panning-for-gold

Panning for Gold

Turn raw, unstructured capture into an evaluated, actionable inventory of threads. Three phases: Extract, Evaluate, Synthesize.

Triggers

Trigger Phrase	Operation
pan for gold	Run the full extract -> evaluate -> synthesize procedure
triage transcript	Build inventory of threads from a raw transcript
synthesize gold-found	Generate the final gold-found file from evaluations

When to Use

Use this skill when:

• You have a voice transcript, stream-of-consciousness note, or brain dump that contains many ideas mixed with noise.
• You need a deterministic procedure to triage which ideas merit deeper analysis.
• You want a permanent, structured artifact that downstream agents (analyst, spec-generator) can consume.

Use a different skill when:

• The input is already structured (specs, ADRs, code). Use the analyst or spec-generator agents instead.
• You only need a one-off summary. Use a generic summarizer.

Workspace Layout

The skill operates inside a workspace root. The default is ./.panning/ in the current working directory; override via --workspace <path> or the PANNING_WORKSPACE environment variable.

<workspace>/
|-- transcripts/          # Raw input (read-only after capture)
|-- inventories/          # Pass1 + final inventories
|-- evaluations/          # Per-thread evaluation files
`-- gold-found/           # Synthesized gold-found files

The script creates missing subdirectories on demand. It never overwrites an existing file unless --force is passed.

Process

Phase 1: Extract

Build a pass1 inventory from a transcript without filtering. Every thread that surfaces is recorded.

Each thread block uses this structure:

## Thread N: <short title>

- **Signal**: high | medium | low
- **Quote**: "<verbatim quote that surfaced this thread>"
- **Context**: <one sentence on where this came from>
- **Initial take**: <one sentence on why this might matter>

The pass1 inventory is provisional. A second pass refines and merges into a final inventory.

Phase 2: Evaluate

For each thread in the final inventory, write an evaluation file. The evaluation captures depth: what evidence supports the thread, what would falsify it, what action it implies.

Evaluations are independent. They can be authored serially or in parallel.

Phase 3: Synthesize

Combine the final inventory and the evaluation files into a gold-found markdown file. The gold-found file groups threads by signal level (High, Medium, Low) and includes a metadata block at the top.

CLI

pan.py init      --workspace <path>
pan.py validate  --inventory <file>
pan.py merge     --pass1 <file> --final <file> --output <file>
pan.py synth     --inventory <file> --evaluations <dir> --output <file>

The script delegates to inventory.py for parsing and merging, and synthesis.py for gold-found generation.

Acceptance Checklist

• Inventory thread blocks contain Signal, Quote, Context, Initial take fields.
• Final inventory deduplicates threads from pass1 by title.
• Gold-found file has a metadata block plus High-Signal, Medium-Signal, and Low-Signal sections in that order.
• No threads from the inventory are silently dropped.

References

• references/inventory-template.md - thread inventory skeleton.
• references/gold-found-template.md - gold-found skeleton.