Method
How We Write Our Daily Horoscopes
The daily reading at the top of each sign page is written by AI from that day's sky. Every sky event in it is checked against NASA's planetary data before a word is written. Then a second AI model, from a different company, reviews the draft, and code checks every planet, sign, house and time in the text against those facts.
A reading that fails a check is never published.
Where the sky facts come from
Each day starts with a list of sky events from an astrology data API built on the Swiss Ephemeris. It covers sign changes, exact aspects, Moon phases, eclipses and retrograde stations, timed to the second, plus where each planet sits at noon Eastern. All 12 signs read from the same list.
Every event is checked against NASA JPL Horizons
Horizons is the ephemeris service run by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A single position can't confirm a time, so for most events we ask Horizons for the sky just before and just after the stated moment. The event passes only if the change happens between the two. A retrograde station gets a longer series of positions across 24 hours, to find when the planet's motion turns.
| Event | NASA must show | Margin |
|---|---|---|
| The Moon changes sign | The Moon crosses the edge of the sign | 60 seconds |
| A planet changes sign | The planet crosses the edge of the sign | 5 minutes |
| An exact aspect | The angle between the two reaches the aspect's angle | 60 seconds with the Moon, 5 minutes without it |
| New, full or quarter Moon | The angle between Moon and Sun reaches 0°, 90°, 180° or 270° | 60 seconds |
| A retrograde station | The planet's motion changes direction | 1 hour |
| An eclipse | The time and type match NASA's eclipse catalog | 5 minutes |
| Where a planet sits at noon ET | The same sign, longitude and direction of motion | 0.1° |
Eclipses are matched to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center eclipse catalog.
One example: the Aries reading for October 14, 2026 says “at 5:44 p.m. ET the Moon trines Saturn,” and Horizons puts that exact trine about two seconds from the data API's time.
If an event fails, the reading stops before a word is written and an alert email is sent to us. A reading is only written once every event in its day passes.
Near a station, a slow planet barely moves, so two good ephemerides can disagree on the time by an hour or more. For Pluto's direct station on October 15, 2026, the data API gave about 10:40 p.m. ET, and NASA's data put the turn about an hour earlier. When the two are more than an hour apart, the reading uses NASA's time. If NASA finds no station within 10 hours, the day's readings are held.
Houses are counted from your Sun sign
A daily horoscope has no birth time to work with, so it uses whole-sign solar houses. Your Sun sign is your 1st house, the next sign is your 2nd, and so on around the zodiac. When the Moon is in Sagittarius, an Aries reads it in the 9th house and a Scorpio in the 2nd. Everyone with the same Sun sign gets the same reading. That's why the reading for your Sun sign fits you without a birth time.
Your own houses start from your rising sign, which needs a birth time. If you know it, the reading for your rising sign counts the houses the way a whole-sign birth chart does. Pull your free birth chart to see where they fall.
Who writes each reading
Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, writes the reading. It gets the checked facts and our rules for what each event means in that sign's house, based on modern Western astrology. It also gets a style guide and the openings of the sign's recent readings, so it doesn't repeat itself. Each sentence that makes a sky claim has to cite the facts behind it.
The readings are published under the ZodiScope name. No astrologer writes them, so we don't put an astrologer's name on them.
The review and the checks
Gemini, an AI model made by Google, reviews each draft as an independent critic. It sees the facts and the draft, but not Claude's reasoning. It rules on five points: whether each sky claim matches the facts, whether each line fits this sign's house, banned phrases, safety and voice. Safety means no medical, legal or money advice and no fear.
Code makes the pass or fail call, and it runs checks of its own.
- Facts. Every planet, sign, house, date, time and aspect in a sentence, and every mention of a retrograde or a Moon phase, must match the facts that sentence cites. The headline may only state what's on the day's checked list.
- Phrases. The draft fails if it uses a stock AI phrase, a fear word or a dash as punctuation.
- Variety. We check for wording repeated across signs and days. A draft fails if over 20% of its five-word phrases also appear in another sign's reading for the same day, or over 15% in any one of the sign's last 14 readings. Opening with the same six words as one of the sign's last 30 readings fails too.
A draft that fails goes back to Claude with the notes, and Gemini reviews the rewrite. After two rewrites, a draft that still fails is held.
A draft that passes usually gets a final polish. Gemini suggests line edits, Claude decides which to take, and the edited text goes through every check again. If it fails anything, or the polish can't run, the reading keeps the text that already passed.
What happens when a reading fails
Readings are written two days ahead, so a held reading has time to run again, and every new version faces the same checks.
The reading for a day changes at midnight US Eastern, and every time in it is Eastern. In California, subtract three hours. Yesterday's reading is never shown as today's.
Corrections
If we find a wrong fact in a published reading, we correct it and list it here with the date.
No corrections so far.
Spotted something wrong? Email hello@zodiscope.io with the sign and the date of the reading.
Today's reading for each sign
Last reviewed October 14, 2026.