/scout

name: scout
description: Evaluate URLs and tools — check vault coverage, assess relevance, recommend save or skip
roles: [all]
integrations: [web-fetch, web-search]

COG Scout Skill

Purpose

Lightweight URL/tool triage that sits between "ignore" and `/url-dump`. Evaluates whether a URL or tool is worth saving or skipping — checking existing vault coverage, assessing relevance to the user's profile and interests, and recommending a clear next action.

When to Invoke

• User wants to evaluate a URL or tool before committing to a full save
• User says "scout this", "evaluate this", "should I save this?", "is this relevant?"
• User shares one or more URLs and wants a quick relevance assessment
• User mentions a tool/service name and wants to know if it's worth investigating

Agent Mode Awareness

**Check `agent_mode` in `00-inbox/MY-PROFILE.md` frontmatter:**

• If `agent_mode: team` — delegate vault scanning and web fetching to parallel sub-agents (one for vault search, one for content fetch/analysis). Combine results for recommendation.
• If `agent_mode: solo` (default) — handle all scanning and analysis directly in the conversation. No delegation.

Pre-Flight Check

**Before executing, check for user profile:**

1. Look for `00-inbox/MY-PROFILE.md` and `00-inbox/MY-INTERESTS.md` in the vault 2. If NOT found:

   Welcome to COG! Scout works best with a profile for relevance matching.

   Would you like to run /onboarding first, or should I evaluate with general criteria?

3. If found:

• Read `MY-PROFILE.md` for active projects and role
• Read `MY-INTERESTS.md` for topic areas
• Read `00-inbox/MY-INTEGRATIONS.md` for active integrations (check if `web-fetch` and `web-search` are available)

Boundary with `/url-dump`

**Scout evaluates** ("should I save this?"). **URL-dump saves** ("save this now").

• Scout checks existing coverage, assesses relevance, and recommends an action
• If the recommendation is **Save**, scout hands off to `/url-dump` with pre-filled category
• Users who already know they want to save should use `/url-dump` directly

Process Flow

1. Accept Input

Accept one or more of:

• **URL(s):** Direct links to evaluate
• **Tool/service name(s):** Will search for the tool first
• **Mixed:** Combination of URLs and names

**Prompt (if no input provided):**

What URL(s) or tool(s) would you like me to evaluate?
(You can paste URLs, tool names, or a mix)

**Batch mode:** Multiple URLs/names in one invocation are processed together with a summary table at the end.

2. Vault Coverage Check

For each URL or tool name, search the **entire vault** for existing coverage.

**Search strategy:**

• Extract domain from URL (e.g., `github.com/owner/repo` → search for repo name)
• Search for tool/service name across the whole vault (grep for domain, repo name, tool name)
• Match against URL strings in frontmatter (`url:` fields) and inline links

**If found:**

🔍 Existing coverage found for [name]:
- [file path] — saved [date], category: [category]
- [file path] — mentioned in [context]

Want me to check if an update is needed, or skip this one?

3. Content Fetch & Analysis

**If URL provided and web-fetch is active:**

• Fetch the URL content using WebFetch
• Extract: title, description, content type, author, date

**If tool name provided (no URL):**

• Use WebSearch to find the tool's primary page
• Fetch and analyze the top result

**Content type detection:**

• **Tool/Service:** Software, SaaS, API, library, framework
• **Article/Blog:** Long-form content, tutorial, opinion piece
• **Repository:** GitHub/GitLab repo (extract stars, last commit, language)
• **Research:** Paper, study, academic content
• **News:** Industry news, announcement
• **Reference:** Documentation, spec, standard

4. Relevance Assessment

Score relevance against user context:

**Profile Match (from MY-PROFILE.md):**

• Does it relate to an active project? Which one?
• Does it align with the user's role?
• Does it fit the user's tech stack?

**Interest Match (from MY-INTERESTS.md):**

• Does it match any declared interest topics?
• How directly relevant is it?

**Quality Signals:**

• For repos: stars, recent activity, maintainer health
• For tools: pricing model, maturity, adoption
• For articles: author credibility, publication quality, recency
• For all: uniqueness vs. what's already in the vault

5. Recommendation

Based on analysis, recommend one of two actions:

**Save** — Worth adding to the knowledge base

✅ SAVE — [Title/Name]
Category: [suggested category for url-dump]
Relevance: [High/Medium] — [why it matters]
Projects: [affected project(s) if any]

Shall I hand off to /url-dump to save it?

**Skip** — Not relevant or not worth the time

⏭️ SKIP — [Title/Name]
Reason: [clear explanation — wrong stack, low quality, already covered, irrelevant to interests]

6. Batch Summary (for multiple items)

When processing multiple URLs/tools, end with a summary table:

## Scout Summary

| # | Item | Verdict | Reason |
|---|------|---------|--------|
| 1 | [Name 1] | ✅ Save | [brief reason] |
| 2 | [Name 2] | ⏭️ Skip | [brief reason] |

**Actions:**
- [X] items ready to save via /url-dump

7. Execute Follow-up Actions

Based on user confirmation:

• **Save items:** Hand off to `/url-dump` with pre-filled category suggestion
• **Skip items:** No action needed

Fallback Behavior

| Scenario | Behavior | |----------|----------| | web-fetch unavailable | Evaluate based on URL structure, domain reputation, and vault search only. Note that content wasn't fetched. | | web-search unavailable | For tool-name inputs (no URL), ask the user for a direct URL instead. For URL inputs, proceed normally — web-search is not needed. | | No user profile | Evaluate with general quality/relevance criteria, skip personalized relevance scoring | | URL is paywalled | Note limitation, evaluate based on available preview