capture

/guide:capture — Daily Thought Capture

Capture what's on your mind — morning intentions or evening reflections.

A standalone skill for recording the user's thoughts, ideas, and reflections. Works independently — no pipeline dependency required.

How It Works

This skill captures the user's raw thoughts through gentle conversation, preserving the verbatim transcript alongside structured themes and connections.

AM vs PM Mode

The skill operates in two modes:

• AM (morning) — Focus on intentions, energy, and what's ahead. Ask about plans, priorities, and what's on their mind for the day. Auto-detect if the current time is before noon.
• PM (evening) — Focus on reflections, lessons, and what happened. Ask about wins, challenges, and what they learned. Auto-detect if the current time is after noon.

If the user doesn't specify AM or PM, auto-detect based on the current time of day (before noon = AM, after noon = PM).

Steps

1. Read config from content/config.yaml for output.captures_dir (fall back to content/captures/ as default if config is missing)
2. Greet the user with a gentle prompt appropriate to the time of day
3. Listen and explore — use gentle follow-up prompts to help the user go deeper:
   • "What's behind that?"
   • "How does that connect to what you've been thinking about?"
   • "What would make today feel like a win?"
   • "Is there something you're avoiding?"
4. Preserve the raw transcript — keep the user's exact words, don't just summarize
5. Extract themes and connections to previous captures or ongoing threads
6. Save to YYYY-MM-DD-am.md or YYYY-MM-DD-pm.md in the captures directory

Output Format

---
date: YYYY-MM-DD
mode: am|pm
themes: [theme1, theme2]
connections: [related captures or thoughts]
---

## Raw Capture

(Verbatim transcript of the conversation)

## Themes

- Theme 1: brief description
- Theme 2: brief description

## Connections

- Links to previous captures or thoughts that relate

iMessage Capture Mode

When running in a --channels session with the iMessage plugin, captures can happen entirely via iMessage:

1. A cron-triggered nudge sends a message to the self-chat via the reply MCP tool
2. The user replies directly in iMessage with their thoughts
3. Claude reads the reply (via chat.db polling), treats it as capture content
4. Claude asks follow-up questions via reply tool ("What's behind that?", "Anything else?")
5. When the user signals they're done (e.g., "that's it", "done", or stops replying), Claude saves the capture

Key differences from terminal mode:

• Use the reply MCP tool for all responses (not AskUserQuestion)
• The user's messages arrive as channel notifications, not terminal input
• Keep follow-ups short — iMessage is a phone screen, not a terminal
• Confirm with a brief reply: "Captured. Themes: X, Y. This feeds into tomorrow's brief."
• Find the self-chat chat_id by querying: sqlite3 ~/Library/Messages/chat.db "SELECT guid FROM chat WHERE chat_identifier LIKE '%<phone>%'"

Edge Cases

• Config file missing: Use default directory content/captures/
• Capture for this period already exists: Append to the existing file, don't overwrite
• User doesn't specify AM or PM: Auto-detect from current time of day (before noon = AM, after noon = PM)
• Standalone usage: This skill works without the pipeline having run — no dependency on signals.json or analysis.md
• iMessage reply with no context: If a message arrives outside of a capture nudge, treat it as an ad-hoc capture — save it with detected themes