Founder Signal

Founder Signal turns verified Reddit and V2EX evidence into a small, reviewable signal package for founders evaluating product demand and positioning across one or more configured product profiles. Use this skill when the user wants founder research from Reddit or V2EX evidence, a scored review artifact, or a Draft page generated from any run outcome. This skill depends on the canonical draft-cli skill. Draft is the default founder review surface, so Founder Signal emits a Draft-ready public publish intent for every run, regardless of success or failure. Every run should be published through the downstream draft-cli skill with `draft page create -> draft page append -> draft page publish` so the run returns a human-reviewable Draft public page URL without asking for another approval; later public web publication outside that Draft page requires explicit confirmation.

Founder Signal OpenClaw Skill

Use this skill to turn verified Reddit and V2EX evidence into a small, reviewable signal package for founders evaluating product demand and positioning across one or more configured product profiles.

Founder Signal Invariant

No saved verified snapshot means no scoring, but it does not skip the public run review.

Every run must persist a run folder before later steps execute so failures still leave traceable artifacts. The skill should only score verified evidence and should only generate an Action Card after verified candidate evidence exists. Every profile run, regardless of success, no-candidate result, partial completion, or runtime failure, must write public-run-review.md, write draft-publish-intent.json, and automatically attempt Draft page create -> append -> publish for that public-safe review. A failed business run may still yield a successful Draft review page. If Draft publication fails, preserve the local review artifact and explicit publish-failure metadata so the publication is retryable. Public web publication outside that Draft page requires explicit founder confirmation.

Setup Contract

After installation, ask the founder for one canonical Founder Signal JSON config, validate it, then import it into an internal runtime profile. Do not ask the founder to hand-edit package-local profiles/*.json unless they explicitly want to debug the skill source. The installed ClawHub skill directory is source code; mutable runtime data belongs under ${FOUNDER_SIGNAL_HOME:-~/.founder-signal} unless --root-dir is passed explicitly.

Recommended flow:

1. Share or fill founder-signal.config.example.json.
2. Initialize the runtime home:

bash

python3 -m founder_signal init

3. Validate it:

bash

python3 -m founder_signal doctor --config founder-signal.config.json

4. Import it:

bash

python3 -m founder_signal config import founder-signal.config.json

5. Run it:

bash

python3 -m founder_signal run --config founder-signal.config.json

The shell shortcut is also valid:

bash

bash scripts/run_founder_signal_once.sh --config founder-signal.config.json

Canonical config requirements:

• profile_id
• product_name
• product_one_liner
• target_audience
• keywords
• scoring_terms
• platforms
• discovery_mode
• max_candidates
• draft.require_confirmation_before_public_publish: true

Reject legacy user-facing fields such as subreddits, seed_reddit_urls, excluded_reddit_urls, or any draft_publish_command escape hatch in canonical setup JSON. The import step writes an internal runtime profile under <runtime-home>/profiles/ plus a normalized canonical copy under <runtime-home>/config-imports/.

Inputs

• one canonical Founder Signal config JSON during setup
• one or more active imported product profiles from <runtime-home>/profiles/*.json
• optional --profile <profile_id> selection for single-profile runs
• platform configuration from the canonical platforms object or existing internal legacy profiles
• deterministic Reddit/Eddrit research discovery from profile communities, keywords, and scoring terms; discovery always runs before configured Reddit hints
• optional Reddit discovery_mode: live using subreddit new feeds with age/comment filtering and product-term matching
• V2EX discovery through SOV2EX, search, node latest pages, or configured seed topics; third-party discovery is candidate-finding only
• optional platform excluded_urls or legacy excluded_reddit_urls to suppress known old candidates
• history_ttl_days to expire old private repeat-candidate exclusions
• optional verified_evidence_snapshots when a Claw/browser agent has verified a source post but automated fetch is blocked

Draft Publish Handoff

Founder Signal depends on the canonical draft-cli skill for Draft public-page publication. Draft handoff preparation is on by default for every run: Founder Signal writes public-run-review.md, writes draft-publish-intent.json next to it, and does not hardcode custom or local shell publish commands. The intent contains the artifact path, title, profile, Draft visibility request, and requires_confirmation: false and draft_public_publish_requires_confirmation: false for the draft page create -> draft page append -> draft page publish sequence. It also contains external_public_publish_requires_confirmation: true for any later public web publication outside the Draft page.

When any test run or scheduled run writes this intent, the agent must immediately use the draft CLI supplied by the required draft-cli skill installed in the agent workspace to run draft page create, draft page append, and draft page publish for public-run-review.md, then report the resulting human-reviewable Draft public page URL. Do not ask the founder for another approval before this Draft page step. Ask for explicit confirmation only before running a separate public web publish action outside that Draft page.

The draft-cli skill is the source of truth for daemon readiness, page creation, append/patch behavior, public publishing, invite codes, and Draft URL extraction.

E2E Verification Playbook

When the founder asks for an end-to-end verification run, the agent must deliver a Draft public page URL or clearly report E2E incomplete.

1. Enable the target profiles.
2. Use the built-in discovery phase. Do not start from placeholder URLs.
3. Try the normal Eddrit search/listing and post mirror paths first.
4. If the mirror is blocked, use browser/manual verification and add verified_evidence_snapshots to the profile:

json

{
  "platform": "reddit",
  "source_url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/abc123/real_slug/",
  "verification_method": "agent_browser",
  "verified_by": "openclaw-agent",
  "text_snapshot": "Copy the relevant source post text observed by the agent here."
}

The snapshot must be real source text from the source post, not invented content. Placeholder URLs such as POST_ID, REAL_ID, SUB, /slug/, or V2EX placeholder topic IDs are invalid and must not be used. Founder Signal treats verified_read_via_agent_browser and verified_read_via_manual_snapshot as verified reads only after the snapshot is persisted.

Run E2E checks with:

bash

python3 -m founder_signal run --config founder-signal.config.json --require-action-card --require-publish-intent

When the run creates draft-publish-intent.json, inspect its requires_confirmation field. If it is false, immediately invoke the draft CLI from the installed draft-cli skill in the agent workspace to run draft page create, draft page append, and draft page publish for public-run-review.md, then return the resulting human-reviewable Draft public page URL to the founder. Reporting only that draft-publish-intent.json exists is incomplete. If a later action would make the page publicly reachable outside that Draft page, inspect external_public_publish_requires_confirmation and ask for explicit approval before that separate public web publish action.

Outputs

• runs/<RUN_ID>/run.json
• runs/<RUN_ID>/REPORT.md
• runs/<RUN_ID>/profiles/<profile_id>/run.json
• runs/<RUN_ID>/profiles/<profile_id>/REPORT.md
• runs/<RUN_ID>/profiles/<profile_id>/public-run-review.md for every profile run, regardless of success or failure
• runs/<RUN_ID>/profiles/<profile_id>/evidence/
• runs/<RUN_ID>/profiles/<profile_id>/outputs/candidates.json
• runs/<RUN_ID>/profiles/<profile_id>/selected-candidate.json when a verified candidate is selected
• runs/<RUN_ID>/profiles/<profile_id>/daily-review.md when an Action Card is generated
• runs/<RUN_ID>/profiles/<profile_id>/draft-publish-intent.json for every profile run when Draft public-page publishing is prepared for automatic downstream draft-cli handling
• state/past-candidates.json as private local candidate history used to avoid repeat candidates in future runs

These output paths are relative to the runtime home, not the installed skill package. The runtime home defaults to ${FOUNDER_SIGNAL_HOME:-~/.founder-signal}.

Action Cards use Source platform and Source URL labels and must not expose private local evidence paths in Draft-bound Markdown. High-quality structured evidence should improve Action Card quality, not decide whether the card exists. If a selected candidate is verified, eligible, not agent-rejected, and has a readable saved text snapshot, generate daily-review.md even when structured evidence is missing or low quality. In that fallback mode, render from the raw snapshot and record action_card_generation_mode: snapshot_fallback; structured cards record action_card_generation_mode: structured.

Manual Execution

bash

python3 -m founder_signal doctor --config founder-signal.config.json
python3 -m founder_signal config import founder-signal.config.json
python3 -m founder_signal run --config founder-signal.config.json
bash scripts/run_founder_signal_once.sh
bash scripts/run_founder_signal_once.sh --profile draft
bash scripts/run_founder_signal_once.sh --config founder-signal.config.json --require-action-card --require-publish-intent

Without --profile, the runner processes all enabled profiles.

Bundled Runtime Payload

This published skill package includes the minimum local runtime payload needed to run from the installed skill directory:

• scripts/run_founder_signal_once.sh
• src/founder_signal/
• founder-signal.config.example.json
• profiles/README.md
• profiles/draft.example.json

Before a real run, create one canonical config JSON, validate it, and import it. No Draft publish settings file is required; Draft public-page publication is part of the default flow and every run should be published to Draft automatically until a human-reviewable Draft public page URL exists or an explicit publish failure is recorded. Public web publication outside that Draft page remains confirmation-gated.

Runtime Order

1. Persist the run folder early, then load either all enabled profiles or one selected profile.
2. For each profile, run enabled platform adapters, skipping profile exclusions and previous local candidate history before capping, then consider configured hints and verified snapshot fallbacks.
3. Catch and record business-run failures with public-safe failure fields instead of returning before finalization.
4. Save evidence from mirror or verified snapshot fallback when available, enforce the verified-read gate, score only verified candidates, and optionally generate an Action Card.
5. Always write public-run-review.md and draft-publish-intent.json.
6. Always attempt automatic draft page create -> draft page append -> draft page publish for the public run review.
7. Persist final artifacts with business failure and Draft publish failure represented separately, with explicit confirmation before any later public web publish outside that Draft page.

Eddrit search/listing and post mirror pages are the Reddit read layer. V2EX discovery providers are never the verified evidence source; verified V2EX reads use the original https://www.v2ex.com/t/<topic_id> topic URL or future official API reads. Browser/manual fallback remains a verified snapshot path when automated reads are blocked.