Template Writes (Slices 15-16)

Donna writes vault notes autonomously in response to triggers. Slice 15 introduces the outbound path with the meeting-note skill as the reference implementation; slice 16 fills in the four cadence-driven templates, adds person-stub auto-creation, and replaces delete-plus-upsert rename handling with content-hash reconciliation.

Slice 15 — template writes

Components

• VaultTemplateRenderer (src/donna/memory/templates.py) — a thin FileSystemLoader + StrictUndefined Jinja environment. Templates are self-contained: each template emits its own frontmatter as a first-line --- YAML block; the renderer parses and returns it separately via python-frontmatter. Missing context keys raise jinja2.UndefinedError.
• MemoryInformedWriter (src/donna/memory/writer.py) — the shared orchestrator every template-write skill delegates to. Owns autonomy-based path redirection, frontmatter-keyed idempotency, prompt-template rendering, routed LLM completion, vault-template rendering, and commit. Any failure logs vault_autowrite_failed and returns a skipped WriteResult — never a partial write.
• resolve_person_link (src/donna/memory/linking.py) — looks up People/{name}.md in the vault; returns [[People/{name}]] when present, [[{name}]] otherwise. Never auto-creates stubs.
• MeetingNoteSkill + MeetingEndPoller (src/donna/capabilities/) — the reference trigger. The poller scans calendar_mirror once per config.memory.skills.meeting_note.poll_interval_seconds for events that ended within the lookback window and don't already have a meeting note indexed. The skill composes memory-search context (prior meetings, recent chats, open tasks), resolves attendee wikilinks, and delegates to MemoryInformedWriter.

Idempotency contract

Every autowritten note carries an idempotency_key frontmatter field (the calendar event id for meeting notes). Before any LLM spend, the writer reads the target path; if the existing note's idempotency_key matches, it emits vault_autowrite_skipped_idempotent and returns without work. This makes re-polling safe and cheap.

Autonomy-level -> path redirection

config/memory.yaml:skills.meeting_note.autonomy_level is the skill-local control. At low, every write is redirected to Inbox/{basename} regardless of the caller-computed target_path. At medium / high, the caller's path is honoured. This is distinct from config/agents.yaml:research.autonomy, which governs the research agent's overall tool budget and timeout. Per-template beats per-agent so Slice 16 templates can differ.

CalendarMirror.attendees

CalendarMirror gained a nullable attendees TEXT column (migration c9d1e3f5a7b2). calendar.py::_parse_event reads items[i].attendees from the Google API, normalising each entry to {name, email} (name = displayName or email local-part); calendar_sync.py::_update_mirror JSON-encodes the list on write. The meeting-note skill parses the JSON and passes it through to the template + wikilink resolver.

Observability

• Invocation log: new task_type=draft_meeting_note, model_alias=reasoner, standard token/cost fields (this is a paid cloud call, unlike the local embedding calls).
• Structlog events: meeting_end_detected (poller found an eligible event), vault_autowrite_skipped_idempotent (writer found a matching key), vault_autowrite_written (happy path), vault_autowrite_failed (any step raised). Slice 16 renamed the two writer-owned events from meeting_note_* to the generic vault_autowrite_* form and added a template field so Grafana breaks counts down per template.
• Grafana memory dashboard gains a "Template writes" row (writes by template, skip rate, LLM cost, failures).

Slice 16 — cadence writes, person stubs, rename reconciliation

Slice 16 fills in the four template writes slice 15 deferred, adds a central People/{name}.md stub auto-creator, and replaces delete-plus-upsert rename handling with content-hash reconciliation. No infrastructure changes to VaultTemplateRenderer, MemoryInformedWriter, or resolve_person_link beyond two optional constructor kwargs on the writer (safety_allowlist, person_stub_helper).

Cadence-driven skills

Four new skills, all sharing one MemoryInformedWriter instance:

• daily_reflection (src/donna/capabilities/daily_reflection_skill.py) — nightly. Target Reflections/{YYYY-MM-DD}.md, idempotency key the ISO date. Context: today's meeting notes, terminal task mutations, chat highlights.
• commitment_log (src/donna/capabilities/commitment_log_skill.py) — nightly. Target Commitments/{YYYY-MM-DD}.md, idempotency key the ISO date. LLM extracts explicit speech-act commitments; one file per day so idempotency is trivial and git log gives the running view.
• weekly_review (src/donna/capabilities/weekly_review_skill.py) — Sunday evening. Target WeeklyReview/{iso_year}-W{iso_week:02d}.md, idempotency key the ISO week label. Also loads the prior week's review (if any) for carry-over commitments.
• person_profile (src/donna/capabilities/person_profile_skill.py + person_mention_counter.py) — Sunday evening. Two triggers: mention_threshold (PersonMentionCounter sweep of memory_chunks.content LIKE '%[[Name]]%' over lookback_days) and stub_fill (weekly scan of People/*.md for notes shorter than min_body_chars). Overwrite guard: refuses to touch notes that are non-empty and lack autowritten_by: donna in frontmatter — Donna never overwrites a user-edited profile. Idempotency key {name}@{iso_week}.

All four route to the reasoner alias via new task_types (draft_daily_reflection, extract_commitments, draft_weekly_review, draft_person_profile) in config/task_types.yaml + config/donna_models.yaml.

Time triggers

AsyncCronScheduler (src/donna/skills/crons/scheduler.py) gained optional day_of_week: int | None (Mon=0..Sun=6) and minute_utc: int = 0 kwargs — enough to cover daily + sub-hour-granular weekly triggers without introducing APScheduler. The existing positional AsyncCronScheduler(hour_utc, task) signature is preserved for back-compat with the other cron users in the codebase.

Person-stub auto-creation

donna.memory.person_stub.ensure_person_stubs scans a rendered body for bare [[Name]] wikilinks (namespaced, aliased, and heading variants are excluded) and writes a People/{name}.md stub when missing. Wired into MemoryInformedWriter.run after a successful vault_writer.write; failures never propagate (logged as person_stub_failed). People must be in safety.path_allowlist — the helper is a no-op otherwise.

Stubs carry type: person, name, stub: true, autowritten_by: donna frontmatter, which the person_profile skill later detects and rewrites with full context.

Rename reconciliation

VaultSource.watch() now buffers Change.deleted events for sources.vault.rename_window_seconds (default 2 s) keyed by the row's content_hash. If a matching Change.added arrives within the window, the pending delete is cancelled and MemoryStore.rename updates source_id in place — no chunk or embedding churn. On miss, the delete flushes normally; on target collision, the caller falls back to delete+upsert.

Structlog events: vault_rename_buffered, vault_rename_matched, vault_rename_flushed_as_delete.

See slices/slice_16_autowrite_cadences_and_rename.md and spec_v3.md §30.7 for the full scope + deferrals handed to slice 17.

See slices/slice_15_template_writes_meeting_notes.md and spec_v3.md §1.3 / §4 / §4.3 / §7.3 / §14.