aurora-discover

name

aurora-discover

description

Extract structured friction signals from raw text sources (Slack messages, Jira issues, email digests, calendar invite notes, screen-recording transcripts). Used by `scout` to convert noisy human chatter into machine-actionable candidate signals. Returns one JSON object per signal with frequency hints, duration hints, pain indicators, and named systems. Reject one-off, internal-swarm, and metadata-only chatter.

aurora-discover

Scout invokes this skill on every batch of new messages it pulls. The goal is structure: turn "every Monday I spend 2 hours pulling vendor invoices from SharePoint" into a typed candidate the rest of the swarm can act on.

Input

A list of {source, ts, author, raw} records. The source is one of slack:#channel, jira:PROJ, email:inbox, calendar:user@org, transcript:recording-id. AURORA's source adapters live in lib/aurora/sources/.

Output

For each genuine friction signal in the input, emit one JSON object:

{
  "id": "scout-<sha256-of-raw-content>",
  "source": "slack:#rpa-asks",
  "ts": "2026-05-09T14:23:00Z",
  "author": "user-name",
  "raw": "every Monday I spend 2 hours pulling vendor invoices from SharePoint",
  "signal": {
    "actor": "user-name-or-role",
    "frequency_hint": "weekly | daily | quarterly | event-driven | unknown",
    "duration_hint": "2 hours",
    "pain_indicators": ["spend", "every"],
    "system_hints": ["SharePoint", "vendor invoices"],
    "candidate_action_verbs": ["pull", "extract", "consolidate"]
  }
}

If a record is not a friction signal, emit nothing. Don't emit "low-confidence" placeholders.

Detection rubric

A record is a friction signal if it contains at least one item from each of two categories:

Category A: cadence or duration

• frequency phrases: "every Monday", "weekly", "always", "every quarter", "each time"
• duration phrases: "X hours", "all morning", "the whole day", "takes forever"
• repetition: same author + similar topic mentioned ≥ 2 times in last 30 days

Category B: pain or manual labor

• pain verbs: "spend", "stuck", "manually", "by hand", "copy-paste", "fight with"
• scope: ≥ 1 named system that has a public API (so it's plausibly automatable)

What to skip

• Internal swarm chatter — anything mentioning aurora-, forger-, concierge
• One-off complaints with no cadence ("I had to do X today")
• Discussions of an existing automation (unless it's broken)
• Pure questions or confusion ("Does anyone know how X works?")
• Praise or acknowledgment ("Thanks for fixing X")

Anti-patterns

• Don't propose solutions in the signal. Solutions are Architect's job.
• Don't infer the actor when the source doesn't name them. Use unknown.
• Don't merge multiple complaints into one signal. Curator deduplicates downstream.
• Don't normalize quotes or fix typos in raw. Audit trail.