signals

name	signals
description	Emit or consume cross-loop signals (observations / frictions / opportunities) in the shared signals/ store. Use to record a finding for other loops or teammates, or to read relevant ones before deciding. PHI must never go in a signal.

The shared signals hub: a central place where any loop, agent, or person on a codebase emits signals (observations / frictions / opportunities) and any loop consumes the relevant ones. Built for multi-person teams on one codebase — signals are committed and synced so the whole team sees what's going on.

emit ─► signals/<id>.md ◄─ source of truth ─► consume (by tag/status)

What a signal is

A small, structured observation — never a task, never raw data. One signal = one file under signals/.

Signal file format

signals/<id>.md, where <id> = <YYYY-MM-DD>-<author>-<slug> (date + author + short slug) so concurrent writers never collide and files are self-describing.

---
id: 2026-06-21-nils-export-too-hidden
author: nils                  # who/which agent emitted it (team attribution)
source: support-loop          # the loop/context it came from (or "manual")
ts: 2026-06-21T14:30:00Z
type: friction                # friction | opportunity | fact
confidence: 0.8               # 0.5 (hunch) | 0.8 (likely) | 1.0 (confirmed)
relevance: [product, onboarding]   # tags that consuming loops filter on
status: new                   # new | ack | acted | archived
title: Export is too hidden
---
5 users this week asked how to export. The action is 3 clicks deep. (count: 5)

PHI exclusion — load-bearing. Because signals are committed and shared across the team, they must be non-PHI patterns/summaries only — "5 users asked about export," never "patient Jane asked…". No names, DOB, SSN, MRN, emails, phone numbers, or free-text that could identify a person. The Secure phase checks this; a PHI-shaped signal is a FAIL.

Emit (the primary action — keep it trivial)

Any loop, agent, or person, when it notices something worth sharing:

1. Choose type, a 1-line title, tags, and a 1–3 line body (a summary/pattern, no PHI).
2. Dedup first: if an open signal with the same logical key already exists (same slug, status ≠ archived), append a tally to its body ((count: N)) and bump confidence instead of creating a duplicate. Cross-author dedup: two people noticing the same thing reinforce one signal.
3. Otherwise write a new signals/<id>.md with the frontmatter above and status: new. Stamp author from the current user/agent. (Create the signals/ directory on first emit if it doesn't exist yet.)

Consume (symmetric read)

A loop, in its Trigger/Investigate step:

1. Read only the relevant signals — filter signals/*.md by status: new|ack and a relevance tag the loop cares about (token-discipline: don't read the whole hub each cycle; grep the frontmatter).
2. On acting on a signal: set status: acted, and optionally TaskCreate a RICE-scored backlog task (see .agents/skills/backlog-scoring/SKILL.md) — signals are upstream of the backlog.
3. Set status: archived when a signal is resolved or stale so it isn't re-acted forever.

Lifecycle

new → ack → acted → archived. Archived signals stay in git for audit/history but are skipped by consumers and the dashboard's active view.

Optional: queryable Task mirror

For loops that want fast filtering instead of grep, mirror each signal as a Claude Code Task with metadata.kind="signal" (+ the same fields). Files remain the source of truth; the Task mirror is a convenience index and is optional.

Visualization

Run bin/signals-build.py to regenerate signals/data.js, signals/data.json, and signals/INDEX.md from the signals/*.md files, then open templates/signals-dashboard.html (copy it next to signals/) for a live team-status board. Optionally publish it to GitHub Pages by copying templates/signals-pages.yml into your repo's .github/workflows/ for a shared team URL — private repo / non-PHI only.

Storage & compliance

• signals/ is tracked (committed) by default — the whole point is team visibility; signals sync via push/pull.
• The PHI-exclusion rule is what makes a shared hub safe on a healthcare codebase. It is enforced in .agents/skills/secure/SKILL.md and tracked in compliance/org-controls-audit.md.
• The generated data.js / data.json / INDEX.md contain only what's already in the (non-PHI) signal files.