Measured 347 executions in a category defined by trust signals.

The Authority Agent ran 347 LLM executions across four providers on hydration / sustainable-drinkware queries, then traced every cited source. Of the citations, ~70% came from a tight cluster of category-credentialed authorities. WellyBottle was missing from most of them.

Simulated the credentialed-authority lift, ranked by category fit.

The OS ranked every candidate source by category-specific AI-citation observability. Different list than what a generic catalog would get. Sustainability publications, eco-living journals, and reusable-goods Reddit threads all sit higher than the generic Wirecutter result for hydration queries specifically.

• Each source scored on category-specific observability, not generic DA
• Sustainability claims back-tested against Good Housekeeping + Treehugger criteria
• Long-tail Reddit & community sources surfaced as separate organic seed list

Shipped a focused outreach queue: credentialed press, not press releases.

The Authority Agent opened SOURCE_OUTREACH items targeting the 50+ sustainability authorities surfaced by the audit. Each ticket carries the publication’s editorial fit angle, the most-cited brand they currently feature, and a draft pitch in the merchant’s voice.

• Sustainability press ranked by current AI-citation frequency
• Drafts cite WellyBottle’s actual sustainability claims, not generic copy
• Long-tail community placement queued separately for organic seeding

Compounded: category-credentialed authority discovery is now a default for any wellness/eco brand.

WellyBottle proved that "Authority Agent" isn’t one-size-fits-all. The category-specific authority pass is now standard for any merchant onboarding under wellness, eco-goods, or sustainability. Different ranked source list, different pitch templates, same Loop.