inbox-listener

Inbox-Listener Wiring

Empirica's loop-cron skill wires periodic background work into the registry. This skill does the same for event-driven background work: held HTTP stream (ntfy), Monitor wake on event, listener stays armed.

Canonical flow (Phase 1 of prop_oxrhoehv4 shipped 2026-05-21): three single-purpose verbs (on/arm/off) that emit structured next_step JSON. The AI chains 3 mechanical tool calls per direction; the CLI handles defaults, persistent-service detection, and state-file management.

When to Use

• User asks to "arm the listener" or "subscribe to ntfy"
• A system-reminder from listener-install-pickup lands in your conversation
• SessionStart hook (session-monitor-arm.py) emits Monitor-arming instructions in additionalContext (it now delegates to empirica listener on, so the output is consistent with what this skill teaches)

If you're scheduling periodic work (cron-mode loop), use /loop-cron instead. This skill is for "wake when something arrives."

Canonical 3-step arm flow

Three tool calls. CLI handles the rest.

1. empirica listener on --output json

Auto-resolves: --ai-id from .empirica/project.yaml (or pass explicitly), --name defaults to <ai_id>-inbox, topic is queried per-tenant from cortex's GET /v1/users/me/notification-channels registry (returns <org>-orchestration-events-<tenant> for the calling tenant — post-T16/T17 isolation). The bare orchestration-events topic is RETIRED — cortex collapsed publish to per-tenant only and no longer fans out the bare fallback. Any listener still pinned to the bare topic receives zero traffic and must restart to pick up the per-tenant resolution from the channels endpoint.

Two possible response shapes:

(a) Persistent OS service already running — short-circuit:

{
  "ok": true,
  "status": "persistent_service_active",
  "next_step": null,
  "message": "No in-session Monitor needed — wake events arrive via the system service."
}

You're done. The systemd-user / launchd service already holds the ntfy stream; wake events arrive through the normal channel.