quaid-alerts

Alerts Skill

Overview

The alerts skill monitors brain state and surfaces actionable notifications. It is designed to be called periodically (e.g., on a cron schedule or after memory_put / memory_link operations) rather than interactively.

Alerts are written to stdout as structured JSON — one alert object per line — so they can be piped to any downstream handler (logger, MCP client, dashboard).

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Alert Types and Priority Levels

Alert Type	Priority	Trigger Condition
contradiction_new	high	quaid check --all returns a contradiction not seen in the previous run
gap_resolved	low	A gap transitions from resolved_at IS NULL to resolved_at IS NOT NULL
page_stale	medium	Page has timeline_updated_at > truth_updated_at by 30+ days AND has > 5 inbound links
embedding_drift	low	Any page_embeddings row references a model_id that is not the current active model

Priority ladder (highest to lowest): critical → high → medium → low. Currently no trigger reaches critical; reserve that level for future use (e.g., data corruption detected by quaid validate).

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Commands

The alerts skill orchestrates existing commands. There is no standalone quaid alerts command; the agent runs these and synthesises results.

# Check for new contradictions
quaid check --all --json

# Check for recently resolved gaps (compare against last known state)
# `--resolved` is a bare boolean flag: present = list resolved gaps, absent = unresolved.
quaid gaps --resolved --json

# List pages for stale-risk check
quaid list --json
quaid graph <slug> --depth 1 --json   # check inbound link count per candidate page

# Check embedding model consistency
quaid validate --embeddings --json

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Alert Object Schema

Each alert is a JSON object with this structure:

{
  "type": "contradiction_new",
  "priority": "high",
  "slug": "people/alice",
  "message": "Contradiction on predicate 'role' between 'engineer' and 'manager'",
  "detected_at": "2026-04-17T09:00:00Z",
  "dedup_key": "contradiction_new::people/alice::role"
}

Fields:

• type — one of the alert types in the table above
• priority — critical / high / medium / low
• slug — the page or resource affected (empty string if not page-scoped)
• message — human-readable description
• detected_at — ISO-8601 UTC timestamp
• dedup_key — opaque string used for suppression (see Deduplication)

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Deduplication Rules

The agent MUST maintain a deduplication log (a simple key-value store, a brain page, or a local file). The default suppression window is 24 hours.

Rule: If an alert with the same dedup_key was emitted within the suppression window, do NOT emit it again. Discard silently.

Dedup key construction:

Alert Type	Dedup Key Pattern
contradiction_new	contradiction_new::<slug>::<predicate>
gap_resolved	gap_resolved::<gap_id>
page_stale	page_stale::<slug>
embedding_drift	embedding_drift::global

If a contradiction is resolved and then re-detected, the dedup key changes because the predicate value pair changes — it will fire again. This is intentional.

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Detection Workflows

Contradiction alerts

1. Run: quaid check --all --json
2. For each contradiction in the response:
   a. Compute dedup_key = "contradiction_new::<slug>::<predicate>"
   b. Check suppression log for key within last 24h
   c. If NOT suppressed: emit alert, record key + timestamp in log

Stale page alerts

1. Run: quaid list --json
2. Filter pages where:
     (now - timeline_updated_at > 30 days) AND (truth_updated_at < timeline_updated_at)
3. For each candidate slug:
   a. Run: quaid graph <slug> --depth 1 --json
   b. Count inbound links (edges where target == slug)
   c. If inbound_links > 5:
      - Compute dedup_key = "page_stale::<slug>"
      - Check suppression log; if NOT suppressed: emit medium alert

Gap resolved alerts

1. Run: quaid gaps --resolved --json
2. For each gap with resolved_at != null:
   a. Compute dedup_key = "gap_resolved::<gap_id>"
   b. If NOT in suppression log: emit low alert, record key

Embedding drift alerts

1. Run: quaid validate --embeddings --json
2. Parse "passed" field
3. If passed == false:
   a. Compute dedup_key = "embedding_drift::global"
   b. If NOT suppressed within 24h: emit low alert with message "Re-embed recommended"

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Suppression Configuration

Agents may configure the suppression window per alert type:

suppression_windows:
  contradiction_new: 24h
  gap_resolved: 72h      # gaps resolve slowly; don't spam
  page_stale: 168h       # stale pages don't change fast; suppress for 7 days
  embedding_drift: 24h

These are agent-side configuration values, not binary flags.

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Output Delivery

Write one JSON alert object per line to stdout:

{"type":"contradiction_new","priority":"high","slug":"people/alice",...}
{"type":"page_stale","priority":"medium","slug":"companies/acme",...}

There is no quaid alerts command — the agent itself synthesises this stream from the orchestrated check / gaps / validate calls above and writes it to stdout (or a file). Downstream handlers consume that stream. Assuming the agent has written its alerts to alerts.jsonl:

• Log to a brain page: quaid put logs/alerts-$(date +%F) < alerts.jsonl
• Filter by priority: jq 'select(.priority == "high")' alerts.jsonl
• Count today's alerts: jq -s 'length' alerts.jsonl

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Failure Modes

Condition	Behaviour
quaid check --all DB error	Emit one critical-priority alert with type: "check_failed" and the error message
quaid validate --embeddings fails to run	Skip embedding drift check; log warning to stderr
Suppression log unreadable	Emit all alerts (fail open — missing suppression is safer than missing alerts)
No brain pages exist	All checks return empty; emit no alerts