User Daily Context

Purpose

When to read this skill: when the daily context block needs refreshing, when its scheduled job has failed, or when the owner asks for a status snapshot.

Keep one block of USER.md — ## Daily Context — fresh every morning so every session that day opens with an accurate read of what is happening in the owner's life. USER.md loads into every session, so this block is the highest-leverage and most-read text the agent maintains. Two failure modes are equally bad: stale (yesterday's events shown as today's) and fabricated (a mood or fact invented from thin signal). This skill optimizes against both.

It is designed to be portable: it adapts to whatever signal sources and tools a given Hermes setup exposes, rather than assuming a fixed toolset. It runs well in a rich setup (calendar + email + sessions + memory) and degrades honestly in a bare one (sessions only, or even nothing).

Honest data model

Be clear about what is extracted vs inferred — they have different failure modes and conflating them is this skill's classic defect:

The most common defect in this skill's history is inferring mood from the calendar ("tea reservation" → "anticipation for tea"). A scheduled event is not a feeling. Mood comes from how the owner interacted (affective TONE) and what outcomes landed. The same rule applies to session subjects: a session ABOUT a topic is not the owner feeling that topic -- never convert a discussed subject into a mood. Transactional, security, travel, purchase, and notification emails are not emotional evidence by themselves: never convert an alert or risk topic into worried, anxious, or similar without explicit affective language from the owner or a clearly affective interaction. If interaction and outcome signal is thin, the correct mood is quiet (low signal), not an invention.

Signal categories (extensible — discover, classify, don't assume)

This skill consumes signal by category, not by a fixed list of channels. Any number of concrete sources can feed a category, and one source can feed several. At the start of every run, enumerate all available signal tools, classify each into the categories below, and use them. A category with no source is simply absent; the run degrades, it never aborts.

Rules:

• Discover and classify, don't assume. List the tools this setup exposes, map each to one or more categories, record what's present. Never call a tool you have not confirmed exists. A new channel the owner adds (a fresh MCP messaging server, say) needs no skill change — it just classifies into INTERACTION/OUTCOME and is used.
• Many sources per category is normal. Sessions and iMessage and Slack all feed INTERACTION. Read across them; do not stop at the first.
• Dedup across channels. The same outcome may appear in email and in a text. Count it once, by impact, not once per channel it touched.
• Use everything already reachable; never seek more access. If the agent can already query a source, it is in scope — use it. Do NOT request, prompt for, or expand access, scopes, logins, or permissions to run this skill. A source that is not already reachable is simply absent; proceed without it. (Keep the output compact and clean: cite mood evidence by channel, e.g. tense about family logistics (messages), rather than pasting raw message text. That is compression and tidiness, not an access gate.) See references/data-sources.md.
• Every category is optional. INTERACTION alone still yields a valid snapshot; nothing available yields an honest unknown one.

See references/data-sources.md for the full category mapping, channel examples, dedup, privacy, and degradation matrix.

Where things live (resolve at runtime)

Paths are profile-relative, never hardcoded to one machine:

• Profile root: the active Hermes profile directory. Resolve from $HERMES_HOME if set; otherwise it is the directory this skill is installed under (the parent of skills/).
• Target file: <profile>/memories/USER.md. (Note: under memories/, not the profile root.) If memories/USER.md does not exist, check the profile root for a USER.md; if neither exists, create <profile>/memories/USER.md.
• Timezone: resolve the host timezone at runtime (e.g. timedatectl / system clock). Date math for yesterday/today/tomorrow uses the host's local day, never an assumed zone.

Size budget (hard cap — never exceed)

USER.md is a context file: the agent harness truncates it (keeps head + tail, drops the middle) if it exceeds the effective context_file_max_chars. A truncated USER.md can silently lose the Daily Context block or corrupt another section, so the block must be sized so the whole file stays under the cap. This is a hard limit; the word budget below is only a soft target underneath it.

Resolve the cap for THIS setup, in order (do not assume a number):

1. Explicit context_file_max_chars in the active config — wins if set.
2. Else dynamic: max(20000, min(context_length * 0.24, 500000)) chars, derived from the loading model's context window (~4 chars/token x 6% of the window).

Cron-mode measurement pitfall: When this skill runs as a cron job, execute_code is BLOCKED (returns a cron-mode refusal, even for pure-Python string math). Do NOT use it to measure OTHER/total chars. Instead write a tiny Python snippet via write_file and run it through terminal (open the file, find("## Daily Context"), sum the lengths of everything else, compare to cap). The calendar step documents the same constraint in references/cron-calendar-access.md. Always read the actual context_file_max_chars value from config; on the indigo box it resolves to 12000, not the dynamic default.

Then, around the patch (Step 7):

• Measure the current total chars of USER.md and the chars of every section other than ## Daily Context — call that OTHER.
• Hard budget for the block = cap - OTHER - margin (keep ~500 chars of margin; other sections can change between runs).
• The new block must fit the budget, and OTHER + block <= cap must hold. If the freshly written block is over, re-compress (bullet words to 8, mood to 1 dimension, week to 5 words) until it fits.
• If even a minimal block will not fit because OTHER already fills the file, write the smallest valid block, do not touch any other section, and emit a warning that USER.md is at its cap so a human can trim the other sections. Never let the file exceed the cap, and never trim another section to make room.

Output format

The ## Daily Context block, written into USER.md exactly as:

## Daily Context

> Refreshed daily by the `ocas-usercontext` job. Do not manually edit; regenerate instead.

### Snapshot (YYYY-MM-DD)
**Mood:** [1-3 evidence-backed dimensions, or `quiet (low signal)`]
**Location:** [city, or `unknown`]
**Week:** [one line, max 10 words]

### Yesterday (YYYY-MM-DD)
- [event, max 12 words]

### Today (YYYY-MM-DD)
- [event, max 12 words]

### Tomorrow (YYYY-MM-DD)
- [event, max 12 words]

Compression rules

• Hard ceiling: the whole USER.md must stay under the harness context_file_max_chars cap (see Size budget). This always wins over the word target.
• Total block under 300 words (soft target, configurable; see Configuration). It costs context on every session.
• Bullets: up to 3 per day, max 12 words each.
• Mood: 1-3 dimensions, each [label] about [topic]; or quiet (low signal).
• Week: one line, max 10 words.
• Empty calendar day → No scheduled events. Never fabricate an event.
• No weather, no advice, no system/meta narration, no em dashes (chat renderers mangle them; use commas/periods).

Generation workflow

• Step 0 — Resolve environment. Profile root, USER.md path, host timezone. Enumerate available tools and classify each into the SCHEDULE / INTERACTION / OUTCOME / STANDING categories. Use every source the agent can already reach; never request or expand access. Unreachable sources are simply absent.
• Step 1 — Read yesterday's snapshot. Read the existing ## Daily Context. Note prior mood + location: the trajectory baseline for Step 5. (Absent = first run; skip the comparison.)
• Step 1b — Resolve the size budget. Determine the effective context_file_max_chars cap (config override, else dynamic). Measure current USER.md total chars and the chars of all sections other than ## Daily Context (OTHER). Compute the block's hard budget = cap - OTHER - margin. In cron mode, run this measurement via write_file + terminal (NOT execute_code, which is blocked in cron); see Size budget pitfall.
• Step 2 — Build the Signal Ledger. Gather, do not yet interpret, across all present sources: SCHEDULE (3 day pulls), INTERACTION (broad tone scan over sessions and any reachable messaging), OUTCOME (recent results on any channel), STANDING (active travel / situations). Write each signal as one line tagged with its category and source. Dedup the same outcome seen on multiple channels. A thin ledger is fine and honest. For SCHEDULE via Google Calendar in cron mode, the primary account's OAuth token may be expired — use the fallback pattern in references/cron-calendar-access.md, implemented by the bundled scripts/_ucal_run.py (run with the Hermes venv python). The same event on multiple calendars is one event, not two — dedup by summary + start + location.
• Step 3 — Extract day bullets. Per day, list calendar events (title + time) as bullets. Empty → No scheduled events. No editorializing.
• Step 4 — Determine location. City from today's calendar geography or a memory travel signal. No signal → unknown. Never guess from home base.
• Step 5 — Infer mood. Read references/mood-inference.md in full. Build 1-3 dimensions, each citing a concrete ledger signal (session tone or email outcome, never the calendar). Apply trajectory vs Step 1: still if it persists, now/shifted if changed, drop vanished moods. Thin ledger → quiet (low signal).
• Step 6 — Write the week theme. One line, max 10 words, from the week's calendar shape and active standing context. Distinguish an extended stay or relocation from a travel-heavy itinerary: use extended stay in [place] when a single location spans multiple weeks; reserve travel-heavy week for frequent movement or multiple trips. When a durable project is active during the stay, combine them, for example Honolulu vacation and construction project. Other themes include deadline-heavy, meeting-heavy, quiet, or project push.
• Step 7 — Patch USER.md. Replace ONLY the ## Daily Context block (from that heading to the next ## or EOF). Use an exact match; never add, remove, reorder, or touch identity, preferences, or any other section. Before writing, confirm the block fits the Step 1b budget and that OTHER + block <= cap; if not, re-compress until it does. Never let the file exceed the cap, and never trim another section to make room.
• Step 8 — Validate, then act on delivery (do not skip). Run the references/validation.md checklist. Then honor the configured deliver setting (default local = silent, write-only). See Configuration.

Configuration

The skill ships with safe defaults; an installer or owner can override them. On a Hermes box these live on the scheduled job (see references/install.md); the skill should read intent from the job/config rather than hardcoding it.

Runtime wiring (Hermes cron)

If run by a cron whose prompt is inlined (the common Hermes pattern), the cron does not auto-read this SKILL.md. Then this skill is the design source of truth and the cron prompt is the runtime source of truth; a change in one not mirrored in the other is a silent divergence. When you change the workflow, format, or config here, mirror the essentials into the cron prompt. See references/install.md for how to instantiate the job on any box, and references/constraints.md for the divergence rationale.

When to Use

• Refreshing the daily context block in USER.md
• Recovering from a failed scheduled context update
• Owner requests a status snapshot or daily briefing
• Inferring mood from interaction and outcome signals

When NOT to use

• Weather → a dedicated weather/briefing skill if the setup has one.
• Long-term planning / goal tracking → a planning skill.
• Advice or recommendations — this reports state, it does not prescribe.
• "How do I feel about X?" — this infers mood from signals; it does not ask.
• A full briefing with weather and priorities → a briefing skill.

Gotchas and error handling

Initialization (first run on a new setup)

• Resolve the profile root and host timezone (Step 0).
• Verify / create <profile>/memories/USER.md.
• Add a ## Daily Context block with a placeholder snapshot.
• Discover available tools; record which capability roles are present.
• Register or confirm the scheduled job with the chosen deliver, schedule, and word_budget (see references/install.md).
• If the job uses an inlined prompt, ensure it matches this skill's workflow.
• Log to journal.