VIP DM Escalated Handling

Context

The Unified Channel Intelligence Pipeline (ADR-0131) classifies all Slack messages with Haiku (~$0.001/msg) for signal/noise routing. However, DMs from VIP contacts (tagged vip: true in Vault contacts) carry significantly higher signal density and relationship stakes. A message from Kent about MEGA content alignment or Grzegorz about cohort scheduling needs richer understanding than a channel noise classifier provides.

Decision

VIP DMs receive escalated classification:

1. VIP Detection

• On ingest, check if the Slack user ID maps to a Vault contact with vip: true
• VIP contacts store slack_user_id and slack_dm_channel in frontmatter
• Bot DMs with Joel are always VIP (Joel is always VIP to himself)

2. Escalated Classification (Sonnet 4.6 via OpenRouter)

• VIP messages skip Haiku classification
• Classified by Sonnet 4.6 with enriched context window:
  • Full Vault contact dossier (projects, recent activity, key context)
  • Related project state (e.g., MEGA status, agreements, open threads)
  • Recent DM history (last 20 messages for thread continuity)
  • Active Granola meeting summaries if recent (<24h)
• Classification output:
  • urgency: immediate / today / this_week / fyi
  • topics: array of topic tags
  • action_required: boolean — does Joel need to respond/act?
  • suggested_context: what Joel should know before responding
  • related_contacts: other VIPs involved in the thread
  • project_refs: linked projects/ADRs

3. Routing & Escalation

Multi-channel notification — VIP messages fan out, not single-channel:

Escalation path if no ack within threshold:

1. T+0: Initial notification to classified channels
2. T+15min: If immediate + action_required and no Joel activity detected → re-ping Telegram with “⚠️ VIP waiting” reminder
3. T+1hr: If still no ack → iMessage escalation (even for today tier) with full context
4. T+2hr: If still no ack → voice call via Telnyx (ADR-0079) with TTS summary: “You have an urgent message from [VIP name] about [topic]. Check your messages.”
5. T+4hr: Log as missed in contact’s activity, surface in daily briefing as unresolved

“Joel activity detected” = any message sent from any gateway channel within the window (not necessarily a reply to the VIP).

4. Cost Model

• Sonnet 4.6 via OpenRouter: ~$0.01-0.03 per VIP message (vs $0.001 Haiku)
• Expected VIP volume: <50 messages/day across all VIPs
• Monthly cost ceiling: ~$30-45 for VIP classification
• Worth it: one missed VIP message costs more than a year of classification

VIP Contact Registry

Initial VIPs (from Vault contacts with vip: true):

• VIP Contact A (<slack-user-id>) — priority collaborator
• VIP Contact B (<slack-user-id>) — priority collaborator

Registry grows as contacts are tagged VIP. No hard limit.

Implementation

Inngest Function: slack-vip-dm-classify

• Trigger: channel/slack.message.received where data.is_vip == true
• Steps:
  1. load-contact — Read Vault contact markdown
  2. load-project-context — Query Typesense for related project docs
  3. load-dm-history — Fetch last 20 messages from Slack API
  4. classify — Sonnet 4.6 via OpenRouter with assembled context
  5. route — Push/digest/index based on classification
  6. update-contact — Append to contact’s recent activity

Pre-requisites

• ADR-0131 message ingest pipeline (provides the trigger event)
• Vault contacts with vip: true and slack_user_id
• OpenRouter API access (already available via openrouter_api_key)

Consequences

• VIP messages get 10-30x richer classification than standard channels
• Joel gets contextual briefs (“Kent is asking about X, which relates to the MEGA timeline you discussed yesterday”)
• Cost is bounded and proportional to relationship value
• Non-VIP messages continue on Haiku path unchanged
• Contact dossiers become living documents updated by the pipeline