# Pattern of life from socials Human Guide

## What This Is For
Deep-dive a subject's social media presence — profile metadata, follower and mutual network, content analysis, and posting-time pattern of life across Instagram, Facebook, X/Twitter. It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for social content: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return.

Use this as a human-readable version of the Pattern of life from socials agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions.

## When To Use This
- Use this when you need a repeatable process for pattern of life from socials.
- Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt.
- Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact.

## When Not To Use This
- Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer.
- Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant.
- Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review.

## What You Need Before Starting
- The goal or business outcome you want.
- The audience, customer segment, or market context.
- Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance.
- Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements.
- A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like.

## Step-By-Step Workflow
1. State the job clearly: "Use the Pattern of life from socials guide to help me with..."
2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints.
3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output.
4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below.
5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed.

## Skill-Specific Guidance
- **Subject** — the account(s) and the real-world entity you believe is behind
- **Objective** — the question that ends the investigation. "Pattern of life"
- **In / out of bounds** — explicitly. Minors, uninvolved family, home address,
- **Posture** — observation only, or authorized interaction. Following, liking,
- **Jurisdiction** — yours, the subject's, the platform's.
- **Stop condition** — you stop when the objective is answered, when the trail
- **Creation date.** Shown outright on some platforms, derivable on others.
- **The numeric ID.** It survives handle changes, so it — not the handle — is
- **Handle history.** Seldom a feature, usually recoverable from old mentions,
- **Verification and linked accounts.** Whether a badge is paid or
- **Early followers.** The first accounts to follow a personal account are
- **Mutual-follow clusters.** Reciprocal edges map real-world communities:

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: Step 1 — Authorized scope, Step 2 — Choose a viewing identity, then preserve, Step 3 — Layer one: account metadata, Step 4 — Layer two: network, Step 5 — Layer three: content, Step 6 — Layer four: temporal behaviour, Step 7 — Consolidate and report, Where this goes wrong, Grading a finding, Worked example.

Use these questions to steer the work:
- What is the intended audience or buyer?
- What source material must be preserved?
- What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion?
- What examples represent the desired quality bar?
- What should the assistant avoid?

## Common Mistakes
- tradeoff using `investigate-without-getting-made`; never browse a subject from
- Go after what the subject never chose. Full per-platform behaviour is in the
- means "didn't post," never "wasn't there."
- categories — if they surface incidentally and aren't in scope, don't record
- [ ] Sample size and window recorded. Under a few dozen manual posts, do not
- city, neighbourhood. Do not report a resolution finer than your evidence
- do not report views individually, but liking, following, saving or replying
- less careful contacts. Mutual-friend enumeration from the outside in is often

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the Pattern of life from socials human guide.

My goal:
[Describe the business outcome]

Audience:
[Describe who this is for]

Context and source material:
[Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy]

Constraints:
[Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items]

Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result.
```

## Final Checklist
- [ ] The output matches the original goal.
- [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer.
- [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved.
- [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit.
- [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person.

## Source
This guide was generated from the useosint/skills skill entry for `pattern-of-life-from-socials`.

## Source Skill Notes
These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic.

# Pattern of Life from Socials

Pattern-of-life analysis turns scattered public posts into a model of where
someone is, when, and with whom. It is the most abusable technique in this
repo: the same method produces a due-diligence report and a stalking dossier.
The difference is authorization and scope, not tradecraft. The beginner error
is collecting posts instead of analysing them — screenshots of a feed are not
intelligence. Work four layers: account metadata, network, content, temporal
behaviour. The first and last are the two everyone skips, and the two the
subject can't curate.

## Step 1 — Authorized scope

Read [../../ETHICS.md](../../ETHICS.md), then write down before opening a
single profile:

- **Subject** — the account(s) and the real-world entity you believe is behind
  them.
- **Objective** — the question that ends the investigation. "Pattern of life"
  is not one. "Does this vendor's EU lead actually live in the EU" is.
- **In / out of bounds** — explicitly. Minors, uninvolved family, home address,
  health, religion, sexuality and immigration status are out unless the
  objective requires them and you can defend that.
- **Posture** — observation only, or authorized interaction. Following, liking,
  messaging and viewing stories are all interaction.
- **Jurisdiction** — yours, the subject's, the platform's.
- **Stop condition** — you stop when the objective is answered, when the trail
  lands on an uninvolved third party, or when the only question left is "where
  do they sleep."

**Done when** all six are recorded in the case file.

## Step 2 — Choose a viewing identity, then preserve

Logged-out leaks less and sees less; logged-in sees more and leaks more.
Platforms variously report story views and profile visits to the subject, and
recommendation systems surface accounts that look at each other — so merely
viewing can put your research account in the subject's suggestions. Decide the
tradeoff using `investigate-without-getting-made`; never browse a subject from
a personal or employer account.

Then capture before you analyse. Accounts get locked or scrubbed
mid-investigation, often because someone noticed. Archive the profile and every
post you may cite via `read-deleted-pages`, and pull older snapshots — they
routinely show a previous bio, link, or handle. Save media locally.

**Done when** the viewing identity is recorded and everything you intend to
cite exists as an archive URL or a local file with a capture timestamp.

## Step 3 — Layer one: account metadata

Go after what the subject never chose. Full per-platform behaviour is in the
[platform disclosure matrix](reference/platform-disclosure.md).

- **Creation date.** Shown outright on some platforms, derivable on others.
  Snowflake-style 64-bit IDs encode a millisecond timestamp in their high bits,
  offset from a platform-specific epoch — the ID *is* the signup time. Plain
  sequential IDs give registration order, so you can bracket a date against
  accounts of known age.
- **The numeric ID.** It survives handle changes, so it — not the handle — is
  the durable selector. Record it.
- **Handle history.** Seldom a feature, usually recoverable from old mentions,
  inbound links, archived snapshots and abandoned cross-posts. A freed handle
  can be reclaimed by a stranger, so an old link proves nothing about current
  control.
- **Verification and linked accounts.** Whether a badge is paid or
  identity-checked changes what it's worth. Linked sites and business-account
  contact fields expose emails and phone numbers the personal profile wouldn't.

**Done when** ID, creation date, handle history and every linked selector are
recorded with sources.

## Step 4 — Layer two: network

A subject's OPSEC is nearly irrelevant if their relatives tag them.

- **Early followers.** The first accounts to follow a personal account are
  overwhelmingly family, school friends and coworkers — it spread by word of
  mouth before it had reach. Where follower ordering is observable, the oldest
  tail is the highest-value segment on the page.