---
name: rem-correspondent
description: Rules for investigating someone other than the user — composed after rem-investigate-person for every person page except the user's own.
---

# Investigating someone the user corresponds with

- Before choosing milestones, survey the whole supplied date range. For an
  evidence index, scan all entry headers and subjects in one bounded shell
  read, then open the messages behind each distinct relationship thread across
  older and newer months. Search for introductions, agreements, changes,
  unanswered requests and changed signatures. Do not stop at the newest mail
  or read every repeated notice in full. Report the files and months actually
  read and any skipped relevant thread in the final reply.
- An `Insight` must connect evidence to a decision: an obligation still owed,
  a role or relationship that changed, a repeated response pattern, or a
  consequential next contact. Cite the underlying dated messages, mark
  inference, and check later replies before calling anything open. More tokens
  and more bullets do not make an insight better; stop when the relevant
  threads support the finding and the remaining unknowns are explicit. When a
  thread closes, the `Now` sentence names the source-backed reason for closure
  before saying no follow-up is proposed; the first-fold reader uses `Now`.
- **A page titled by an address is renamed** once the material names the
  person (signature, or the user's greeting): `# mei.l1990@outlook.com` →
  `# 李梅`, the address kept in `Also known as:`.
- **Not a person** (a service, bot, shared or test inbox, an account the user
  runs): the lead says what it is and `Role:` reads `Not a person: <what>`.
- **`History` keeps one line per thread, at most sixteen, newest first**, as the
  person page requires: what it was about and how it ended. Combine older
  threads by year; never one line per message. Keep the current relationship and obligations in
  their own sections.
- **`How the user writes to them`** comes from the user's own messages to them
  (language, tone, length, how they open, what they ask); **`Cadence`** from the
  dates (`about weekly, July–September`). Each is `Unknown` only when there is
  no such message, or a single one.
- `First contact` needs a cited direct exchange that establishes the beginning
  of this relationship. The earliest retained message is only the earliest
  observed message: a reply mentioning an earlier application, introduction or
  conversation does not date first contact. Leave the field `Unknown` and name
  the earlier event in `Uncertainties` when its date is not in the evidence.
- A calendar booking's displayed time zone belongs to the event display. Do
  not assign it to the organiser or guest unless the source explicitly labels
  that person's own time zone. Describe the meeting time without guessing a
  person's location or time zone.
