiliate, even though those publishers ALSO publish independent_editorial content elsewhere. Classify by the specific article, not the brand.

content_farm

Mass-produced, AI-generated, low-effort templated content. Thin wrappers around other sources, auto-translated content, SEO-churn sites.

ugc

User-generated content with low moderation or community-edited.

Examples: Reddit posts, forum threads, Stack Overflow, Quora answers, Hacker News, individual Medium posts by named authors with no vendor affiliation, community-run wikis.

unknown

Signals don’t allow confident classification. authoritative_weight is low; recommended_action is tag so the agent knows not to rely.

Boundary rules (six rules enforced by the prompt)

1. Affiliate trumps reputation. “Best X”, “Top N”, comparison listicles → affiliate, even on famous publishers.
2. Vendor blog ≠ vendor primary. Blogs at /blog/ or /resources/ teaching adjacent concepts → vendor_content_marketing, not vendor_primary.
3. URL path override. Paths containing /sponsored/, /partner/, /advertorial/, /branded/, /promoted/, /contributor/, /councils/, /community/, /guest-post/, /opinion/guest/ on otherwise-reputable domains: classify by the article alone. Parent reputation does NOT transfer.
4. Trade associations / lobbies. Groups publishing “research” about their own industry (Corn Refiners on corn syrup, Heartland on climate) → vendor_content_marketing + domain_content_mismatch=true. They are vendors of a policy position.
5. Domain / content mismatch. True when the domain’s implied business strongly differs from the content topic (hospital-linen supplier publishing weight-loss reviews). False for plausibly related or generic domains.
6. Academic / government TLD discipline. .edu, .ac.xx, .gov, .europa.eu, .who.int are NOT automatic tier indicators. Classify by the specific page content:
   • Published paper → peer_reviewed
   • University news / press release / popular explainer → independent_editorial
   • Degree program marketing → vendor_content_marketing
   • Official regulator guidance → regulated_primary

Taxonomy gaps (known)

• Gray-market vendors. Gaming boost providers, tool crack sites, and similar legal-gray commercial actors currently fall through as vendor_primary. A dedicated tier or orthogonal legitimacy axis is on the roadmap.
• Aggregator journalism (e.g., content aggregators with light editorial overlay) sometimes classifies as content_farm when the overlay is light; rules 2 and 3 help but edge cases remain.

If you find a consistent misclassification, it belongs in the observation log — the learning loop will eventually surface it.