Run the observer daemon

The observer folds records from a firehose through an ObservationMethod and emits a dev.idiolect.observation at each configured flush. Encounters remain the event log; observations carry the computed summary.

The crate is idiolect-observer. Its daemon binary lives behind the daemon feature.

What it produces

A dev.idiolect.observation record carries:

the observer's DID,
a structured method descriptor (name, version, optional parameters and code reference),
a scope describing which records the aggregation covers,
the method's output payload (shape is method-defined),
the observation's publication timestamp and visibility.

The deliberation-tally method currently places its result in observation.output; dev.idiolect.deliberationOutcome is a separate record kind.

Choose the publication boundary

Observations are content-addressed and signed, like any other ATProto record. A consumer reading an observation can:

verify the signer DID,
ask the indexer for the underlying encounters and re-fold them independently,
treat the observation as a soft assertion of fact, not a single source of truth.

This record boundary lets several observers publish different folds without erasing the underlying events.

Run the daemon

cargo install --path crates/idiolect-observer --features daemon

The binary is configured through environment variables, not command flags. Set IDIOLECT_OBSERVER_DID; optionally set IDIOLECT_TAP_URL, IDIOLECT_TAP_ADMIN_PASSWORD, IDIOLECT_OBSERVER_CURSORS, IDIOLECT_FLUSH_EVENTS, and IDIOLECT_PDS_URL. It wires:

A firehose stream (tapped, via the indexer's firehose-tapped feature, transitively pulled in by daemon).
A SQLite cursor store.
A CorrectionRateMethod inside ObserverHandler<M, P>.
A flush schedule that triggers observation publication.

If IDIOLECT_PDS_URL is unset, the reference daemon uses an in-memory publisher and persists no observation records. Its PDS branch does not yet supply authentication; use a wrapper binary with an authenticated PdsWriter for production publication.

Bundled methods

The spec at observer-spec/methods.json declares nine bundled methods. Each lives in crates/idiolect-observer/src/methods/.

Method	Folds
`correction-rate`	Per-lens correction counts grouped by reason.
`encounter-throughput`	Encounter traffic by kind and downstream result.
`verification-coverage`	Per-lens verification counts by kind, result, and distinct verifiers.
`lens-adoption`	Per-lens encounter count and distinct invokers.
`action-distribution`	Encounter counts grouped by `use.action`, optionally rolled up through a vocab.
`purpose-distribution`	Encounter counts grouped by `use.purpose`.
`basis-distribution`	Record counts grouped by `basis` variant, bucketed by record kind.
`attribution-chains`	`dev.idiolect.belief` counts by holder and subject.
`deliberation-tally`	Per-statement per-stance `deliberationVote` counts (see the note below).

The current spec declares all nine methods in record form; they consume &IndexerEvent<IdiolectFamily>. The library also supports instance-form methods over panproto WInstance through InstanceMethodAdapter.

default_methods() returns boxed instances of every record-form method; instance-form methods need a caller-supplied schema resolver and are constructed individually.

Add a method

Edit observer-spec/methods.json, add the method's entry, run cargo run -p idiolect-codegen. The generated descriptor table picks up the new method. Implement ObservationMethod (or InstanceMethod) in crates/idiolect-observer/src/methods/<module>.rs and add it to the default_methods() constructor.

Operational notes

Observers should run with their own DID, distinct from the DIDs whose encounters they observe.
Multiple observers may publish observations of the same scope. Consumers can require quorum among $k$ of $n$ trusted observers before treating an observation as authoritative.

`deliberation-tally` output

The shipped deliberation-tally method emits its per-statement per-stance vote counts inside an observation.output blob, not as a typed dev.idiolect.deliberationOutcome record. The data shape is the same; the publication surface differs. Publishing a typed outcome requires separate application code.