Media To Roadmap

/media-to-roadmap — external source in, de-duplicated roadmap out

One job: somebody published a video, podcast, article or thread about AI coding, agents or developer workflow, and Ane wants to know what in it is worth adopting. The output is one roadmap file in agent-improvements/, already checked against what the system does today.

Why this exists

The pattern has run by hand at least six times: the Karpathy/Forte video became a 14-item register, the Nate Herk/Cole Medin podcast a 9-item roadmap, the loops video (2026-06-21) the monitoring-loops build plan, the STORM video (2026-06-30) the research-scoping skill, and the Thariq context-engineering article plus the Isenberg graph-engineering video (2026-08-04) a sequenced adoption plan. The pipeline is always the same; the part worth standardising is the judgement call about what NOT to implement, because the source always oversells (STORM's "90 seconds = 48 PhD hours" claim is the reference case).

Method, in order

1. Fetch the source — never work from memory

Every claim in the roadmap traces to fetched content. Retrieval recipes per source type (YouTube transcript with the POT-token fallback, articles, login-gated x.com threads) are in references/fetch-patterns.md. Fetch through context-mode (ctx_fetch_and_index / ctx_execute) so the raw transcript stays out of the conversation. If the source cannot be fetched, stop and say so; do not reconstruct it from training data.

2. Extract concrete techniques

List what the source actually proposes, as specific, implementable claims — not themes. For each claim, record the source's own evidence for it and the strongest objection to it. A claim that survives its objection can be classified; one that does not goes straight to the do-NOT-adopt list with the objection as the reason.

3. Inventory what already exists

Before classifying anything, check what the system already does. The surfaces, in the order they answer fastest:

1. Installed skills — ~/.claude/skills/ names and descriptions.
2. Hooks — ~/.claude/settings.json.
3. The harness — tests/run_tests.py check names.
4. scripts/ and ane_package/ in the work folder.
5. Standing rules — ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md and the project CLAUDE.md.
6. Specialist agents — agent-improvements/agent_registry.md.

An idea the system already implements is recorded under Already doing as validation, never re-proposed as new work. This de-dup pass is the whole reason the skill exists; skipping it produces the duplicate-entry drift the backlog harness check was built to catch.

4. Classify every surviving idea

Two axes per idea, both mandatory:

• Build route: reuse > improve > rebuild. Prefer extending an existing hook, check, module or skill over building parallel machinery. Name the thing being reused or improved; "new" requires stating why nothing existing serves.
• Ring: Adopt / Trial / Assess / Hold (ThoughtWorks radar frame):
  • Adopt — proven fit, low risk, do it in the named block.
  • Trial — promising; pilot on one bounded workflow with a named success check before system-wide use.
  • Assess — worth understanding; a spike or a watch item, no build commitment.
  • Hold — do not pursue now; the reason is stated, because Hold entries are how the next scan avoids re-litigating.

5. Write the roadmap

Target: agent-improvements/<slug>-YYYY-MM-DD.md, slug from the source. Apply mel_wiki/wiki/concepts/edit-preservation-protocol.md when the target file exists. Required sections, in this order:

1. Source — what/who/where/date, fetch method used, scan date.
2. What the source says — the extracted claims, each with its evidence and strongest objection.
3. Already doing — validation list, each item naming the existing surface.
4. Adopt / Trial / Assess / Hold — the classified ideas, each with build route and effort guess.
5. What NOT to build — mandatory, with reasons. An empty section means the scan failed, not that everything is worth building.
6. Warning signals — what in the source, if it shows up in the system later, indicates the advice aged badly.
7. Sequenced blocks — Adopt/Trial items grouped into buildable sessions, spec-then-clear style.

On request, also write a continuation handoff to agent-improvements/handoffs/ so a fresh session can build block 1 without this session's context.

Hard rules

• Scope advice to the model generation it targets. A technique demonstrated on frontier-generation models does not automatically transfer to the Sonnet-tier specialist prompts; say which generation the source used and whether the transfer holds.
• No third-party orchestration platforms without the two checks. IPPF devices deny admin rights, and SRHR data never enters non-enterprise tools. Any idea requiring an install or an external service passes the no-admin check and the sensitive-data check before it can leave Assess.
• Strip the hype before endorsing. The strongest objection is named per endorsement (challenge-by-default). Repeating the source's own benchmark claims without that objection is a quality failure.
• Numbers about the system are computed, not recalled. A count of checks, skills or hooks stated in the roadmap is computed in the same turn or replaced by the command that produces it.

Sits beside, does not duplicate