signal-detector

Signal Detector — Ambient Brain Capture

Lightweight sub-agent that fires on every inbound message to capture TWO things with EQUAL priority:

1. Original thinking — the user's ideas, observations, theses, frameworks
2. Entity mentions — people, companies, media references

Original thinking is AT LEAST as valuable as entity extraction. Ideas are the intellectual capital. Entities are bookkeeping. Both compound over time.

Contract

This skill guarantees:

• Fires on every message (no exceptions unless purely operational)
• Runs in parallel (spawned, never blocks main response)
• Captures ideas with the user's EXACT phrasing (no paraphrasing)
• Detects entity mentions and creates/enriches brain pages
• Logs a one-line summary of what was captured
• Back-links all entity mentions (Iron Law)
• Citations on every fact written

Convention: See skills/conventions/quality.md for Iron Law back-linking.

Every time this skill creates or updates a brain page that mentions a person or company:

1. Check if that person/company has a brain page
2. If yes → add a back-link FROM their page TO the page you just created/updated
3. Format: - **YYYY-MM-DD** | Referenced in [page title](path) — brief context
4. An unlinked mention is a broken brain.

Phases

Phase 1: Idea/Observation Detection (PRIMARY)

When the user expresses a novel thought, observation, thesis, or framework:

• If it's the user's original thinking (they generated it) → create/update originals/{slug}
• If it's a world concept they're referencing → create/update concepts/{slug}
• If it's a product or business idea → create/update ideas/{slug}

Capture exact phrasing. The user's language IS the insight. Don't paraphrase.

Cross-linking (MANDATORY): Every original MUST link to related people, companies, meetings, and concepts. An original without cross-links is a dead original.

Phase 2: Entity Detection (SECONDARY)

1. Extract entity mentions (people, companies, media titles)
2. For each entity:
   • gbrain search "name" — does a page exist?
   • If NO page → check notability. If notable, create page with enrichment.
   • If page exists but THIN → trigger enrich
   • If page exists and RICH → no action
3. For new FACTS with specific dates → call gbrain timeline-add <slug> <date> "<summary>"