Vibe Decoding

Every day, we generate a continuous stream of signals: bookmarks saved, notes taken, articles read, conversations had, ideas sparked. Most of these signals disappear into the noise, never to resurface when they’d be most useful.

Vibe Decoding is a reference architecture for building your own personal signal processing system.

The Problem

We’re surrounded by information, but starved for insight. The bookmark you saved six months ago that’s suddenly relevant. The connection between two ideas you had weeks apart. The pattern in your interests that you’ve never noticed.

These signals exist. They’re scattered across apps, notes, and memory. The challenge isn’t capturing them (we’re already doing that, perhaps too well). The challenge is decoding them: extracting meaning, surfacing connections, and triggering action at the right moment.

The Life Stream

At the heart of Vibe Decoding is the concept of a life stream: a unified event log of your digital (and eventually physical) interactions. Every link saved, every note written, every highlight captured becomes an event in this stream.

But a stream of raw events isn’t enough. What makes Vibe Decoding powerful is what happens next:

1. Events are enriched - Agents process each event, extracting entities, themes, and connections
2. Context is built - Over time, the system learns your interests, projects, and patterns
3. Insights surface - When new information arrives, it’s connected to what you already know
4. Action is triggered - The right information appears at the right time

The Tech Stack

This isn’t just philosophy, it’s a working system. The current implementation uses:

• Kafka for event streaming and durable message storage
• AI Agents (powered by Claude) for enrichment and analysis
• Supabase for structured storage and querying
• Flink for real-time stream processing

// A simplified event in the life stream
interface LifeEvent {
  id: string;
  type: 'link_saved' | 'note_created' | 'highlight_captured';
  timestamp: Date;
  payload: unknown;
  metadata: {
    source: string;
    context?: string;
  };
}

What’s Next

This series will walk through building a complete Vibe Decoding system, from conceptual foundations to working code:

• Part 1: The event model and life stream architecture
• Part 2: Agents and enrichment loops
• Part 3: Kafka patterns for personal streams
• Part 4: Real-time processing with Flink
• Part 5: Voice notes and context triggers
• Part 6: Extending the system

Why “Vibe”?

The word “vibe” captures something important: we’re not trying to build a perfect knowledge graph or a comprehensive database. We’re trying to capture the feel of what you’re interested in, the direction of your thinking, the energy around certain topics.

Vibes are fuzzy. They’re contextual. They change over time. That’s a feature, not a bug.

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Ready to start decoding? Head to Part 1 to explore the event model (coming soon), or check out the Start Here page for a guided path through the series.