Persona Detection Skill

Classification: Inheritable (VS Code heir) | Feature Knowledge Activation: persona, know your customer, project type detection, welcome screen, sidebar persona Inheritance: heir:vscode

Purpose

Detect the most appropriate user persona for a workspace to personalize the Alex experience — sidebar branding, skill suggestions, and working memory P5-P7 configuration.

Priority Chain (Highest to Lowest)

Priority	Source	Signal	Confidence
1	Focus	Active Pomodoro session topic	0.95
2	Goal	Stated session objective from goals.json	0.85
3	Phase	Current ROADMAP phase keywords	0.75
4	Project Goals	Learning goals from user-profile.json	0.70
5	Profile Cache	Saved projectPersona (< 7 days old)	cached
6	Profile + Workspace	Tech stack, expertise, file structure scoring	variable
7	Default	Developer fallback	0.50

Detection stops at the first confident match. Lower priorities only run if higher ones return null.

Available Personas (as of v5.6.8)

developer, academic, researcher, technical-writer, architect, data-engineer, devops, content-creator, fiction-writer, game-developer, project-manager, security, student, job-seeker, presenter, power-user

Workspace Scoring (Priority 6 Heuristics)

Three pattern types with distinct matching logic:

Pattern Type	Example	Match Method
Path (contains `/`)	`src/`, `.github/workflows/`	`fs.pathExists()` — directory must actually exist
Extension (starts with `.`)	`.tex`, `.fountain`	`endsWith()` on workspace entries
Filename	`Dockerfile`, `package.json`	Exact case-insensitive Set lookup

Critical rule: Never use bidirectional substring matching for workspace patterns. It causes false positives (e.g., .github/workflows/ matching any .github/ entry).

LLM Detection Path

When detectAndUpdateProjectPersona() is called (initialize/upgrade):

•Detect technologies from file structure
•Gather project context (directory tree, README, package.json, copilot-instructions.md)
•Send structured prompt to LLM (prefers GPT-4o > Claude Sonnet > any)
•Parse JSON response → match to existing persona or create dynamic one
•Save to user-profile.json as projectPersona
•Update P5-P7 working memory slots via updateWorkingMemorySlots()

P5-P7 Slot Assignment

Each persona maps to three working memory domain slots via PERSONA_SLOT_MAPPINGS:

Persona	P5 (Primary Support)	P6 (Core Skill)	P7 (Complementary)
developer	code-review	code-review	git-workflow
academic	research-project-scaffold	research-project-scaffold	creative-writing
researcher	research-project-scaffold	research-project-scaffold	api-documentation
technical-writer	api-documentation	api-documentation	markdown-mermaid
architect	architecture-health	architecture-health	code-review
data-engineer	microsoft-fabric	microsoft-fabric	code-review
devops	infrastructure-as-code	infrastructure-as-code	git-workflow
content-creator	creative-writing	creative-writing	gamma-presentations
fiction-writer	creative-writing	creative-writing	scope-management
game-developer	game-design	game-design	creative-writing
project-manager	project-management	project-management	scope-management
security	incident-response	incident-response	code-review
student	learning-psychology	learning-psychology	deep-thinking
job-seeker	creative-writing	creative-writing	code-review
presenter	gamma-presentations	gamma-presentations	slide-design
power-user	git-workflow	git-workflow	scope-management

P6 comes from the persona's skill field. P5/P7 are defined in PERSONA_SLOT_MAPPINGS. Unknown personas default to code-review (P5) / scope-management (P7).

The welcome view displays all three slots in a "Focus" section with confidence % and detection source.

Adding New Personas

•Add to PERSONAS array in personaDetection.ts with: id, name, bannerNoun, hook, skill, icon, accentColor, keywords, techStack, projectPatterns
•Add P5/P7 mapping to PERSONA_SLOT_MAPPINGS in personaDetection.ts
•Add persona ID to the LLM prompt's personaId enum
•Add skill to getSkillDescription() map and skillNameMap in welcomeView.ts
•Ensure matching skill exists in .github/skills/

Known Pitfalls

Issue	Root Cause	Fix
Every Alex project shows DevOps	`.github/` matched via substring	Use `fs.pathExists()` for path patterns (v5.6.8)
`.github/` triggers power-user	Noise signal in every project	Removed from power-user patterns (v5.6.8)
Wrong persona cached	projectPersona in user-profile.json stale	7-day expiry + re-detect on upgrade

Synapses

•[.github/skills/heir-curation/SKILL.md] (High, Integrates, Forward) - "Persona detection ships to heir via inheritance"
•[.github/instructions/alex-core.instructions.md] (Medium, References, Forward) - "P5-P7 working memory slots updated by persona detection"
•[.github/skills/release-process/SKILL.md] (Medium, Validates, Forward) - "Persona detection tested during pre-publish"