A walkthrough

What does working in Vigil Professional actually look like? This page follows one real question — is the Strait of Hormuz commercially usable again? — through one working pass: what changed, why, what the instruments do with it, and what comes out at the end. Four steps, a few minutes, and every picture is the real product.

Everything on this page is real. The question, the records and the screenshots are the live workspace over the published corpus — nothing is mocked up for demonstration, and if a record is reviewed next week this page changes with it. When you want the full depth, one complete Professional record is published line by line, in public, on the record page.

Four terms, plainly

Watch question: A standing question Vigil keeps under review on a stated cadence — public, free to read, with its whole review history.
Observable record: Professional's layer under a question: one checkable thing, with its current reading, its dated evidence, what would count as movement, and what it cannot establish.
Canonical record: One entry in Vigil's research corpus — an event, a development, an actor, a supply system. Everything on every surface cites these; nothing copies them.
Brief Builder: The instrument that assembles a briefing from canonical records, each block printing its own wording, dates, confidence and sources.

1 · See what changed

A working session starts in Monitor, on the exposure you hold.

Standing Watch scope

Gulf Energy & Maritime Risk

Commercial access, energy infrastructure and regional security conditions affecting Gulf maritime and energy exposure.

6 questions in scope · reviewed weekly · the scope is public

A scope is a named exposure held across several questions at once — narrower than a module, wider than a single question. Opened in Monitor, it shows what the current review cycle found: which questions moved, which stayed quiet, the recorded activity behind them, and the geography they sit on. Our question is one of the 6.

The Gulf Energy & Maritime Risk standing scope inside Monitor: six of six questions reviewed this cycle, and all six moved; the What moved list of those six questions, the cycle chronology, three recorded-activity series, the top of a Gulf map carrying 29 located places, and an inspector waiting for a selection. — The same Gulf Energy & Maritime Risk scope that is public, opened as a working surface: its geography, its recorded activity, and the review entries behind its six questions.

A review that finds nothing material is recorded as exactly that — quiet is a finding, not an absence, and the cycle chronology says so rather than leaving you to wonder whether anyone looked.

2 · Understand why

Under the headline sits the question, and under the question sits the evidence.

Public Watch question

Is the Strait of Hormuz commercially usable again?

Closed by judgment, not water: the strait remained physically passable. Clubs ended war-risk extensions in March 2026; the London market said cover stayed available, owners judged the risk too high. No cover is written on charterers' terms, the IMO's no-safe-transit view stands and all six Gulf states reject Iran's Strait Authority. On 9 October the Revolutionary Guard claimed a tanker strike on an unauthorised route and extended its declared targeting beyond the strait. Central Command calls the lanes open to ships not breaking US sanctions. Tracked transits fell to seven on 6 October, the fewest since July.

Condition as of 2026-10-11 · 6 named observables · last reviewed 2026-11-01

Read it in Vigil Research

The question itself is free, with its condition and its review ledger. What Professional adds is the layer beneath: an observable record for each checkable thing the question turns on, and under each record the chain it rests on — the question above it, the observables beside it, the reading itself, and the canonical sources it cites.

The evidence chain for one observable record: question — “Is the Strait of Hormuz commercially usable again?”; observables — six records that check it; this record — the reading that no war-risk cover is being written on terms charterers take up; sources — four registry entries it cites. — Question, observables, the record, its sources. Four counts of canonical records, declared by the corpus — nothing here grades how strong the evidence is.

That chain is the whole method in one view: nothing in it is generated, and nothing grades how strong the evidence is — the records state what they rest on, and you judge. To read every field of one such record, the record page publishes one in full.

3 · Work with the research

The same records, worked as a corpus — by query, as systems, and under assumptions.

Investigate works the corpus by query. One word — the strait's name — returns every family of record that touches it, and selecting one opens what it rests on and what it connects to without leaving the page.

The Investigate workspace with the query “hormuz” returning 49 records grouped by family — watch question, observable records, scenario templates, developments, actors, formations, events, locations and more — one observable record selected; beside the results, its evidence chain of question, observables, this record and sources, and related entities naming six actors and six places; and on the right the inspector, open on that record. — Investigate is a working surface, not a search box: a query returns records by family, and selecting one opens what it rests on and what it connects to without leaving the page.

The strait is also a record in its own right: a node in the Hormuz-dependent crude and products export system, a supply system with 8 nodes in its authored order and 6 documented disruptions. The Economy & Logistics workbench draws that system as a journey — traceable upstream and downstream from any node, an order the record states, never a route it has not established. The Handbook chapter shows all six of its instruments.

The Flows instrument on Hormuz crude exports in the presentation state: the supply system’s nodes in their authored order as a left-to-right journey of role runs — entry ports, a processing complex, more entry ports, the Strait of Hormuz as chokepoint, Sohar as transit node — each run banded origin, process or movement and joined by schematic arrows; the strait is selected and traced downstream so the nodes after it stay lit and the earlier ones dim; a Documented disruptions strip beneath. — A flow is the record’s authored order, in runs of one role, banded by role and marker type — an order, not a route, and the arrows say so. Trace downstream lights what comes after a node.

And when the question is what if, Scenario Lab runs an authored template — here, Commercial transit through the Strait of Hormuz is materially disrupted — holding 4 assumptions you set and reporting which records become relevant, affected or stressed. Every template publishes what it does not model, and a run carries no probability, no score and no horizon.

A scenario template — “Commercial transit through the Strait of Hormuz is materially disrupted” — with four assumptions held, nine of sixteen implications active, four conditions that would invalidate the premise, 59 records engaged and five things it does not model; the assumption controls on the left, the assumption-to-record chain in the middle, and the invalidators and not-modelled lists on the right. — Scenario Lab holds conditions you choose and reports which parts of the record become relevant, affected or stressed. No probability, no score, no horizon.

4 · Produce and return

The end of a pass is something somebody else can check.

The Brief Builder assembles a briefing from canonical blocks. Each block prints its own wording, register, condition date, confidence and sources; your summary and annotations are marked as yours, on the page and in every export — Markdown, print, JSON, evidence pack.

The briefing on paper: a Vigil Consilium intelligence-brief masthead, the title “Gulf maritime access — September”, the scope line “Iran–Gulf · week to 14 September 2026”, an executive summary marked as the author’s own, and beneath it numbered blocks each carrying its register, its condition date and its confidence. — The document the builder is assembling. Vigil’s wording prints as Vigil’s; the author’s prose is marked as the author’s, on the page and in every export.

What you save is a reference to a record, never a copy of it — so when a reading is next reviewed, your collections, timelines and brief drafts move with it instead of quietly going stale. And because you follow the question, the next material change reaches you without being looked for; a review that finds nothing changed sends nothing.

Working groups do this together: Vigil Professional Teams adds a shared workspace beside each member's own, where collections and brief drafts are shared by one deliberate action and every change carries its author. How Teams works.

Where this leaves you

Vigil Research — the questions, the briefs, the corpus — is free and stays free. Professional is the working layer over it: 445 observable records across 8 modules — Ukraine–Russia, Sahel, Caucasus, Syria, Taiwan Strait, Iran–Gulf, NATO Eastern Flank and Levant — under 83 public Watch questions, with 17 standing scopes and 23 scenario templates, worked with the instruments above.

Every Professional plan includes this whole toolset. The coverage you choose decides which research modules it works over. Focused access from $69 / €59 per month, for one named user.

Inspect one record in full See the whole product Open Professional

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