intake-interview

name	intake-interview
description	Sectioned, resumable interview that builds the personal context store from conversation — basics, people, history, patterns, care, preferences. Use for a first pass when there is nothing to ingest, or to fill a section the user chose to skip. Triggers on "run the intake", "interview me", "let's build my context".

personal-context: intake-interview

The conversational route into the store. Think of it as the paperwork a good intake would cover, done at the person's pace, in their words, with everything optional.

It is not a clinical intake. No screening instruments, no scoring, no severity questions, no diagnostic checklist — see the prohibitions in the contract.

Before starting

• Resolve paths with sh "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/paths.sh" --json and read config_file. If it doesn't exist → run context-init first. Never hard-code a path; see docs/storage-paths.md.
• Read the store's INDEX.md. If entries exist, this is a resumption: report which sections have content and offer to continue rather than restart.
• Say up front, once: any question can be skipped, the session can stop at any point and resume later, and everything gets shown before it's written.

Sections

Run in this order — earlier sections make later ones easier to answer. Each is independently skippable and independently resumable.

#	Section	Produces	Typical length
1	Basics	identity, situation	5 min
2	People	person entries	10–20 min
3	Chapters	period entries	10 min
4	Events that mattered	event entries	open-ended
5	Patterns	pattern entries	10 min
6	Care and history of support	care entries	5–15 min
7	How to talk to you	preference entries	5 min

Sections 5 and 6 are the ones people most often want to defer. Offer that explicitly rather than waiting for them to ask.

1. Basics

Name and what to call them, pronouns, where they live, languages, household composition, what they do. Then current situation in a few sentences: work, health at a high level, anything currently consuming most of their attention. situation gets review_after six months out; it is the entry most likely to go stale.

2. People

"Who's in your life?" — then follow it. For each: relation, how long, and one or two sentences on how the relationship actually works, in their words. Ask about people who are gone as well as people who are around; a dead parent belongs in people/.

Names: ask what they want recorded. Initials or first names are a reasonable default and worth suggesting once, not enforcing.

3. Chapters

Life in periods rather than years: "Berlin, 2019–2023", "the first company", "after the diagnosis". Ask for the chapter names first, dates second. People remember in chapters and this question is much easier than a chronology.

4. Events that mattered

Dated, and only what they choose to name. Do not go looking. If something heavy comes up, slow down: ask whether they want it in the store at all, and at what sensitivity. high is a good default for anything they hesitate over.

5. Patterns

"What do you notice yourself doing, over and over?" Their observation, their phrasing. confidence: stated when they say it. If you notice something across their answers, you may offer it once — and it is recorded only if they agree, with confidence: inferred.

6. Care and history of support

Who they've seen, when, what modality, what helped, what didn't, what they'd never do again. Diagnoses as reported: what, who gave it, when. Medication only if they raise it, recorded as fact, never commented on. All care entries default to sensitivity: high.

If nobody has ever been involved, that is itself worth an entry — it tells a future workspace that "talk to your therapist about it" is not available advice.

7. How to talk to you

The section that pays off immediately in every workspace. Tone, directness, what reassurance does to them, what they don't want said, vocabulary they reject, whether they want to be pushed. Also: what they want an agent to do when they go quiet.

Between sections

After each section, before moving on:

1. Show the entries as they would be written, in full.
2. Ask about scope and sensitivity for each — do not choose these silently.
3. Write the confirmed ones via the write protocol (context-write), update INDEX.md.
4. Say what's next and offer to stop there.

Rules

• One question at a time. A numbered list of fifteen questions is a form, and it gets form answers.
• Skipping is free. Never ask why something was skipped and never come back to it later uninvited. gap-scan handles gaps, on request.
• Their words go in the entry. Do not translate into clinical or therapeutic register.
• No assessment. No screening questions, no scales, no "on a scale of one to ten", no inferring diagnoses, sexuality, religion, politics or immigration status. Record only what is stated.
• Stop when it gets heavy. If a section is clearly costing them, stop the section, not just the question, and say the store is useful with gaps in it.
• Nothing is written unshown. Ever, including things they said explicitly.
• A store with twenty good entries beats one with two hundred. Depth on the people and preferences sections is worth more than completeness everywhere.