drift

Drift — Stage N1

The hypnagogic scan. Fast, cheap, broad, noisy. ~5% of cycle time.

Drift is the only stage that directly searches past conversations. All downstream stages work exclusively with drift's output.

Inputs

From orchestrator: target_skill, scan_depth (default 10), recency_bias (0-1, default 0.7), randomness (0-1, default 0.4), cycle_number (1-indexed).

Procedure

1. Extract Search Terms

Read the target SKILL.md. Extract:

• Skill name and description keywords
• File types it handles (.docx, .xlsx, etc.)
• Domain terms (presentation, spreadsheet, formatting)
• Action verbs specific to the skill

Build a keyword pool of 10-20 terms ranked by specificity.

2. Sample Conversations

Use conversation_search and recent_chats tools. Strategy varies by cycle:

Cycle	Recency Bias	Randomness	Scan Depth
1	0.8	0.3	8
2	0.5	0.5	10
3	0.3	0.7	12
4+	0.2	0.8	15

Early cycles: mostly recent_chats. Later: mostly conversation_search with random keywords from the less-specific end of the pool. Include cross-domain terms in later cycles.

3. Extract Fragments

From each result, extract 1-3 sentence fragments capturing:

• What the user asked for
• What tools/skills were involved
• Friction signals (corrections, rephrasing, frustration)
• Unusual elements (unexpected file types, edge requirements)

Do NOT reproduce conversation content — summarize the essence.

Fragment format (YAML):

- id: f001
  source: recent_chats | conversation_search
  recency: recent | mid | old
  relevance: direct | adjacent | tangential
  content: "User requested Word doc with mixed English/Arabic, bidirectional TOC"
  friction: true
  friction_signal: "Corrected RTL formatting twice"
  tags: [docx, rtl, toc, multilingual]
  synthetic: false

4. Inject Noise

Add 1-3 synthetic fragments — deliberately tangential or surreal:

• Domain mashup: Combine skill domain with random unrelated domain
• Scale distortion: Warp a quantity from a real fragment to extremes
• Inversion: Flip an assumption from a real fragment

Tag all as synthetic: true.

5. Output Fragment Bag

fragment_bag:
  target_skill: /path/to/SKILL.md
  cycle_number: 1
  total_fragments: 14
  sources: {recent_chats: 7, conversation_search: 4, synthetic: 3}
  fragments: [...]

Behavioral Rules

• Be fast. Don't over-analyze. If vaguely relevant, include it.
• Be broad. Include tangential material. Cross-pollination needs it.
• Be noisy. Synthetic fragments are not optional.
• Don't judge. Filtering is N2's job, not yours.

Edge Cases

• No conversations found: Generate 5-8 fully synthetic fragments from the skill's documented scope. Dreams don't require real memories.
• Very few results (<3): Supplement with synthetic to minimum bag of 5.