Panning for Gold

Overview

Transform raw brain dumps into evaluated, actionable idea inventories. Three phases: Extract every thread without filtering, Evaluate the highest-signal ones, then Synthesize into a permanent gold-found file.

Core principle: Every line gets examined. Nothing is dismissed as noise on the first pass. Personal threads, half-formed thoughts, and tangential observations often contain the highest-signal ideas.

When to Use

• Voice transcripts (multi-speaker, timestamped)
• Stream-of-consciousness notes
• Brain dump markdown exports from ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude
• Any document where the user says "process this" or "what's in here"
• Multi-topic conversations that need thread extraction

Critical Rules (Learned from Production Use)

These rules exist because they've been violated and caused wasted work:

1. SAVE EVERYTHING TO PERMANENT FILES. Phase 1 inventory, Phase 2 evaluations, and Phase 3 synthesis ALL get saved to files in the project's docs directory. Never rely on agent memory or temp task outputs surviving compaction.

2. SUMMARIES FIRST, TRANSCRIPT SECOND. If a summary/notes file exists alongside a transcript, use the summary as the primary extraction source. Only read the full transcript for: (a) exact quotes to support threads, (b) verifying completeness on the second pass. This saves 10-20K tokens per scan.

3. EVALUATORS WRITE TO FILES. Every background evaluator agent MUST write its evaluation to a permanent file (e.g., docs/meetings/evaluations/YYYY-MM-DD-{slug}.md) as part of its task. Do not depend on collecting agent return values.

4. SYNTHESIS HAPPENS INLINE. Do not dispatch a separate agent for synthesis. Write the gold-found file yourself after evaluators finish. If evaluators disappear (compaction, task ID loss), write the synthesis from your own reading.