Joelclaw contacts
Add, enrich, and manage contacts in Joel's Vault. Fire the Inngest enrichment pipeline for full multi-source dossiers, or create quick contacts manually. Use when: 'add a contact', 'enrich this person', 'who is X', 'VIP contact', 'update contact', or any task involving the Vault/Contacts directory.
git clone https://github.com/joelhooks/joelclaw
T=$(mktemp -d) && git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/joelhooks/joelclaw "$T" && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r "$T/skills/contacts" ~/.claude/skills/joelhooks-joelclaw-contacts && rm -rf "$T"
skills/contacts/SKILL.mdContacts
Manage contacts in
~/Vault/Contacts/. Each contact is a markdown file with YAML frontmatter.
Contact File Location
~/Vault/Contacts/<Name>.md
Index file:
~/Vault/Contacts/index.md — wikilink list of all contacts.
Frontmatter Schema
--- name: Full Name aliases: [nickname, handle] role: Current Role / Title organizations: [Org1, Org2] vip: true # or false slack_user_id: U0XXXXXXX slack_dm_channel: D0XXXXXXX # null if unknown website: https://example.com github: username twitter: handle email: user@example.com tags: [vip, instructor, creator, family, employee] ---
Sections
# Name ## Contact Channels - Slack, email, social handles, website ## Projects - Active projects, courses, collaborations ## Key Context - Relationship notes, working style, history ## Recent Activity - YYYY-MM-DD | channel | summary
See
~/Vault/Contacts/Matt Pocock.md for a fully enriched example.
Adding a Contact
Option 1: Fire the Enrichment Pipeline (preferred)
Send an Inngest event. The
contact-enrich function fans out across 7 sources (Slack, Roam, web/GitHub, Granola, recall memory, Typesense), synthesizes with LLM, and writes the Vault file.
# Via curl (CLI has OTEL import bug under Bun v1.3.9) curl -s -X POST http://localhost:8288/e/37aa349b89692d657d276a40e0e47a15 \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '[{ "name": "contact/enrich.requested", "data": { "name": "Person Name", "depth": "full", "hints": { "slack_user_id": "U0XXXXXXX", "github": "username", "twitter": "handle", "email": "user@example.com", "website": "https://example.com" } }, "ts": EPOCH_MS }]'
Depth modes:
(~60s, ~$0.05): All 7 sources + LLM synthesis. Use for new contacts or periodic refresh.full
(~10s, ~$0.01): Slack + memory only. Good for real-time VIP detection.quick
Hints are optional but help: Any known identifiers (Slack ID, GitHub, email, Twitter, website) seed the search and improve results.
Option 2: Quick Manual Create
For simple contacts where enrichment is overkill:
--- name: Person Name aliases: [] role: Role organizations: [Org] vip: false slack_user_id: null website: null github: null twitter: null email: null tags: [tag1] --- # Person Name ## Contact Channels - ... ## Key Context - ...
Write to
~/Vault/Contacts/Person Name.md and add [[Person Name]] to index.md.
Updating Contacts
Re-run enrichment with the existing vault path:
{ "name": "contact/enrich.requested", "data": { "name": "Person Name", "vault_path": "Contacts/Person Name.md", "depth": "full" } }
The synthesizer merges new data with existing content — it won't discard existing facts unless contradicted.
VIP Contacts (ADR-0151)
Mark
vip: true in frontmatter. VIPs get deep enrichment + ongoing monitoring.
Deep Enrichment Playbook (one-time)
Every VIP gets the full treatment. This is what we did for Kent C. Dodds (Feb 26, 2026):
| Step | Source | What to Capture |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Web presence | Web search | Bio, role, location, personal details |
| 2. Podcast/interviews | Web search | Appearance list, own podcasts, audiences |
| 3. Joel collaborations | Their website, appearances pages | Joint podcasts, co-organized events, shared projects |
| 4. Career timeline | Defuddle 2-3 key interview transcripts | Origin story, career arc, key decisions, values |
| 5. GitHub profile | GitHub API or web | Repos, followers, orgs, contribution patterns |
| 6. X/Twitter profile | X API v2 (use x-api skill) | Bio, followers, recent tweets, engagement |
| 7. Key relationships | Cross-reference transcripts + contacts | Who they work with, who they mention, who we know in common |
| 8. Content catalog | Website crawl (defuddle) | Courses, blog posts, open source projects |
| 9. Audience reach | Podcast counts, social followers | Conference circuit, community presence |
Index to Typesense after enrichment:
- Batch-import appearances/content to
collection (NDJSON,discoveries
)action=upsert - Tag all docs with person's name slug (e.g.
) for filteringkent-c-dodds - Fields:
,id
,title
,url
,summary
,tags[]timestamp - Write a
reference doc linking back to contactVault/Resources/{name}-media-appearances.md
Output sections in the vault note:
- Background & Story (origin, career timeline)
- Teaching/Work Philosophy (or equivalent for non-educators)
- Key Relationships (cross-linked
to other contacts)[[wikilinks]] - Audience & Reach
- Content/Products
- Podcast/Collaboration History with Joel
- Recent Activity (timestamped)
Ongoing Monitoring (Phase 2-4 of ADR-0151)
| Channel | Tool | Signal |
|---|---|---|
| Google Alerts | joelclawbot Google account | Name mentions in news, blogs, press |
| X/Twitter list | joelclaw X account | Tweets, engagement |
| GitHub activity | GitHub API (polling) | New repos, releases |
| Podcast RSS | Feed monitoring | New episodes |
| Website changes | Periodic defuddle + diff | Blog posts, launches, bio changes |
High-signal (immediate): course launches, role changes, mentions of Joel/egghead/Skill, fundraising. Low-signal (daily/weekly digest): regular tweets, blog posts, OSS activity.
Current VIPs
- Get notified to Joel via gateway after enrichment
- Are refreshed weekly via scheduled cron
- Have priority in channel intelligence pipeline (ADR-0131, ADR-0132)
- Get ongoing monitoring when ADR-0151 Phase 2+ is implemented
Roam Research Enrichment
Joel's Roam archive (
~/Code/joelhooks/egghead-roam-research/) contains the full egghead-era graph (2019-2024). Many contacts have extensive history there.
Quick Search (Python regex)
cd ~/Code/joelhooks/egghead-roam-research python3 -c " import re with open('egghead-2026-01-19-13-09-38.edn', 'r') as f: content = f.read() pattern = r':block/string\s+\"([^\"]*?)\"' matches = [] for m in re.findall(pattern, content): if '[[SEARCH_TAG]]' in m.lower(): matches.append(m) print(f'Found {len(matches)} blocks') for m in matches[:30]: print(f' - {m[:200]}') "
People Taxonomy
People are tagged with relationship prefixes in Roam:
— Strategic partners (Ian Jones, Alex Hillman)[[collaborator/Name]]
— egghead instructors (Matt Pocock, Jacob Paris)[[client/Name]]
— egghead team (Will Johnson, Daniel Miller, Maggie Appleton)[[staff/Name]]
(no prefix) — Informal references (Zac is[[name]]
)[[zac]]
Page Title Search
python3 -c " import re with open('egghead-2026-01-19-13-09-38.edn', 'r') as f: content = f.read() pattern = r':node/title\s+\"([^\"]*?SEARCH_TERM[^\"]*?)\"' for m in re.findall(pattern, content): print(f' page: {m}') "
Adding to Contacts
When extracting person data from Roam, add
roam_tag to frontmatter:
roam_tag: "[[collaborator/Ian Jones]]"
This enables future re-queries and cross-referencing.
Datalog Queries (advanced)
The EDN file is Datomic-style. Clojure scripts exist at
scripts/ for structured analysis. See the roam-research skill for full Datalog patterns.
Resolving Unknown People
When you encounter a Slack user ID (
<@U0XXXXXXX>):
# Lease token and look up profile SLACK_USER=$(secrets lease slack_user_token --ttl 5m) curl -s "https://slack.com/api/users.info?user=U0XXXXXXX" \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $SLACK_USER" | jq '.user.real_name, .user.profile.email' secrets revoke --all
Then fire enrichment with the resolved name and hints.
Inngest Function
- Function:
(contact-enrich
)packages/system-bus/src/inngest/functions/contact-enrich.ts - Event:
contact/enrich.requested - ADR:
~/Vault/docs/decisions/0133-contact-enrichment-pipeline.md - Concurrency: 3 max
- Sources: Slack, Slack Connect, Roam archive, GitHub/web, Granola meetings, recall memory, Typesense
Privacy
- Contact files are in Vault (private, not in public repos)
- Slack data stays private — never surface in public content
- Email/phone are stored for Joel's reference only