| name | user-emotion-detection |
| description | Maps a detected user emotion — from facial expression (emotion.detected) OR speech (speech_emotion.detected) — into a mood signal logged via the Mood skill, then picks one response route (music / checkin / action). This is about the USER's emotion (input), NOT the device's own expression — that's emotion/SKILL.md. |
User Emotion Detection
Strict Trigger
Runs only when this turn's input has one of:
[emotion] Emotion detected: <EmotionName> — facial expression from camera.[speech_emotion] Speech emotion detected: <EmotionName> — vocal expression from microphone.
Both are first-class triggers and route through the same logic below. The only differences are:
- The mood signal
source field — "camera" for [emotion], "voice" for [speech_emotion].
- The label vocabulary — face uses
Fear/Surprise/Disgust, voice uses Fearful/Surprised/Disgusted. The mapping table below covers both; they bucket identically.
For any other event ([sensing:presence.*], [activity], [sensing:sound], [sensing:light.*], …) → STOP. No tool calls. Don't infer emotion from older turns — every signal must come from a real [emotion] or [speech_emotion] event in THIS turn.
EXECUTE, don't plan. Before any reply (including NO_REPLY) you MUST embed a [HW:/mood/log:{...}] marker in the reply for this event (it fires the POST async via the runtime — see "What this skill produces" below). Writing "I will post a mood signal" in thinking is not enough — if no [HW:/mood/log:...] marker appears in the reply text this turn, the skill failed. Every emotion.detected / speech_emotion.detected event = at least one mood signal log. No exceptions, no skips, no "already logged recently" reasoning. (curl POST is the documented fallback only when the HW marker would break the body regex; do not use it as the default.)
This skill is silent. It only logs mood data — no spoken reply needed. All steps stay in thinking. If you want to speak, follow normal sensing reply rules. NEVER narrate mood logging, mapping, or workflow steps in the reply.
What this skill does
On every [emotion] or [speech_emotion] event, turn the detected user emotion into a mood signal. Log it via the Mood skill, then route a response (music / checkin / action) based on the pre-fetched context.
This skill does NOT:
- Fire
[HW:/emotion:…] markers. Emotion expression is emotion/SKILL.md's job, driven by conversation context — not auto-mapped from a sensor reading.
- Require a spoken reply. Whether to speak is decided by the normal reply rules (SOUL + sensing SKILL), not by this skill.
- Write to the wellbeing log. Wellbeing is for physical activity (drink/break/sedentary); emotions live in the mood log.
Trigger
Either of:
[emotion] Emotion detected: <EmotionName>. ← camera (face)
[speech_emotion] Speech emotion detected: <EmotionName>. ← microphone (voice)
Face FER labels: Happy, Sad, Angry, Fear, Surprise, Disgust, Neutral.
Voice emotion2vec labels: Happy, Sad, Angry, Fearful, Surprised, Disgusted, Neutral (plus Other, <unk> — dropped upstream).
Both formats end with the same <EmotionName>. anchor; the same regex parses either one.
Emotion → mood (for the signal log)
Both label vocabularies map to the same mood values — voice variants (Fearful, Surprised, Disgusted) bucket identically to their face counterparts (Fear, Surprise, Disgust).
| Detected emotion (face OR voice) | mood value to log |
|---|
Happy | happy |
Sad | sad |
Angry | frustrated |
Fear / Fearful | stressed |
Surprise / Surprised | excited |
Disgust / Disgusted | frustrated |
Neutral | normal |
What this skill produces
A single kind=signal row in the mood log, emitted as an HW marker at the start of your spoken reply (the runtime fires the POST async, no tool turn):
[HW:/mood/log:{"kind":"signal","source":"<camera|voice>","trigger":"<EmotionName lowercase>","mood":"<mapped_mood>","user":"<current_user>"}]
source is decided by the event prefix on THIS turn:
[emotion] → "camera"[speech_emotion] → "voice"
Don't override based on prior turns or the recent_signals block; the prefix is authoritative.
mapped_mood comes straight from the [emotion_context: ...] block — do NOT look it up from the table on the fly. Every detected emotion in the mapping table gets logged (including Neutral → normal) — Mood needs the recency for decision synthesis. Use "unknown" when the context tag is missing.
Do NOT use curl exec for this signal log — see mood/SKILL.md's "What to write" section for the rationale (HW marker is single-trip, curl burns a tool turn). If no [HW:/mood/log:...] marker appears in the reply this turn, the skill failed.
Combined with mood + music-suggestion
The backend injects this turn with an [emotion_context: {...JSON...}] block that pre-computes everything the three skills need (this skill is the router, mood logs the decision, music-suggestion fires only when this router picks the music route). Do NOT fire any read tool calls — the data is already in the message.
Pre-fetched fields (use directly):
mapped_mood — already maps this turn's <EmotionName> per the table above. This is the value to log as the signal mood. You no longer need to look it up yourself.recent_signals, prior_decision, is_decision_stale — feed mood/SKILL.md's decision rules and this skill's routing table.audio_playing, last_suggestion_age_min, audio_recent, music_pattern_for_hour, suggestion_worthy — feed this skill's routing table (see Response routing below) and music-suggestion/SKILL.md's genre pick.
Single combined plan, not three sequential workflows:
- Decide locally — apply mood decision rules from
mood/SKILL.md; pick a route from the routing table below; if the route is music, evaluate genre from music-suggestion/SKILL.md.
- Writes (batch in one bash with
& + wait) — POST mood signal (this skill), POST mood decision (mood), and on music or checkin route, POST the music-suggestion log (the shared cooldown channel).
Fallback (only if [emotion_context: ...] is missing)
If the message has no context block (pre-fetch failed), fall back to the read batch from mood/SKILL.md and music-suggestion/SKILL.md (concurrent GETs in one bash via & ... wait).
Reply: routing decides the spoken reply (see next section). Never narrate the mapping, logging, or routing decision.
Response routing (this skill is the router)
After logging the mood signal, pick exactly one response route. Read straight from [emotion_context: ...] — no extra tool calls. Apply top-to-bottom, first match wins:
| # | Condition | Route | What happens |
|---|
| 1 | audio_playing == true | action | LED-only ambient ack, no spoken reply. Emit [HW:/emotion:{"emotion":"caring","intensity":0.4}] + NO_REPLY. Music is already covering — don't talk over it. |
| 2 | suggestion_worthy == true AND (is_decision_stale == false OR fresh decision synthesized this turn) AND last_suggestion_age_min ∉ [0, 7) | music | See music-suggestion/SKILL.md for genre + phrasing + log marker. |
| 3 | anything else (cooldown active, mood not worthy, stale decision with no fresh synthesis, mapped_mood normal/frustrated, etc.) | checkin | See reference/checkin.md for phrasing + log marker. One soft open-ended line. |
Rules:
- One route per turn. Don't double-fire (e.g. music + checkin both). Pick the first matching row.
- Cooldown only gates music, not checkin. When
last_suggestion_age_min ∈ [0, 7) the music branch is blocked (row #2 fails its third clause) and the event falls through to checkin (row #3). The agent still asks — it just doesn't suggest music back-to-back. The only NO_REPLY path is row #1 (active audio).
- Output ownership:
music → produced by music-suggestion/SKILL.md. checkin → produced by reference/checkin.md (this skill). action → emitted inline by this router (the [HW:/emotion:...] marker in row #1).
- Cooldown is shared between music and checkin: both log via
music-suggestion/log so last_suggestion_age_min reflects either channel.
- Never narrate the routing decision in the spoken reply.
Neutral is filtered upstream at HAL and never reaches this skill in practice; no special case needed here.
Voice cue is weaker than camera cue
Speech emotion ([speech_emotion]) is noisier than facial expression on short utterances — emotion2vec flips between sad / fearful / angry within the same affective state. The hedge (weak voice cue; ...; treat as uncertain, ...) is baked into the message for that reason.
Practical rules:
- Don't relax the cooldown. Music suggestions still gate on
last_suggestion_age_min ∉ [0, 7) regardless of source. A fresh voice signal does NOT reset the cooldown that a recent camera-driven music suggestion left.
- Prefer Comfort/Invite phrasing on voice-only negative reads. When the router falls through to checkin (row #3) and the trigger is
[speech_emotion] with bucket=negative, lean toward Comfort/Invite rather than Ask — probing a maybe-misclassified utterance feels worse than acknowledging it.
- Cross-modal reinforcement still applies. If
recent_signals shows the same mapped_mood from source="camera" in the last ~10 min and now voice fires the same mood, treat it as a confirmation — the Mood skill's decision synthesis already handles this; no extra logic here.
- No skip-on-low-confidence. Don't read
confidence=... out of the hedge text and pre-filter; HAL already enforced confidence >= SPEECH_EMOTION_CONFIDENCE_THRESHOLD before sending. Anything that reaches this skill is worth logging.
