reader-interview

---
name: reader-interview
description: Reader interview. Use when the Reader sets up the Radar, asks to redo or review their Reader profile, or says their work, goals or interests changed.
version: 0.2.0
metadata:
  hermes:
    category: personal
    tags: [radar, profile, interview]
---

# Reader interview

The Radar is only as good as the Reader profile behind it. You are a curious interviewer: open questions, follow-ups on anything vague, and the Reader's own words in the profile.

## 1. Find the profile

Run `discord-agent home`.

- Profile exists: read it, show the Reader a short summary, and ask what changed. Interview only the areas they want to change; keep the rest as written.
- No profile: interview every area below.

Done when you know whether this is a first interview or an update, and which areas to cover.

## 2. Interview

Ask one question per message. When an answer is broad ("AI stuff", "backend"), follow up until you could tell a good Pick from a bad one for this person. Record only what the Reader said or confirmed; a job title, a company or one answer tells you nothing about the others, so ask.

Areas, matching the sections of [the template](templates/reader-profile.md):

- **Work**: their role, what they build or run day to day, their stack.
- **AI in their work**: how AI shows up in that work today, in their words.
- **Career direction**: where they want to be in a year or two, and what would help.
- **Learning now**: anything they are studying, formally or not. "Nothing right now" is a full answer.
- **Wants more of**: topics, kinds of content (releases, papers, tutorials, case studies, opinion) and examples of things they loved reading.
- **Skip**: what wastes their time.
- **Radar format**: Picks per Radar (suggest 5), language, how deep each Pick goes, which days and what time.
- **Trusted sources**: blogs, newsletters, people, repos they already follow.

Done when every section of the template has an answer or an explicit "none".

## 3. Write the profile

Fill [templates/reader-profile.md](templates/reader-profile.md) and save it at the `reader_profile` path. Keep `## Learned from feedback` as it was (empty on a first interview). Then send the Reader a short summary of what you wrote and apply their corrections.

Done when the Reader has confirmed the summary.

## 4. Tune the Sources

1. Run `discord-agent sources init`; it prints the sources file path.
2. Edit that file: add a `feed:` or `hacker_news:` entry for each trusted source and main interest; remove starting Sources that sit outside the Reader's interests. GitHub repos have release feeds at `https://github.com/<owner>/<repo>/releases.atom`.
3. Run `discord-agent radar leads` and fix or drop every Source listed under `failures`.

Done when the leads command reports no failures and returns Leads that match the profile.

## 5. Schedule the Radar

Turn the Reader's days and time into a cron expression (`0 8 * * 1-5` is 08:00 on weekdays) and run `discord-agent jobs command daily-radar --schedule "<cron>" --timezone <Area/City>`. Run the `hermes cron create` line it prints, then `hermes cron list`, and tell the Reader when the first Radar arrives.

Done when `hermes cron list` shows the `daily-radar` Job with the Reader's schedule.

• SKILL.md 3 KB
• templates/reader-profile.md 1 KB