Everything you need to run investigations with AI. Results, not hype.
The Indicator Lab offers an integrated suite of tools, methods, and support to help you use AI to supercharge your OSINT and digital investigative work.
Background a company, trace a crypto address, scrape a website, track a ship — you can save time and multiply your findings thanks to powerful agents, 24/7 monitoring tools, plus access to hands-on support.
A Lab membership makes it easy to get your machine set up to use AI and start running investigative agents. Install everything with one desktop app to connect our core tools with your preferred AI application, or use local models on your machine. Your Lab membership also includes access to all of Indicator's OSINT guides, investigations, and monthly workshops to keep your skills sharp. We’ll get your and your agents operating at peak capacity.
Investigative Agents
Spotlight is a system that drives your agent through a rigorous investigative process adapted to AI. Explain your investigation and it draws on a set of OSINT skill files, Indicator methods and techniques and the Navigator database of 13,000 tools to propose a plan rooted in investigative best practices. You review, revise, and accept the plan before launching it into an investigation cycle.
Exclusive skills based on Indicator OSINT guides to ensure your agents apply the most advanced techniques for analyzing websites, evaluating evidence, and more.
Mycroft gives you access to our core tools inside Goose, the Apache 2.0 open-source agent desktop from the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation. Out of the box it runs on an OpenRouter model with zero data retention, so nothing you feed it is kept by your AI platform. You can also set it up locally with open-source models we recommend.
Monitoring & Data
Scoutpost is a next-generation monitoring tool that connects to your AI agent. It runs scheduled checks across webpages, social profiles, government sources, news sources, aircraft, and vessels to surface changes that match your criteria.
When it finds something, Scoutpost sends an email alert and stores a dated, archived finding. It can also capture tamper-evident snapshots with optional Wayback submission, preserving evidence before it disappears.
Agents can create, run, search, and manage Scoutpost through MCP, REST, or the scout CLI.
Agents can also access data from TK public sources, enabling them to stay grounded in authoritative records.
A Lab membership includes enhanced access to OSINT Navigator, our ever-growing database of more than 13,000 OSINT tools. Kick off a task and your agent can find the right tool for the job, use it, and share the results.
Expert Guidance
A monthly Lab workshop from Tom Vaillant with hands-on demos and case studies.
One-on-one guidance and troubleshooting from Tom via bi-weekly Office Hours.
A Lab Notes newsletter with tips, technology updates, and insights to help your investigative workflows.
What you get
Real value, but not a silver bullet
As investigators ourselves, we know there are limits to what AI can — and should — do. You don’t want to hand over your analysis and thinking to a model, or unwittingly upload sensitive information. We built these tools to enhance the work of skilled human investigators. The Lab equips you with investigative research agents that adhere to tradecraft and defer to you. The included access to all of Indicator’s content, workshops, and reporting ensures you stay at the bleeding edge of digital investigative work.
Sensitive project?
Keep it on your machine.Lab tools can be run locally using open models on Mycroft. Our desktop application your available compute power and installs a suggested model from Google’s Gemma 4 family. We built a custom harness and trained a Gemma4 model to run Spotlight on a laptop or similar system. No need to worry about using up your tokens from a third-party model, and everything stays on your computer. If you’re worried about putting your data or your queries in the cloud, this is the alternative.
One install. Four apps.
Spotlight
Spotlight is where you run an investigation. Describe the task and what you’ve already collected and it proposes a methodology and plan for you to approve. Then it does the legwork and comes back with a case file where every claim is traced to a source.
> Proposes before it acts. Spotlight writes a plan and a methodology for your approval. Nothing runs until you say so.
> Review gates throughout. The investigation stops at each stage for your sign-off. You can redirect it, narrow it, or kill it.
> Pressure tests its work. An adversarial fact-check runs against the agent’s findings before you ever see them, helping discard weak findings and unsupported analysis.
> Grounded in real records. Your agent queries public data directly — company filings, court records, procurement, sanctions, and registries — instead of reasoning from whatever it half-remembers. Each finding links back to the record, page, or document it came from.
> Runs locally when it needs to. The full pipeline works on an open model on an ordinary laptop.
Scoutpost
Scoutpost is your monitoring engine. Tell it what you need to track — a webpage, a social profile, a local council agenda, a plane, a ship — and it checks every 24 hours, alerting you when something changes and archiving the evidence. You and your agents get the results. 1,000 credits a month.
> Monitors and archives online content. Individual pages and entire websites, profiles on X, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, government and council pages, and PDFs. You can also describe a topic or share keywords and it searches for the latest results.
> Understands plain language. No regex, no scraping setup — just type the criteria you need to monitor and Scoutpost will target them.
> Tracks aircraft and vessels. No need to keep checking manually. Tell it that you want to know if a ship leaves port, or if a plane enters a country’s airspace. It alerts you when it happens.
> Makes findings searchable. Everything gets added to your case file locally and pulled into a database for your agents to access the information.
OSINT Navigator
OSINT Navigator answers the question every investigation starts with: what tool do I use for this? Describe the problem in plain language and it finds the right tool from a catalog of more than 13,000. Then your Spotlight agent can go use it.
> 200 searches a day. Up from 50 with the standard Indicator membership.
> Available wherever you work. Connect via web app, CLI, API, and MCP, and via Spotlight and Mycroft.
> Search by what you're trying to do, not by tool name. You don't need to know a tool exists to find it.
> Answers grounded in Indicator's full archive. Navigator surfaces the guides, investigations, and techniques that relate to your query. You get a list of tools and the techniques and guidance on how to use them.
> Indicator methods as runnable skills. Skills Navigator packages our guides so an agent can execute the technique, not just read about it.
> OSINT Tool Radar. An exclusive, weekly email that details which tools were added or removed to OSINT Navigator.
Mycroft
Mycroft is the desktop interface for your AI investigation system. One place to work with your agents, notes, and tools. Built on the open-source Goose platform, you can plug in a preferred model using OpenRouter credits. Or go completely sovereign with a local model.
> One conversation, the right tool. Enter your request in plain language and Mycroft routes the request to the right Lab tool or service. You don't have to remember which app does what.
> Dozens of ready-made skills. This is an OSINT- and reporting- aware system: source checks, briefs, backgrounding, document review.
> Your own searchable knowledge base. Query your notes, sources, and past reporting.
> Nothing has to leave your machine. Mycroft can run with local models, so sensitive material stays on your computer.
> Connected to everything else in the Lab. It makes Spotlight, Scoutpost, and OSINT Navigator reachable from one interface.
FAQ
Do I need to be technical?
No. That's the point of the desktop app: one install, one onboarding page, everything configured and kept up to date. If you can install an app, you can run this. We’re making AI-powered investigations accessible to everyone.
Do I have to pay OpenAI or Anthropic on top of this?
It’s your choice. If you already pay for an AI platform you can connect it to Lab tools like Spotlight, Scoutpost, and Navigator via an API key and use the model of your choice. You could use the free tier of an AI platform if your usage permits. Or you can run the tools locally with an open source model via the Mycroft desktop app.
What if I can't or don’t want to upload my material to a cloud AI company?
Then run the Lab tools locally. We’ve packaged Goose to work with Gemma 4 on a computer with 24GB of RAM, Spotlight can also run on the same RAM requirements and nothing leaves your machine. Just follow the installation process in our desktop application to get started.
Is this locked to one AI app/model?
No. If you already pay for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or another model, you can plug the core Lab tools (Spotlight, Scoutpost, Navigator) into it. The only requirement is a desktop application that works on local files (which Claude and ChatGPT do by default); for the Gemini subscription this requires you to install Antigravity.
How much does it cost?
As a new member, the lab costs US $22.95 per month. Because of how Beehiiv works, you will need to purchase a Pro or Patron membership and then add a Lab membership. If you struggle with any of it, please email us at [email protected]. Besides the tools described here, Lab membership gives you access to all of the benefits of a Pro membership which means full access to our reporting, monthly workshop, and guides. We publish two paywalled articles a week and run an online workshop every month. You get all of it, plus the tools.
I’m already an Indicator member. Can I add the Lab?
Yes! Go here to add the Lab for just $10 a month. Please note that there is no annual option for the Lab at this stage, so you will be billed monthly for the Lab add-on.
Can I cancel?
Yes. The Lab is billed monthly and you can cancel anytime. Why not give it a shot?
