voice-note-ingest — Exact-Phrasing Voice Capture

Convention: see conventions/quality.md for citation rules, back-link enforcement, and exact-phrasing requirements.

Convention: see _brain-filing-rules.md for the filing decision protocol.

Iron Law

The user's exact words are the insight. Never paraphrase. Never clean up. The vivid, unpolished, stream-of-consciousness phrasing captures something that cleaned-up prose does not. Preserve it in block quotes. The Analysis section can interpret; the transcript section is sacred.

• ✅ "The ambition-to-lifespan ratio has never been more fucked"
• ❌ User noted the tension between ambition and mortality

When to invoke

The user sends an audio or voice message via any channel (Telegram, voice memo upload, openclaw audio attachment). The host agent typically provides the transcript text. If not, transcribe it with your host's transcription tool (Groq Whisper is fast and cheap; OpenAI Whisper works too — segment audio > 25MB via ffmpeg first).

The pipeline

1. STORE       → Upload original audio to gbrain storage backend
                 (S3 / Supabase Storage / local — pluggable per
                 src/core/storage.ts).
2. TRANSCRIBE  → Use the agent-provided transcript verbatim, OR
                 transcribe the audio yourself (see "When to invoke")
                 if no transcript was supplied.
3. ROUTE       → Apply the decision tree (below) to find the right
                 destination directory.
4. WRITE       → Create / update the destination brain page; preserve the
                 verbatim transcript in a block-quoted "User's Words"
                 section.
5. CROSS-LINK  → For every entity mentioned (person, company), add a
                 timeline back-link from THEIR brain page to THIS one
                 (Iron Law per conventions/quality.md).

Decision tree (where the content goes)

Apply in order. First match wins. If multiple categories apply, file to the primary directory and cross-link to the others.

1. Original idea, observation, or thesis — the user is expressing a novel thought, framework, or connection THEY generated. → originals/<slug>.md. Use the user's vivid language for the slug.

2. About a world concept they encountered — a framework or model someone else created that the user is referencing. → concepts/<slug>.md.

3. About a specific person — new information, opinion, or observation about someone. → Update people/<person>.md timeline.

4. About a specific company — new info about a company. → Update companies/<company>.md timeline.

5. A product or business idea — something that could be built. → ideas/<slug>.md.

6. A personal reflection — therapy-adjacent, emotional, identity. → Append to appropriate personal/<slug>.md.

7. None of the above / random thought / doesn't fit cleanly — → voice-notes/YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.md (catch-all).

Multiple categories? Create the primary page, then cross-link to all others. If the voice note covers a person AND a novel idea, create the originals/ page AND update the person's timeline.

Brain page format

For ALL voice-note-derived pages, include this skeleton:

---
title: "[Title derived from content]"
type: [original | concept | voice-note | ...]
created: YYYY-MM-DD
updated: YYYY-MM-DD
tags: [voice-note, relevant-tags]
sources:
  voice-note:
    type: voice_note
    storage_path: "[gbrain storage URL or relative path]"
    acquired: YYYY-MM-DD
    acquired_via: "voice note from <channel>"
---

# Title

> Executive summary of what was said and why it matters.

## User's Words

> "Exact transcript, verbatim, preserving every word, hesitation, and verbal
> tic. This is the primary source material. Do not edit."

🔊 [Audio]([gbrain storage URL or relative path])

## Analysis

[What this means, why it matters, connections to other thinking. The
analysis is the agent's interpretation; the transcript above is sacred.]

## See Also

- [Related brain pages with relative links]

---

## Timeline

- **YYYY-MM-DD** | voice note from <channel> — [Brief description]

Citation format

[Source: voice note, <channel>, YYYY-MM-DD]

Include timestamps when available:

[Source: voice note, <channel>, YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM PT]

Naming convention

• Audio files: YYYY-MM-DD-<brief-slug>.<ext> (e.g., 2026-04-13-rick-rubin-creative-philosophy.ogg)
• Brain pages: match the slug of the destination directory.

Bulk vs. single

This skill handles ONE voice note at a time. Each is its own ingest cycle. No batching.

When it fails

Follow the agent operator protocol for any gbrain error code, exit code, [AGENT] block or notice block. Specific to this skill:

• Transcription is unavailable or the storage backend refuses the audio (gbrain storage shows no backend): file the note text you have and tell the user the audio was not stored.
• The routed page write returns revision_conflict or write_pending: re-read and merge, or poll gbrain write-request <request_id>; never paraphrase to resolve a conflict.

Anti-Patterns

• ❌ Paraphrasing the transcript. The exact words are the signal.
• ❌ Cleaning up hesitations or filler words ("um", "like", "you know"). The texture matters.
• ❌ Creating a page with no entity cross-links when people/companies were mentioned. Iron Law fail.
• ❌ Skipping the audio storage step. Always upload the original; the brain page has a 🔊 [Audio] link back to it.

Related skills

• skills/signal-detector/SKILL.md — same exact-phrasing pattern for text-channel idea capture
• skills/idea-ingest/SKILL.md — for typed-text idea ingestion
• skills/conventions/quality.md — citation + back-link rules

Contract

This skill guarantees:

• Routing matches the canonical triggers in the frontmatter.
• Output written under the directories listed in writes_to: (when applicable).
• Conventions referenced (quality.md, brain-first.md, _brain-filing-rules.md) are followed.
• Privacy contract preserved: no real names, no fork-specific filesystem path literals, no upstream-fork references.

The full behavior contract is documented in the body sections above; this section exists for the conformance test.

Output Format

The skill's output shape is documented inline in the body sections above (see "Output", "Brain page format", or equivalent). The literal section header here exists for the conformance test (test/skills-conformance.test.ts).