Swarm Alerts & Topic Monitoring Guide

Everything you need to set up AI-powered monitoring, track topics across congressional hearings, and receive instant alerts when relevant content appears.

1) Introduction: Why AI Topic Monitoring Matters

Congressional hearings produce thousands of hours of content each year. Manual monitoring is impossible at scale. Rotunda's Swarm system deploys AI agents that continuously scan all hearings—live and archived—for topics you care about, delivering targeted alerts within minutes of relevant content appearing. Whether tracking legislation, regulatory issues, or specific stakeholders, Swarms ensure you never miss critical moments.

  • Continuous monitoring: AI scans all House and Senate hearings automatically, 24/7.
  • Instant alerts: Get email notifications within minutes when your topics appear in any hearing.
  • Natural language topics: Describe what you're tracking in plain English—no complex syntax or keywords required.
  • Live coverage: Swarms monitor all ongoing and upcoming hearings.

2) What is a Swarm?

A Swarm is Rotunda's AI-powered topic monitoring system. Each Swarm represents a topic or area of interest you want to track across congressional hearings. Behind the scenes, the Swarm uses multiple concurrent LLM instances to analyze transcript chunks through embeddings and natural language understanding, identifying relevant content with high precision.

How Swarms Work

  • Multi-stage AI analysis: Incoming transcripts are processed through embedding similarity and LLM evaluation to filter for relevance.
  • Concurrent processing: Multiple AI agents work in parallel to analyze content in real-time as hearings progress.
  • Intelligent filtering: The system learns your topic's nuances to reduce false positives and surface genuinely relevant moments.

3) Setting Up Your First Swarm

Creating a Swarm takes seconds. Navigate to the Swarms page and click "Create New Swarm." The key to effective monitoring is crafting a clear, focused topic description.

  1. Name your Swarm: Use a descriptive name you'll recognize in alerts (e.g., "AI Regulation - FTC Oversight").
  2. Write your topic description: Describe in plain English what you want to monitor. Be specific about the subject, related legislation, agencies, or stakeholders.
  3. Save and activate: Your Swarm begins monitoring immediately.

Pro tip: Start with a focused topic for your first Swarm. You can always create additional Swarms for related areas rather than trying to capture everything in one.

4) Crafting Effective Topic Descriptions

The quality of your alerts depends on how well you describe your topic. Swarms use natural language understanding, so write as if explaining to a knowledgeable colleague.

Best Practices

  • Be specific: Instead of "climate change," try "climate disclosure requirements for public companies and SEC oversight of climate-related financial risks."
  • Include context: Mention relevant legislation (bill numbers, titles), agencies, or key stakeholders to help the AI understand what matters.
  • Define scope: Specify whether you want broad coverage or narrow focus. Example: "Focus on antitrust enforcement actions, not general competition policy discussions."
  • Provide examples: List a few concrete examples of what you consider relevant: "Mentions of FTC investigations into tech platforms, discussions of merger reviews, or testimony about market concentration."

Topic Description Template

A well-structured topic description typically includes:

  • Core subject: What you're tracking (e.g., "cybersecurity requirements for critical infrastructure")
  • Key entities: Agencies, companies, bills, or individuals (e.g., "CISA, DHS, H.R. 1234")
  • Scope boundaries: What to include or exclude (e.g., "Include state-level discussions; exclude general data privacy topics")
  • Example scenarios: Concrete situations you want to catch (e.g., "Testimony about ransomware incidents, discussions of incident reporting requirements")

5) Understanding Alerts

When your Swarm identifies relevant content, you receive an email notification within minutes. Each alert includes a direct link to the specific moment in the hearing where your topic was mentioned, along with context about the hearing.

  • Instant email notifications: Receive alerts as soon as relevant content is identified in live hearings.
  • Direct links: Click through from your email to watch the exact moment with synchronized transcript.
  • Full context: Each alert includes hearing title, committee, timestamp, and surrounding transcript context.
  • Alerts dashboard: View all your alerts in one place on the Alerts page, where you can search, filter, and review past notifications.

6) Managing Your Swarms and Alerts

Access all your Swarms from the Swarms dashboard. Each Swarm displays its current status, recent activity, and configuration.

Viewing Alerts

  • Alerts page: Visit the Alerts page to see all moments where your Swarms identified relevant content, with hearing context and timestamp.
  • Direct playback: Click any alert to watch the video moment with synchronized transcript.
  • Clip and share: Instantly create a clip from any alert by highlighting the moment and hitting share.
  • Search and filter: Use the alerts page to search across all your alerts or filter by specific Swarms or time periods.

Refining Your Swarm

  • Edit topic description: If you're getting too many false positives or missing relevant content, refine your description with more specific language or examples.
  • Pause/resume: Temporarily pause a Swarm if you don't need active monitoring, then resume when needed.
  • Archive: Archive completed or obsolete Swarms to keep your dashboard focused on active topics.

7) Use Cases and Applications

Swarms are versatile tools for various monitoring needs. Here's how professionals use them:

Legislative Tracking

Monitor all mentions of specific bills across committee hearings and floor debates. Get alerted when your legislation is discussed, amended, or referenced by witnesses or members.

Regulatory Monitoring

Track agency oversight, rulemaking discussions, and enforcement priorities. Stay informed about regulatory changes that could impact your clients or industry.

Stakeholder Intelligence

Follow mentions of specific companies, organizations, or individuals across congressional proceedings. Understand how stakeholders are being discussed and what concerns are raised.

Issue Area Surveillance

Maintain comprehensive coverage of broad policy areas (e.g., healthcare, energy, financial services) by setting up multiple focused Swarms for different aspects of the issue.

Competitive Intelligence

Track how competitors, adjacent industries, or alternative approaches are discussed in congressional forums. Identify emerging trends and potential policy shifts.

8) Integrating Swarms with Your Workflow

Swarms work best when integrated into your daily research and monitoring routines.

Team Collaboration

  • Shared Swarms: Organization admins can create Swarms visible to all team members, ensuring everyone receives relevant alerts.
  • Forward alerts: Alert emails include direct links to video moments—forward them to colleagues for instant access.
  • Clip creation: Turn any alert into a shareable clip with a public permalink for team briefings or client updates.

Research Integration

  • Alert review: Check the Alerts page regularly to identify priority items for deeper analysis.
  • Search follow-up: Use Rotunda's natural language search to find related moments when a Swarm identifies something interesting.
  • Citation workflow: Create clips directly from alerts for use in memos, briefings, or legal filings.

Proactive Monitoring

  • Scheduled review: Check your hearing schedule each week and create temporary Swarms for specific upcoming hearings you want to monitor closely.
  • Event-driven Swarms: When major policy events occur (e.g., regulatory actions, market incidents), quickly set up a Swarm to track congressional response.

9) Advanced Swarm Strategies

Power users employ these techniques to maximize Swarm effectiveness:

Layered Monitoring

Create multiple Swarms with different specificity levels for the same general area. Example: one broad Swarm for "AI policy" and several narrow Swarms for "AI safety standards," "AI copyright," and "AI employment impacts."

Negative Filtering

Explicitly tell your Swarm what to exclude if you're getting unwanted matches. Example: "Track telecommunications infrastructure, but exclude general broadband deployment discussions unless they involve 5G security."

Temporal Swarms

Set up short-lived Swarms for specific events or time periods (e.g., during a specific bill's markup or confirmation hearing), then archive when complete.

Comparative Swarms

Run parallel Swarms on related but distinct topics to compare congressional attention. Example: separate Swarms for "renewable energy incentives" vs. "fossil fuel subsidies" to track relative discussion volume.

10) Troubleshooting and Optimization

If your Swarm isn't performing as expected, try these adjustments:

Too Many False Positives

  • Add specificity: Include more context about what makes content relevant vs. tangentially related.
  • Define exclusions: Explicitly state what you don't want to see.
  • Narrow scope: Focus on a specific aspect rather than a broad topic area.

Missing Relevant Content

  • Broaden description: Include alternative terminology or related concepts that might be used in hearings.
  • Add examples: List specific scenarios or phrases that you consider relevant.
  • Check historical matches: Review past hearings manually via search to see how your topic is actually discussed, then update your Swarm description to match.

No Matches at All

  • Verify topic frequency: Use search to confirm your topic is actually discussed in hearings. Some niche topics may not appear regularly.
  • Expand scope: Your topic might be too narrow. Broaden to related areas or higher-level categories.
  • Check Swarm status: Ensure your Swarm is active (not paused).

11) Swarm Best Practices Summary

  • Start focused: Begin with narrow, well-defined topics rather than trying to capture everything at once.
  • Iterate descriptions: Refine your topic descriptions based on the alerts you receive—treat it as an evolving process.
  • Use multiple Swarms: Create separate Swarms for distinct aspects of your work rather than one catch-all Swarm.
  • Review regularly: Check the Alerts page regularly to assess performance and make adjustments to your Swarms.
  • Combine with search: Use Swarms for ongoing monitoring and manual search for historical research.
  • Archive when done: Keep your active Swarm list manageable by archiving completed topics.
  • Manage alert volume: If you're receiving too many alerts, refine your topic descriptions to be more specific and focused.

12) Privacy and Data Security

Swarm monitoring operates on public congressional hearing data. Your Swarm configurations and alert preferences are private to your organization.

  • Topic privacy: Your Swarm descriptions and monitored topics are not shared outside your organization.
  • Alert delivery: Alerts are sent only to authorized users within your organization.
  • Data retention: Swarm matches reference public hearing content and are retained according to standard data policies.
  • Access control: Organization admins control who can create, edit, and view Swarms.

13) Frequently Asked Questions

How quickly do I get alerted after relevant content appears?

For live hearings, alerts typically arrive within minutes of the relevant moment.

Can I monitor specific committees or speakers only?

Yes—include committee or speaker names in your topic description to focus monitoring. Example: "Track mentions of cryptocurrency regulation in House Financial Services Committee hearings."

How many Swarms can I create?

Limits depend on your subscription tier. Contact your organization admin or check your account settings for details.

Can I share alerts with people outside my organization?

Alert emails contain links to video moments. Anyone with the link can view the content (it's public hearing footage). For formal sharing, create a clip from the alert for a permanent public permalink.

What happens if I edit a Swarm topic description?

The updated description takes effect immediately for new content. The system does not automatically re-process historical content with the new description, but you can trigger a backfill by contacting support if needed.

14) Glossary of Terms

  • Swarm: Rotunda's AI-powered topic monitoring system that continuously scans congressional hearings for specified topics and sends alerts when relevant content appears.
  • Topic description: The natural language explanation of what you want to monitor, used by AI to identify relevant content.
  • Alert: A notification sent when your Swarm identifies a relevant moment in a hearing. Alerts include email notifications and entries on the Alerts page.
  • Alerts page: Dashboard where you can view, search, and filter all alerts generated by your Swarms.
  • False positive: An alert that the Swarm flagged but isn't actually relevant to your monitoring needs—indicates the topic description needs refinement.