/world

name: alive:world
description: "The human doesn't know what to work on, or wants to see everything at once. They need the big picture — what's active, what's stale, what needs attention. Renders a live world view grouped by ALIVE domain, then routes to open, tidy, find, history, or map."
user-invocable: true

World

This is Mission Control. When the human opens their world, it should feel like booting an operating system — everything they care about, at a glance, with clear paths to action.

NOT a database dump. NOT a flat list. A living view of their world, grouped by what matters, showing relationships, surfacing what needs attention.

---

Load Sequence

1. **Read `.alive/_index.yaml`** — one read, everything the dashboard needs: every walnut's type, goal, phase, rhythm, updated, people, links, tags, bundles, and parent relationships. The SessionStart hook injects `<WORLD_INDEX_BRIEF>` (names, paths, phases, people) which is enough to orient, but the dashboard's goal lines, rhythm warnings and bundle counts come from the full index file. Older plugin versions injected the full index as `<WORLD_INDEX>`; if that's in context, use it and skip the read. 2. **If no index exists at all** — generate it first (`python3 "$ALIVE_PLUGIN_ROOT/scripts/generate-index.py" "$WORLD_ROOT"`), then read the output. Fall back to manual scanning only on first-time setup before the index infrastructure exists. 3. **Freshness check** — read the `generated:` timestamp from the index. Display it in the dashboard header. If older than 10 minutes, show a warning. If older than 1 hour, suggest regeneration. This makes index staleness visible instead of invisible. 4. Build the tree from the index — parent/child relationships from `parent:` field 5. **Lightweight fresh checks** — one Bash call each, no subagents, no Explore agents:

• **Unsaved sessions with stash:** already in the index as `unsaved_with_stash:`. If non-zero, surface in the Attention section. No bash loop needed.
• **Unrouted inputs:** resolve the world root via the doctor JSON surface, then list the absolute path. Never use a relative `ls 03_Inbox/` — it silently fails when the Bash tool's cwd isn't the world root. One-liner:

     WR=$(alive doctor --check=world-root --json | jq -r '.world_root') && [ -n "$WR" ] && ls "$WR/03_Inbox/" 2>/dev/null | grep -v '^\.' | grep -v '^Icon'

Doctor's pinned-strategy result is the authoritative resolver — preferred over raw config-file reads, which mangle paths with internal whitespace. Just the filenames, no deep reads.

• **API context:** only if context sources are listed in the session start injection (already in your context from the hook — do NOT re-read preferences.yaml).

6. Compute attention items from fresh checks + index staleness signals 7. **Inbox triage (background)** — if `03_Inbox/` has items, dispatch a background agent to triage them. Don't wait for it — render the dashboard immediately, the triage results arrive while the human reads.

Inbox Triage Agent

Dispatch with `run_in_background: true` when inbox has 1+ items. The agent:

1. Reads the subagent brief from the plugin templates (for ALIVE context) 2. Lists all files in `03_Inbox/` with `ls -la` 3. For each item, determines:

• **Type:** transcript, email, document, screenshot, video, extraction directory, financial, unknown
• **Likely destination walnut:** match against the world index (injected in the agent prompt) by keywords, people names, project names
• **Priority:** urgent (contains decisions/deadlines), normal, low (reference material)
• **Age:** how old is the file

4. Returns a structured triage report

When the background agent completes, surface the results:

╭─ 🐿️ inbox triaged (8 items)
│
│  Urgent
│   march-expenses.csv              → finance (transactions, needs review)
│   error-log-april-2.txt           → my-startup (build error from deploy)
│
│  Route
│   team-dinner-recap.mp4           → my-startup (event footage)
│   fathom-extraction/              → runs via /alive:mine-for-context
│   otter-extraction/               → runs via /alive:mine-for-context
│
│  Auto-route (low priority)
│   gmail/                          → capture via sync script
│   slack/                          → capture via sync script
│
│  ▸ Route all? Or review one at a time?
│  1. Route all suggested
│  2. Review each
│  3. Skip for now
╰─

The triage agent gets the world index in its prompt so it knows every walnut, person, and active bundle. It matches by name, keywords, and file type patterns. It does NOT move files — it suggests. The human confirms.

**DO NOT read preferences.yaml** — it's already injected at session start. **DO NOT read individual walnut files** (key.md, now.json, log.md) — the index has everything. **DO NOT read .alive/_squirrels/*.yaml files** — recent sessions are in the index under `recent_sessions:` and unsaved stash count is in `unsaved_with_stash:`. **DO NOT spawn Explore agents or subagents** for the dashboard — use the index and the one bash check above. The entire dashboard should render from the injected brief plus 1 index-file read plus 1 fast bash call (inputs listing).

State Detection

Before rendering, detect system state:

• **Fresh install** (no walnuts exist) → route to `setup.md`
• **Previous system detected** (v3/v4 `_brain/` folders exist) → offer migration via `/alive:create-walnut` migrate mode
• **Normal** → render dashboard

---

Dashboard Layout

The dashboard has 4 sections. Each tells you something different.

Section 1: Right Now

What needs the human's attention TODAY. Not everything — just what's active and demanding.

╭─ 🐿️ your world
│
│  RIGHT NOW
│  ──────────────────────────────────────────────
│
│   1. my-startup              launching
│      Urgent: 1 · Active: 3
│      Last: 2 hours ago · 6 sessions this week
│
│   2. freelance-agency        legacy
│      Urgent: 3 · Active: 0
│      Last: 2 days ago
│