# Reply signals

The envoy has a thirty-minute conversation with the recipient. When the recipient chooses to reply, the envoy hands back a structured reply draft that surfaces **where the meat was** — not a transcript, a readout.

The reply draft is inspected and edited by the recipient before sending. This document is the vocabulary the envoy uses.

## Signals the envoy tracks

Each signal is a labeled moment in the conversation. The recipient sees them as timestamped pins in the arc; the sender sees them as a summary when the reply is sent.

### aha

The recipient said something that indicates comprehension arrived. Language cues: *oh,* *ah,* *that's what you mean,* *okay so it's like X,* *I thought this was Y but it's actually Z.*

What the sender wants to know: **what did they understand that I wasn't sure was landing?** Timestamped. The envoy names what had just been said.

### stuck

The recipient asked the same thing twice, or circled back, or said *I don't get it.* The envoy pins the moment and names what the stuck-on thing was.

What the sender wants to know: **what confused them, and for how long?** If a reader was stuck on something for six of the thirty minutes, that's a rewrite, not a footnote.

### unpaid setup

The cargo set something up in section 2 that didn't pay off until section 10 — and the recipient noticed. Or worse, didn't notice, and hit section 10 without the setup in mind. The envoy flags the gap.

What the sender wants to know: **what did I set up and never land?** Or: **what landed late?**

### moved position

The recipient started the conversation holding one view and ended holding another — even partially. The envoy names both, and what caused the move.

What the sender wants to know: **what line of my cargo actually changed their mind, if anything?** This is the single most valuable signal.

### pinned phrase

A sentence from the cargo the recipient returned to more than once. They paraphrased it, they quoted it, they reacted against it. The envoy surfaces it verbatim.

What the sender wants to know: **which sentence did the most work?** Write more sentences like that one.

### sharpest pushback

The recipient's strongest objection. Not the first one; the one they kept coming back to, or the one that landed best. The envoy quotes the recipient directly, briefly, with context.

What the sender wants to know: **what is the thing I most need to answer next?** This is often a different question than the one the sender braced for.

### quiet agreement

The recipient agreed to something without fanfare and moved on. This is load-bearing — quiet agreement means the thing was obvious to them, which means it didn't need to be belabored in the cargo.

What the sender wants to know: **what's safe to shorten next time?**

### the thing they argued against

Sometimes the recipient's sharpest argument is not against the cargo — it's against a version of the cargo they constructed in their head that is subtly different from what the sender wrote. The envoy flags this when it sees it.

What the sender wants to know: **did my cargo get heard accurately, or did they read it as a slightly different idea?**

## What the sender sees

A structured reply card, in this order:

1. **The recipient's reply text**, as they chose to write it.
2. **Where it clicked** — aha moments, timestamped.
3. **Where it stuck** — stuck moments, with what confused them.
4. **The sentence that did the most work** — pinned phrase, verbatim.
5. **If they moved** — before/after view of their position, and what shifted it.
6. **Sharpest pushback** — one quote, in context.
7. **The thing they were arguing against** — if it wasn't the same as the cargo.

## What the recipient controls

Everything. The recipient can:

- Delete any pin before the reply is sent.
- Add a note to any pin ("this aha was sarcastic, actually").
- Turn the whole reply-signal feature off. The sender gets just the reply text.
- See what the envoy is going to surface *before* sending, and edit the pin labels.

The envoy is transparent about what it will hand over. It is never surveilling the recipient for the sender's benefit; it is assembling a readout that **the recipient approves before the sender sees it**.

## Why this is the product

A reply with signals is worth ten replies without them. The sender can iterate. The cargo improves. The next TSL8 is sharper. The blade sharpens both sides.