contacts

name: contacts displayName: Contacts description: "Add, enrich, and manage contacts in Joel's Vault. Fire the Inngest enrichment pipeline for full multi-source dossiers, or create quick contacts manually. Use when: 'add a contact', 'enrich this person', 'who is X', 'VIP contact', 'update contact', or any task involving the Vault/Contacts directory." version: 1.0.0 author: joel tags: [joelclaw, contacts, vault, enrichment, people] disable-model-invocation: true

Contacts

Manage contacts in ~/Vault/Contacts/. Each contact is a markdown file with YAML frontmatter.

Contact File Location

~/Vault/Contacts/<Name>.md

Index file: ~/Vault/Contacts/index.md — wikilink list of all contacts.

Frontmatter Schema

---
name: Full Name
aliases: [nickname, handle]
role: Current Role / Title
organizations: [Org1, Org2]
vip: true  # or false
slack_user_id: U0XXXXXXX
slack_dm_channel: D0XXXXXXX  # null if unknown
website: https://example.com
github: username
twitter: handle
email: user@example.com
tags: [vip, instructor, creator, family, employee]
---

Sections

# Name

## Contact Channels
- Slack, email, social handles, website

## Projects
- Active projects, courses, collaborations

## Key Context
- Relationship notes, working style, history

## Recent Activity
- YYYY-MM-DD | channel | summary

See ~/Vault/Contacts/Matt Pocock.md for a fully enriched example.

Adding a Contact

Option 1: Fire the Enrichment Pipeline (preferred)

Send an Inngest event. The contact-enrich function fans out across Slack, Roam, web/GitHub, Granola, Brain-backed recall, and other indexed sources, synthesizes with LLM, and writes the Vault file.

# Via curl (CLI has OTEL import bug under Bun v1.3.9)
curl -s -X POST "http://localhost:8288/e/$INNGEST_EVENT_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '[{
    "name": "contact/enrich.requested",
    "data": {
      "name": "Person Name",
      "depth": "full",
      "hints": {
        "slack_user_id": "U0XXXXXXX",
        "github": "username",
        "twitter": "handle",
        "email": "user@example.com",
        "website": "https://example.com"
      }
    },
    "ts": EPOCH_MS
  }]'

Depth modes:

• full (~60s, ~$0.05): All 7 sources + LLM synthesis. Use for new contacts or periodic refresh.
• quick (~10s, ~$0.01): Slack + memory only. Good for real-time VIP detection.

Hints are optional but help: Any known identifiers (Slack ID, GitHub, email, Twitter, website) seed the search and improve results.

Option 2: Quick Manual Create

For simple contacts where enrichment is overkill:

---
name: Person Name
aliases: []
role: Role
organizations: [Org]
vip: false
slack_user_id: null
website: null
github: null
twitter: null
email: null
tags: [tag1]
---

# Person Name

## Contact Channels
- ...

## Key Context
- ...

Write to ~/Vault/Contacts/Person Name.md and add [[Person Name]] to index.md.

Updating Contacts

Re-run enrichment with the existing vault path:

{
  "name": "contact/enrich.requested",
  "data": {
    "name": "Person Name",
    "vault_path": "Contacts/Person Name.md",
    "depth": "full"
  }
}

The synthesizer merges new data with existing content — it won't discard existing facts unless contradicted.

VIP Contacts (ADR-0151)

Mark vip: true in frontmatter. VIPs get deep enrichment + ongoing monitoring.

Deep Enrichment Playbook (one-time)

Every VIP gets the full treatment. This is what we did for Kent C. Dodds (Feb 26, 2026):

Index to Typesense after enrichment:

• Batch-import appearances/content to discoveries collection (NDJSON, action=upsert)
• Tag all docs with person's name slug (e.g. kent-c-dodds) for filtering
• Fields: id, title, url, summary, tags[], timestamp
• Write a Vault/Resources/{name}-media-appearances.md reference doc linking back to contact

Output sections in the vault note:

• Background & Story (origin, career timeline)
• Teaching/Work Philosophy (or equivalent for non-educators)
• Key Relationships (cross-linked [[wikilinks]] to other contacts)
• Audience & Reach
• Content/Products
• Podcast/Collaboration History with Joel
• Recent Activity (timestamped)

Ongoing Monitoring (Phase 2-4 of ADR-0151)

High-signal (immediate): course launches, role changes, mentions of Joel/egghead/Skill, fundraising. Low-signal (daily/weekly digest): regular tweets, blog posts, OSS activity.

Current VIPs

• Get notified to Joel via gateway after enrichment
• Are refreshed weekly via scheduled cron
• Have priority in channel intelligence pipeline (ADR-0131, ADR-0132)
• Get ongoing monitoring when ADR-0151 Phase 2+ is implemented

Roam Research Enrichment

Joel's Roam archive (~/Code/joelhooks/egghead-roam-research/) contains the full egghead-era graph (2019-2024). Many contacts have extensive history there.

Quick Search (Python regex)

cd ~/Code/joelhooks/egghead-roam-research
python3 -c "
import re
with open('egghead-2026-01-19-13-09-38.edn', 'r') as f:
    content = f.read()
pattern = r':block/string\s+\"([^\"]*?)\"'
matches = []
for m in re.findall(pattern, content):
    if '[[SEARCH_TAG]]' in m.lower():
        matches.append(m)
print(f'Found {len(matches)} blocks')
for m in matches[:30]:
    print(f'  - {m[:200]}')
"

People Taxonomy

People are tagged with relationship prefixes in Roam:

• [[collaborator/Name]] — Strategic partners (Ian Jones, Alex Hillman)
• [[client/Name]] — egghead instructors (Matt Pocock, Jacob Paris)
• [[staff/Name]] — egghead team (Will Johnson, Daniel Miller, Maggie Appleton)
• [[name]] (no prefix) — Informal references (Zac is [[zac]])

Page Title Search

python3 -c "
import re
with open('egghead-2026-01-19-13-09-38.edn', 'r') as f:
    content = f.read()
pattern = r':node/title\s+\"([^\"]*?SEARCH_TERM[^\"]*?)\"'
for m in re.findall(pattern, content):
    print(f'  page: {m}')
"

Adding to Contacts

When extracting person data from Roam, add roam_tag to frontmatter:

roam_tag: "[[collaborator/Ian Jones]]"

This enables future re-queries and cross-referencing.

Datalog Queries (advanced)

The EDN file is Datomic-style. Clojure scripts exist at scripts/ for structured analysis. See the roam-research skill for full Datalog patterns.

Resolving Unknown People

When you encounter a Slack user ID (<@U0XXXXXXX>):

# Lease token and look up profile
SLACK_USER=$(secrets lease slack_user_token --ttl 5m)
curl -s "https://slack.com/api/users.info?user=U0XXXXXXX" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SLACK_USER" | jq '.user.real_name, .user.profile.email'
# Revoke only the exact lease ids acquired by this task; never all sessions’ leases.

Then fire enrichment with the resolved name and hints.

Inngest Function

• Function: contact-enrich (packages/system-bus/src/inngest/functions/contact-enrich.ts)
• Event: contact/enrich.requested
• ADR: ~/Vault/docs/decisions/0133-contact-enrichment-pipeline.md
• Concurrency: 3 max
• Sources: Slack, Slack Connect, Roam archive, GitHub/web, Granola meetings, Brain-backed recall, and other indexed sources

Privacy

• Contact files are in Vault (private, not in public repos)
• Slack data stays private — never surface in public content
• Email/phone are stored for Joel's reference only