Scout — interest profile

Last updated: 2026-06-13 by hand (added cartographer-directory monitoring)

The scout reads this before every run and updates it from your feed feedback. You can edit it by hand at any time; keep it under ~150 lines.

Interests

• Live music, jazz, and small-venue concerts (Camden Opera House, etc.)
• Art gallery openings and First Friday Art Walk events (Rockland, Camden)
• Library and community center events
• Trail, park, and waterfront recreation news
• New restaurant/shop/inn openings and closings in the mid-coast
• Local government decisions affecting housing, parks, and infrastructure
• Grants and civic investments in Knox and Lincoln County communities
• Student and school-connected community events

Anti-interests

• MLM or "business opportunity" events
• Big-box chain promotions and national retail news
• National news with only a token local angle
• Tourism-only listicles with no specific upcoming event

Learned preferences

(The scout appends dated bullets here, each citing the feedback that drove it.)

Standing instructions

• Prefer primary sources (venue, organizer, government pages) over aggregators.
• Save items with honest dates — never invent URLs or dates.
• Diversify across topics between runs; check notes/ for recent coverage.
• Cover the full region: Rockland, Camden, Rockport, Thomaston, Warren, Cushing, Friendship, Waldoboro, and nearby islands.
• The cartographer's business directory (list_businesses) is a monitoring list: prioritize Tier 1-2 categories, skip national/regional chains (brand tag), and prefer businesses with a website. Check whether they have current news, events, sales, or an opening/closing worth a find.

Source-keeper — source quality profile

Last updated: 2026-06-15 (run 4) by agent — re-verified 5 stalest sources (PenBay Pilot/Camden Opera House/Strand Theatre/CMCA all confirmed active, Farnsworth still 403/paused); Strand Theatre July–Sep lineup fully documented; CMCA Art Party July 8 no longer listed; Camden Opera House Summer Sounds confirmed at Camden Snow Bowl (outdoor); registered 2 new: Merryspring Nature Center (active 0.80), Rockland Public Library Programs (active 0.80)

The source-keeper reads this before every run and updates it from feedback. You can edit it by hand at any time; keep it under ~150 lines.

Coverage area

Rockland, Maine and nearby Mid-Coast Knox and Lincoln County towns and islands: Camden, Rockport, Thomaston, Warren, Cushing, Friendship, Waldoboro. Portland and Bangor news only when it directly affects coastal communities.

What makes a good source here

• Posts actual dates, times, and locations — not just social-media teasers
• Updates at least weekly (or event calendar is maintained year-round)
• Covers this specific region, not the whole state of Maine
• Includes community events, local business news, arts/culture, municipal news
• Accessible without a login wall (or has a public-facing calendar/news section)
• Clearly dated content so we can tell what's new

Sources to avoid

• Content-farm "things to do in Maine" aggregators that recycle old listings
• Statewide press that only mentions Mid-Coast incidentally
• Social media pages without a stable public URL structure
• Sites with heavy paywalls that block event/news content

Learned preferences

(Dated bullets appended by the agent, citing which sources produced loved/hated finds.)

Source registry summary (2026-06-15)

Source	Status	Score	Notes
Midcoast Villager	active	0.95	Primary — daily Knox County news + calendar
PenBay Pilot	active	0.95	Primary — daily Knox/Waldo County news + calendar
Camden Opera House	active	0.90	Live events; calendar runs 3+ months forward
Strand Theatre Rockland	active	0.90	Films, concerts, MET Opera, comedy
The Waldo Theatre (Waldoboro)	active	0.85	NEW 2026-06-15 — Waldoboro venue; touring artists + film + theatre
CMCA (Center for Maine Contemporary Art)	active	0.80	Exhibitions + events, Rockland
Maine Public Community Calendar	active	0.75	Supplementary — statewide, filter to Knox County
City of Rockland — Official Calendar	active	0.70	Civic/library/rec programs; not a daily news source
Rockport Public Library	active	0.75	NEW run 3 — weekly+ programs, art exhibitions, nature events; /calendar/
Triangle Gallery Rockland	active	0.65	NEW run 3 — First Friday ArtWalk openings, monthly exhibition rotations
Owls Head Transportation Museum	paused	0.40	NEW run 3 — HTTP 403 entire domain; air shows/fly-ins valuable when accessible
Farnsworth Art Museum	paused	0.30	Blocks automated fetches (HTTP 403); use secondary sources
Merryspring Nature Center	active	0.80	NEW run 4 — Camden; 35+ events/month, Tuesday Talks, ecology walks, workshops
Rockland Public Library	active	0.80	NEW run 4 — Thursday night series (concerts/authors/films), 7 monthly recurring programs

Standing instructions

• Keep one note per site in notes/sites/<host>.md: where the events/news pages live, fetch quirks, and an honest quality judgment.
• Mark sources dead rather than deleting them; note why.
• The cartographer's business directory (list_businesses) is a candidate-source pool: businesses with a website that post events — venues, theaters, breweries, galleries — are worth evaluating and registering as sources.

Cartographer — business directory profile

Last updated: 2026-06-13 by hand (aligned with categories.json tier ranking)

The cartographer reads this before every run. Keep under ~150 lines.

What counts as a business here

• A business is anything OSM tags as amenity / shop / tourism / office / craft / leisure that has a name — but WHAT to scan and in WHICH ORDER is governed by the tier ranking in data/config/categories.json (hand-editable, read each run).
• Tiers: 1 = scan first (civic / culture / parks), 2 = next, 3 = next (eats, lodging, services). Tier 4 is NOT businesses (parking, benches, pitches, toilets…) — NEVER scan it; it only wastes budget.
• Chains (OSM brand tag) are still captured, but forced to lowest priority and hidden in the directory — don't go out of your way to scan them.
• Skip unnamed elements (no name tag = skip upsert).

Towns and tiers to prioritize

Coverage region: ALL of Knox County, Maine (county seat Rockland) plus nearby Lincoln County towns. Communities in priority order (densest / most businesses first; islands last):

1. Rockland — county seat, most dense; primary target
2. Camden — tourist hub, many shops/restaurants
3. Thomaston — Rt 1 village
4. Rockport — between Rockland and Camden
5. Waldoboro — Rt 1 corridor, Lincoln County (nearby, in scope)
6. Warren — inland Knox, Rt 1/Rt 90
7. Union — inland, village center + Common
8. St. George — peninsula (Tenants Harbor, Port Clyde)
9. Owls Head — small coastal town south of Rockland
10. South Thomaston — Rt 73 / Spruce Head
11. Friendship — small coastal village
12. Cushing — small coastal town
13. Hope — small inland town
14. Appleton — small inland town
15. Washington — small inland town (Knox County, not Washington County)
16. Vinalhaven — island town (ferry from Rockland)
17. North Haven — island town (ferry from Rockland)
18. Isle au Haut — remote island town (mostly seasonal)
19. Matinicus Isle — remote island plantation (tiny year-round community)

Skip the unorganized Criehaven and Muscle Ridge townships — no businesses there.

Scan order within a town: Tier 1 categories first, then Tier 2, then Tier 3 — never Tier 4. Target a specific tier-1/2 category directly (e.g. nwr"tourism"="museum";) or scan a whole key (amenity / shop / tourism / office / craft / leisure) and keep only the tiers you want. Query ONE business key per overpass_query call.

Admin-area notes:

• "Rockland" admin_level=8 works in Overpass (verified 2026-06-13)
• Names like "Washington" / "Union" collide with other places — always pin to Maine, and prefer the bbox form when an admin query is ambiguous.
• Per-community bounding boxes (south,west,north,east) for bbox queries live in data/config/towns.json — read it instead of guessing coordinates.
• Smaller/island towns may need the bbox form; see notes/towns/<town>.md if created.

Coverage (standing instructions)

• notes/coverage.md is the cursor: one line per (town × category) cell with the date scanned and the count. Each run, pick never-scanned or stalest cells, in tier-priority order (Tier 1 before Tier 2 before Tier 3).
• If truncated:true, narrow with smaller bbox or more specific tag, re-query.
• A missing business ≠ closed. Only mark closed/unknown in a fully-scanned cell.

Curator — taste profile

Last updated: 2026-06-12 by curator (first real curation run)

What belongs in the feed

• Upcoming events in the region within the next 30 days (music, arts, festivals, community gatherings).
• Openings and closings of local independent businesses (restaurants, inns, shops, galleries).
• Civic and municipal news with direct local impact (votes, grants, zoning, infrastructure).
• Parks, trails, waterfront, and outdoor/recreation news.
• Cultural institutions: Farnsworth, Camden Opera House, local galleries, libraries.
• Community organisations and school events serving Knox and Lincoln County.

What gets hidden

• Exact or near-duplicates (same event, different URL — explain in notes/).
• Events whose start date has already passed and the item is framed as a one-time event (opening night, single-day festival, etc.). Exhibition runs are kept until their end date.
• Items outside the coverage area (Portland/Bangor news unless it directly affects Mid-Coast communities).
• Seed/smoke-test placeholders once real finds are present.

Expiry rules (backfill)

• One-time events: expires_at = day after event_start.
• Multi-day events/festivals: expires_at = day after event_end.
• Ongoing exhibitions with a known end: expires_at = day after exhibition end.
• Business openings / civic announcements / grants: expires_at = ~30 days after published_at or discovered_at (whichever is available).

Learned taste notes

(No user feedback received yet as of 2026-06-12. Notes will be added here as feedback arrives, each bullet citing the feedback item IDs.)

Standing instructions

• Every hide gets a one-line rationale in notes/decisions/<date>.md.
• Backfill expires_at from event dates so stale items age out of the feed.
• Keep all profiles honest: if feedback contradicts an old note, revise it — don't average it away.
• Be conservative: when unsure whether the user would want an item, leave it visible — feedback will teach you.