Weekly Signal Diff

Weekly Signal Diff

Problem

A wall of news does not tell the user what structurally changed. Most weekly roundups over-index on headlines, underweight economics and dependency shifts, and ignore what the user actually cares about. This skill turns a noisy week into a small set of structural changes, weighted by Open Brain memory.

When to Use

• Weekly market review or Sunday/Friday ritual
• "Run my weekly signal diff"
• "What changed this week that matters to me?"
• "Track this market and tell me the structural shifts"
• "Turn this pile of news into a decision-grade diff"
• Ongoing automation that writes a weekly digest back to Open Brain

Required Context

Gather as much as the environment allows:

• the user's active projects, bets, and recurring interests
• prior weekly digests or adjacent summaries stored in Open Brain
• the desired freshness window (default: last 7 days)
• any preferred outlets, banned sources, or explicit watchlist entities

If the user has not provided categories or companies, read references/starter-universe.md and use it as a bootstrap layer only.

If live web access is available and the user wants current coverage, read references/live-search-upgrade.md and use the strongest search mode the environment supports.

Process

1. Establish the frame.

   • Confirm the topic space, freshness window, and whether the goal is personal awareness, operator strategy, investor tracking, or content prep.
   • If the user says nothing, default to a 7-day operator-style review.

2. Pull Open Brain context first.

   • Search for active projects, current priorities, recurring entities, recent captures, and the last 2-4 weekly digests.
   • Tool names vary by client. Use the available Open Brain search, list, and capture tools in the environment rather than assuming fixed names.
   • Extract a short relevance profile: what the user is building, what they keep revisiting, what they are worried about, and what they are trying to learn.

3. Build the watchlist.

   • Start from the suggested 10-category / 30-company starter universe if the user has not defined a watchlist.
   • Treat the starter list as a scaffold, not a contract.
   • Re-rank or replace items using Open Brain context:
     • promote companies, categories, or themes the user mentions often
     • demote low-signal items
     • add personal-priority entities even if they are outside the starter set
   • Preserve some baseline discovery. Personalization should shape the scan, not collapse it into only known favorites.

4. Gather the week's evidence.

   • Prefer fresh, source-backed information with links or citations.
   • If live search is available, perform a broad sweep first, then targeted follow-ups on the top candidate shifts.
   • If live search is not available, work from the user's provided sources and say that the diff is source-bounded.
   • Ignore pure announcement theater unless it changes economics, distribution, regulation, dependency, geography, or buyer behavior.

5. Ask the structural questions on every candidate signal.

   • What constraint shifted?
   • Who gained or lost leverage?
   • What got cheaper, harder, faster, or more defensible?
   • What dependency got exposed?
   • What business model or pricing assumption weakened?
   • What changed in regulation, geography, or distribution?
   • Why does this matter for the user's actual projects, workflows, or market view?

6. Score before writing.

   • Keep only the few signals that represent real change.
   • A good weekly diff usually has 3-7 structural shifts.
   • Merge duplicates, drop weak stories, and explicitly label speculation as speculation.

7. Produce the weekly diff.

Use this default structure:

• Coverage note — what was scanned, how it was personalized, and the date window
• Structural shifts — 3-7 items, each with:
  • what changed
  • why it matters in general
  • why it matters to this user
  • supporting evidence or citations
• What changed from last week — new, rising, fading, or resolved themes
• Watch next — entities, constraints, or questions to monitor
• Actions — optional follow-ups, only if the evidence supports them

1. Capture the durable output.
   • Save the final digest back into Open Brain when capture tools are available.
   • Prefer one durable weekly summary plus separate captures only for truly important follow-up items.
   • Include provenance: week ending date, topic scope, and major entities covered.

Output

When this skill works correctly, the user gets:

• a concise weekly structural diff instead of a headline roundup
• a clear explanation of why the shifts matter to them specifically
• citations or source links when live search is available
• a durable weekly digest saved back into Open Brain for future comparison

Guardrails

• The goal is diff, not digest.
• Do not force all 30 suggested companies into the final output. They are there to prevent blank-page syndrome, not to create fake coverage.
• Do not mistake product launches, benchmark screenshots, or funding headlines for structural change unless they move a real constraint.
• Keep general market analysis separate from personalized implications.
• If evidence is thin, say the week was thin.
• If the environment lacks live search, be explicit about the freshness limitation.
• If the user's interests are unclear, use the starter universe and explain that it is a bootstrap pass.

Notes for Other Clients

• This skill is portable across Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and similar clients because the core behavior is procedural.
• Adapt Open Brain tool names to the local environment.
• For scheduled runs, pair the skill with the user's automation system and keep the same structure every week so diffs stay comparable.
• If OpenRouter is available, prefer a Perplexity Sonar web-search model for the retrieval pass, then use the local AI client or model to do the actual synthesis if that split is more ergonomic.