Discovery — Capture What's Interesting
SkillDev toolsCapture interesting finds to the Vault via Inngest. Triggers when the user shares a URL, repo, or idea with signal words like \"interesting\", \"cool\", \"neat\", \"check this out\", \"look at this\", \"came across\", or when sharing content with minimal context that implies it should be remembered. Also triggers on bare URL drops with no explicit ask. Fires a discovery/noted event and continues the conversation, the pipeline handles everything else.
Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.
No other account needed.
Add ahel to your AI once: Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Claude Code or Codex. Then ask it to use this.
Then ask your AI: use the Discovery skill
What this skill tells your AI
The instructions your AI receives, as published by joelhooks/joelclaw in skills/discovery/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.
When Joel flags something as interesting, fire it into the pipeline and keep moving.
Gateway auto-capture rule
Gateway already auto-captures Joel-authored Slack links from #brain-joel (C09LKT871PE).
Contract:
- only Joel-authored Slack messages in that one channel
- extract all URLs from message text
- normalize Slack angle links like
<https://x|label> - send one
discovery/notedevent per unique URL in the message - defaults:
site=joelclaw,visibility=private - include Slack channel/message context in the event
- fire-and-forget; Slack handling must not block on discovery pipeline failures
So if a future task mentions missing #brain-joel capture, debug the gateway rule first before adding another manual discovery path.
Trigger Detection
Signal words/patterns (case-insensitive):
- "interesting", "cool", "neat", "nice", "wild", "clever"
- "check this out", "look at this", "came across", "found this"
- "bookmarking", "save this", "remember this"
- Bare URL/repo link with minimal context (1-2 words + link)
- Sharing a link then immediately moving on
When NOT to trigger: If Joel is asking for help with the thing (debugging, implementing, reviewing), that's a task — not a discovery.
Workflow
1. Resolve site + visibility first
Preferred explicit fields:
site:joelclaw|wizardshit|sharedvisibility:public|private|archived|migration-only
Sensible default when not specified:
site = joelclawvisibility = private
2. Canonical operator path when you need the final link back
Use the event surface directly and follow the run to completion:
joelclaw send discovery/noted --data '{"url":"<url>","context":"<optional context>","site":"joelclaw","visibility":"private"}' --follow
The terminal run result now includes the final link for the created piece:
- public joelclaw discoveries →
https://joelclaw.com/cool/<slug> - non-public or off-site captures →
vault:Resources/discoveries/<Title>.md
Always return that finalLink to Joel.
If Joel explicitly wants the piece published somewhere other than joelclaw and that venue has its own durable publish surface, route to that venue-specific workflow instead of pretending the joelclaw discovery pipeline published it there. The joelclaw discovery pipeline can carry site/visibility metadata, but it only gives you a public joelclaw URL when the capture is actually eligible for joelclaw publication.
3. Compatibility shortcut
joelclaw discover still works as the thin fire-and-forget shortcut and now accepts explicit site/visibility too:
joelclaw discover <url> --site joelclaw --visibility private
joelclaw discover <url> -c "what Joel said about it" --site wizardshit --visibility private
But if Joel needs the final link in the same turn, prefer joelclaw send discovery/noted --follow.
2. Assess for Monitoring (before moving on)
After firing the discovery event, quickly assess:
- Is this monitorable? — Does it have ongoing updates? (blog with feed, GitHub repo with releases, living document that changes)
- Is it relevant to Joel's interests? — Check the interest profile in the
monitorskill. If it maps to 2+ areas, it's a strong candidate.
If both yes → recommend monitoring via MCQ:
"This looks like an active [blog/repo/guide] covering [matched interests]. Want to add it to the monitoring list?"
1. Yes, monitor it (hourly/daily)
2. Not now
If the agent recommends monitoring and Joel accepts, add the subscription per the monitor skill workflow.
If monitorable but low relevance → mention briefly: "This has a feed if you ever want to track it" — don't push.
If not monitorable (one-shot article, tweet, static page) → skip, don't mention monitoring at all.
3. Continue conversation
Don't wait. Joel flagged something and moved on — match that energy.
What the Pipeline Does (background, in system-bus worker)
- Investigate — clone repos, extract articles via defuddle, read content
- Analyze via pi — decides title, tags, relevance, writes summary in Joel's voice
- Embed media — if source is a video (YouTube, etc.), auto-embeds
<YouTubeEmbed url="..." />in the note - Write — vault note to
~/Vault/Resources/discoveries/{Title}.md(normal path) or a unique{Title} {fingerprint}.mddegraded fallback- If pi note generation times out or errors, the function writes a source-grounded degraded fallback note (
captureStatus: degraded,needs-review) and still forwardsdiscovery/capturedwithcaptureStatus: degraded. This keeps/coolcapture durable instead of losing the find behind a model stall.
- If pi note generation times out or errors, the function writes a source-grounded degraded fallback note (
- Sync — fires
discovery/capturedevent which syncs to joelclaw.com/cool/ - Observe — emit/query canonical OTel for pipeline behavior; the discovery note and
discovery/capturedevent are the durable receipts. The formerslogwrite path is retired.
X/Twitter URL Enrichment
When the source URL is an X/Twitter post (x.com/*/status/* or twitter.com/*/status/*):
- X blocks web scraping — do NOT use url_to_markdown or web_search for tweet content
- Instead, use the x-api skill to fetch tweet text, author, and metrics via the Twitter API v2
- Extract the tweet ID from the URL and call
GET /2/tweets/:id?tweet.fields=text,author_id,created_at,public_metrics&expansions=author_id&user.fields=name,username - Include tweet text, author handle, and engagement metrics in the discovery note
- See
x-apiskill for OAuth 1.0a signing details
Deep Dig — Inngest Enrichment Pipeline (ADR-0150)
Enrichment is not manual agent work. The discovery/noted event triggers a durable Inngest function (discovery/enrich) that handles all enrichment automatically:
- Classify URL — tweet, repo, article, video
- Fetch content — X API for tweets, defuddle for articles, repo clone for repos
- Match tracked projects — opencode, opentui, course-builder, pi-tools
- Deep dig if matched — recent commits, PRs, issues from upstream
- Profile the poster — git authors, web search, contact lookup (fires
contact/enrichif new) - Write enriched vault note — full context, not a bare URL
The agent's job is just to fire discovery/noted with whatever context Joel provided. The pipeline does the rest.
Tracked projects (canonical list in packages/system-bus/src/config/tracked-projects.ts)
anomalyco/opencode(fork ofsst/opencode)anomalyco/opentui(fork ofsst/opentui)badass-courses/course-builderjoelhooks/pi-toolsjoelhooks/joelclaw
Video/Media Handling
When the source URL is a YouTube video (youtube.com or youtu.be):
- The discovery note gets a
<YouTubeEmbed url="..." />component right after the title - This renders an embedded video player on the cool page at joelclaw.com
- The note body still includes analysis/summary — the embed is supplemental, not a replacement for writing about it
Signals
- GitHub stars
- 64
- Forks
- 2
- Last commit
- Sep 2026
Advanced
- Item type
- skill
- Key
discovery-joelhooks- Source
- github.com/joelhooks/joelclaw