Ethan generates a huge volume of outbound whispers, briefs, and Socratic questions to his tablet — but nothing tracks which ones he ever actually answered or acted on. This ledger records every tablet-bound artifact and reports the ones that went unread past 72h, so he can retire the channels that are pure noise instead of adding more.
Create /home/ethan/.claude/tools/whisper-debt-ledger (bash+python). On each run, scan ~/Tablet/ for files written by the brief/whisper family (socratic-tablet-brief, commit-socratic-tablet-brief, morning-tablet-brief, bounded-email-tablet-whisper, feedback-pulse-tablet, pondercard-generate) and upsert rows into ~/.claude/state/whisper-debt.sqlite with (path, source_tool, created_at, mtime_at_creation, answered_at). Detect 'answered' by comparing current mtime/size against creation snapshot (stylus annotation via Doc Markup changes the file) or by a matching entry in tablet-question-inbox. Weekly cron (Sunday 7am, via cron-capped) emits a per-tool table — sent, answered, ignore-rate, median-time-to-answer — through send-formatted-email, and pipes the worst offender to stale-project-nudge style output. ~90 lines.
## What I built
**`~/bin/whisper-debt-ledger`** (~120 lines Python, executable) — tracks every tablet-bound artifact and reports which ones you never touched.
- **Sources tracked** (7 tools → 11 glob patterns, resolved by reading each tool's actual output path, not guessed): `socratic-tablet-brief`, `commit-socratic-tablet-brief`, `morning-tablet-brief`, `bounded-email-tablet-whisper`, `feedback-pulse-tablet`, `pondercard-generate`, `tablet-question-inbox`.
- **Store**: `~/.claude/state/whisper-debt.sqlite` — one row per artifact with its birth time and an mtime/size snapshot.
- **"Answered" detection**: current mtime or size differs from the snapshot, i.e. a Doc Markup stylus annotation rewrote the file. `created_at` uses the file's real mtime, so pre-existing artifacts get honest ages instead of all looking brand new.
- **Commands**: `scan` (upsert + mark answered), `report` (table), `report --email`.
**`~/bin/whisper-debt-ledger.test.sh`** — 4 bats tests, all green, running in a temp `$HOME` so they never touch the real `~/Tablet/`. Written RED first (confirmed 4 failures before the script existed).
**Cron**: `0 7 * * 0` via `cron-capped`, logging to `~/.claude/whisper-debt-ledger.log`. Appended safely — existing crontab preserved.
## What the first real run found
473 tablet artifacts tracked. **Zero have ever been annotated.** Every channel sits at 77–96% ignored past 72h:
| Tool | Sent |