MSI
One number. Zero to ten. Updated every minute.
The MSI is a live measure of how much is happening in the world right now — headline volume, source spread, market and seismic activity, sentiment. One canonical reading. The VIX for world events.
In-memory rolling buffer. Resets on cold start. v2 persists to KV.
How it's computed
The MSI is a weighted sum of five signals, each normalised to a 0–1 range, then scaled to a 0–10 score. The formula is public on purpose. We show our work.
MSI = 10 × (
0.25 · volume // log-scaled headline count
+ 0.30 · velocity // rate of change vs baseline
+ 0.15 · spread // independent reporting sources
+ 0.10 · sentiment // average negative tone
+ 0.20 · cross_corr // markets + seismic, coincident
)0–2 · Calm
Nothing unusual happening.
2–4 · Background
Normal activity. Minor stories.
4–6 · Active
Meaningful events developing.
6–8 · Escalating
Multiple concurrent active situations.
8–10 · Intense
Major unfolding event(s) dominating signals.
Inputs
- GDELT 2.0 — global headline volume, source diversity, tone.
- CoinGecko — 24h crypto volatility (BTC + ETH).
- USGS — significant earthquake count (M4.5+, last 24h).
- stooq— equity and commodity moves (S&P 500, oil).
- AISStream — live vessel positions and shipping-lane activity.
All free. All commercial-use-OK. No paid data feeds.
Editorial guardrails
A high MSI means people are having a bad day somewhere. We don't celebrate spikes, we don't time anything to them, and we never use the number to speculate. The MSI is sober by default.