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Amanuensis

A read-and-prioritize layer for personal assistants

Amanuensis sits between personal information sources and delivery channels, using context and priority to decide what deserves the foreground. Urgent items go out immediately; necessary but not urgent items are held back until a better time. This protects attention without discarding signals that may matter later.

Amanuensis focuses on one job: deciding what deserves attention, and when. Its reasoning and converse flows are bounded to information triage; general-purpose conversation, long-term memory, and privileged actions stay outside this boundary.

Within the Yaaa ops architecture, Amanuensis is a concrete subsystem implementation spanning reasoning, converse, and attention-aware delivery. Yaaa defines how those subsystems are composed and governed; Amanuensis implements the information-triage path.

Sample walkthrough
Amanuensis flow Signals move through gather, judge, and deliver. Inbound and outbound policy gates control the route. Outcomes are immediate delivery, the digest window, or a quiet do-not-disturb hold, with drop-tier items suppressed. SIGNALS IN, ATTENTION OUT gather one comparable shape INBOUND POLICY judge context decides relevance OUTBOUND POLICY deliver spend attention deliberately IMMEDIATE DIGEST QUIET
01

The problem

Attention is scarce; information is overwhelming

Urgent or not, messages from every source draw attention just to be processed. How often is a push notification just spam? Without triage, the message is noisy: more material to scan, distrust, and discard. Triage changes the equation by ranking each signal against context, timing, and an actual plan.

Signal buried in noise remains noise.
Signal after triage is a resource.
Resources, organized and reusable, become assets.

Noise reduction across sources Many items from six personal information sources are compared together. A narrowing filter surfaces three useful items while fifteen lower-value items stay ambient or are suppressed. WHAT ARRIVES work email newsletters to-dos notes calendar social feeds compare across sources 18 ITEMS COMPARED remove repeats and low-value noise rank by interruption value 3 SURFACED must - should - fyi 15 HELD BACK ambient - drop signal buried in noise remains noise · signal after triage is a resource organized resources can become assets when context changes
02

Why this layer

Aggregation, triage, restrained delivery

Mail, calendar, task, and notification tools move information reliably. Assistants can summarize it one item at a time. The missing layer compares unlike sources against the same private context, then makes the delivery decision before anything interrupts.

A private secretary sorting the morning mail made the same judgment: discard the junk, file the routine, interrupt only for what cannot wait. Amanuensis rebuilds that narrow role between existing sources and delivery channels. Conversation, long-term memory, and privileged actions remain outside its boundary.

The judgment layer Mail, tasks, feeds, and calendar items can already be moved or shortened. Amanuensis compares them against shared context and makes the delivery call before anything interrupts: immediate delivery, the digest window, or a quiet hold. WHAT ALREADY EXISTS mail tasks + notes feeds + calendar move urgent or not shorten each item alone THE MISSING LAYER compare across sources shared context · timing · intent JUDGMENT BEFORE DELIVERY IMMEDIATE DIGEST QUIET
03

In practice

What's important depends on the context

A discount flyer is ambient when there is no purchase plan. Repeated as an immediate notification, it becomes spam and a spending trap. When a plan already exists - for example, replace a desk chair this month - the same offer becomes useful. Amanuensis keeps it ambient by default, then surfaces it when the offer matches a real plan. Plans arrive the same way anything else does: a memo is ingested as a record, then read as context when other items are judged.

INGEST - gatherTRIAGE - judgePUSH - deliverPRIORITYDELIVERYmemomemoreplace my desk chair this monthflyer emailflyer email20% off ergonomic chairsnormalized recordENTITYnormalized recordnormalized recordENTITYnormalized recordrecord storeENTITYrecord storecontent-hashed, versionedmarketing messagemarketing messagematching a recent purchase planregular marketing messageregular marketing messageno plan in contextno matching planno matching planverdict storeENTITYverdict storeversioned by routemustmustshouldshouldfyifyiambientambientdropdropimmediateimmediatenext windownext windowquiet - do not disturbquiet - do not disturbnothing sent; held, browsable laterntfy.shntfy.shdiscord channeldiscord channeldelivery ledgerENTITYdelivery ledgerevery attempt lands here
The memo carrying a desk chair plan and the flyer are both ingested. With the memo as context, the flyer matches a recent purchase plan, lands on the should tier, and reaches a Discord channel in the next digest window. With no matching plan, it is a regular marketing message: it lands on ambient and is held quiet, nothing sent
04

The system

Three responsibilities, one inspectable trace

Amanuensis separates collection, judgment, and delivery so each boundary can be tested independently. A stable item ID connects the stages; policy gates control where sensitive content may be inferred and delivered.

  1. 01 / Gather

    Make unlike sources comparable

    Mail, tasks, feeds, and notes enter one stable record shape, with repeats removed at the edge.

  2. 02 / Judge

    Rank each item in context

    Private plans, timing, and intent turn the same signal into foreground, digest, quiet, or drop.

  3. 03 / Deliver

    Spend attention deliberately

    Deterministic gates decide whether an item may interrupt, wait for a digest, or remain unsent.

Inspect the architecture and policy boundaries
05

Choose the next level

Architecture for rationale. Walkthrough for evidence

Technical deep dive

Inspect the system's boundaries

See each kit, the inbound and outbound policy gates, end-to-end traceability, the reviewed feedback loop, and the costs of the design.

Open the technical deep dive

Example walkthrough

Follow one item end to end

Inspect records sampled and reconstructed from the live system for presentation, from ingestion through triage, delivery gates, digest assembly, the delivery ledger, and every failure branch.

Open the example walkthrough

Work in progress

The design, interface contracts, and reconstructed example trace are public. The implementation remains in a private repository while its interfaces evolve. A public release requires dependency and licensing review, secret scanning, provenance checks, and sufficient documentation - not only a change in repository visibility.