voc-extract

When to use

• A backlog or planning round needs grounded user-voice signal, not anecdotes.
• A round of bug reports / feature requests / Sentry events has accumulated and the team needs themes with citation per theme.
• A roadmap proposal needs a "what users keep telling us" backing section.

Do NOT use this skill for live interviews (discovery-interview) or for quantitative funnel diagnosis (funnel-analysis).

Bounded scope

• Read-only on artefacts the host already has — local repo issues (gh issue list), PR discussions (gh pr view), Sentry projects the team owns. No external scrape, no SaaS API calls.
• Chat-export sourcing (Discord, Slack) is deferred pending privacy review (council Q5, SHIP-WITHOUT). If a request asks for chat-derived VoC, refuse and route the user to a privacy review.
• No PII surfacing — quotes are paraphrased to remove names, emails, tenant identifiers; verbatim is reserved for product-team artefacts inside the repo.

Cognition cluster

• Mental model 15 — Signal vs noise. A loud single reporter swamps quiet recurring patterns; rank by distinct authors, not comment count. See docs/contracts/mental-models.md § 15.
• Mental model 14 — Pareto. Roughly 20% of themes carry 80% of the contact volume; cut the long tail explicitly so the team acts on the head. See mental-models.md § 14.
• Mental model 22 — Data-informed, not data-driven. Issue counts are evidence, not voting; weight by recency, severity, and segment before recommending. See mental-models.md § 22.
• Product context-spine slot. Read product for segments, non-goals, and focal jobs; do not surface themes that fall outside the declared scope without a scope-violation flag. See context-spine.

Procedure

1. Inventory the source artefacts

Identify what is in scope for this run:

• gh issue list --state all --limit N per repo.
• gh pr list --state all --limit N per repo.
• Sentry project names + date window.

Capture counts and date window in the output header so the verdict is reproducible.

2. Inspect each artefact and tag

Per artefact, capture:

• Theme tag (free-text, normalised in step 3).
• Author (distinct identity).
• Severity — blocking / friction / wish / praise.
• Segment — derived from the product spine slot.
• Citation — repo#123, PR URL, Sentry issue ID.

3. Normalise and rank

Cluster theme tags into 5–12 themes max. For each:

• Distinct-author count (the rank key).
• Severity mix (blocking-share matters more than wish-share).
• Recency — last 90 days vs older; weight 2× recent.
• Segment skew — does the theme cluster in one segment?

Drop themes with < 3 distinct authors unless severity is blocking or the theme is brand-new in the recency window.

4. Build the theme report and validate

One row per theme. Columns: theme · distinct authors · severity mix · recency · segment skew · representative citations (≤ 3) · proposed next step (refine / probe / defer).

Validate the report before handing back: verify each row cites ≥ 1 artefact, check that distinct-author counts match the source inventory from step 1, confirm no PII leaked into the citations, and ensure no theme rated defer lacks a written rationale.

5. Surface scope violations

Themes that fall outside the product spine slot's declared scope go into a scope-violation.md block, never silently into the main report. The team decides whether to expand scope or close the door.

6. Hand back

Route refine candidates to refine-ticket; route probe candidates (need live interview) to discovery-interview; defer the rest with explicit rationale.

Related Skills

WHEN to use this

• The signal needs to come from existing repo / Sentry artefacts.
• The output is a theme list with citation, not narrative summary.
• A roadmap proposal needs grounded VoC backing.

WHEN NOT to use this

• The signal needs a live conversation — route to discovery-interview.
• The artefacts are chat-export sourced (Discord, Slack) — refuse and route to a privacy review (deferred per bounded scope).
• The output is a quantitative funnel — route to funnel-analysis.
• A theme is already a ticket candidate — route directly to refine-ticket.

When the agent should load this

• "Was sagen die User wirklich?"
• "Top-Themen aus den letzten 90 Tagen Issues."
• "Welche Sentry-Patterns sind recurring?"
• "Backe der Roadmap-Phase ein VoC-Block dazu."
• "Gibt es ein Segment, das uns überproportional pingt?"

Output

1. Header — sources scanned, counts, date window, scope notes.
2. Theme report table — themes, distinct authors, severity mix, recency, segment skew, citations, next step.
3. Scope-violation block — themes outside the product spine slot, explicit, never collapsed into the main table.
4. Routing list — refine / probe / defer rows with the named downstream skill per theme.

Gotcha

• One articulate user can own three themes; rank by distinct authors or you ship their backlog.
• A theme with no recency (all > 90 days) is archaeology, not VoC; flag it explicitly.
• Chat-export requests are tempting (Discord copy-paste); refuse per bounded scope until the privacy review lands.

Do NOT

• Do NOT scrape external sources or hit SaaS APIs the team does not already own.
• Do NOT surface PII; paraphrase before quoting.
• Do NOT collapse scope-violations into the main table.
• Do NOT lock decisions inside this skill — hand off to refine-ticket or decision-record.