What Amb Affairs is

Amb Affairs is the geopolitics desk of the Ambassador house. Day one is a single public instrument: the Iran Tension Meter — a 0–100 reading, a short note in the editor’s voice, and a short list of headlines worth keeping on the desk.

It is not a live intelligence product, not an alert service, and not a model. The number moves when an editor moves it.

How the score is set

Adrian Vann sets the score by hand. Feeds never write the published number. An automated ingest pulls allowlisted RSS/Atom sources into a private candidate queue. An editor then publishes or dismisses each item. Only published items appear on the public meter page, newest first.

The public label (Low through Critical) is derived from configurable bands unless the editor overrides it for a given reading:

• Low0–24
• Moderate25–49
• Elevated50–74
• High75–89
• Critical90–100

Each published reading is appended to history. That history drives the 24-hour delta (versus a prior reading, preferring one from about a day earlier) and the seven-day sparkline.

Relationship to AmbTimes

AmbTimes (ambtimes.com) is the sibling brand: faith, family, and civic news. The two sites cross-link in the footer. They do not share a CMS, homepage, or editorial queue.