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Summary

The intelligence function is the framework's sensor. Its job is narrow: produce a bounded daily market read — what changed today that matters to an options underwriter — plus a regime check and an event map. It does not predict prices or estimate probabilities (forbidden; see LLM agent roles). Its quality is measured by resolution: every item either changes a decision or is explicitly dismissed.

Focus — The Filter Hierarchy

An underwriter does not read the news; an underwriter reads for specific changes. Filter order:

  1. IV-expectation changes — scheduled catalysts (CPI, FOMC, earnings) and surprise events that reprice expected movement. Primary sources: exchange calendars, Cboe/OTC data pages.
  2. Regime-state changes — anything moving the state variables: VIX level bands, VIX/VIX3M term slope, VRP sign, realized-vol percentile, ETP flow stress. See regime definition.
  3. Correlation/structure changes — index-vs-single-name divergence, sector dislocations, dispersion-relevant news. See dispersion and correlation.
  4. Everything else is noise — dismissed with a decision-log record (verdict: dismissed, no concept file): the forced-resolution rule applies to dismissed items too. Three occurrences of a dismissed category is itself a signal; log it as such.

Source hierarchy: primary documents (exchange notices, official calendars, data pages) > market-structure commentary (dealer/flow research) > general financial press > social. A claim in tier 2–3 that affects sizing or regime must be corroborated or is recorded as uncorroborated.

Digest — The Intake Protocol

Per the intake convention: one item → one dated concept, with publication/retrieval/as-of times and a snapshot note. The daily template forces consistency (the anti-drift device):

Field Question
Event class catalyst / regime / correlation / flow / other
IV implication which tenors and which direction, qualitatively
Regime bearing does it move a state variable? which?
Urgency today / this week / watchlist
Corroboration sources checked, uncorroborated flags

The agent triaging must, before classifying, cite how similar prior items were resolved in the journal (learning function) — consistency is a checkable property.

Analyze — The Three Daily Outputs

  1. Market read (≤1 page): what today's intake implies for IV across tenors and structures; written from the digest, citing inbox concepts.
  2. Regime snapshot: computed state variables (deterministic, fail-closed — missing data is a state, not an assumption; see operating rhythm) + the day's regime label and transition state. ETP-flow state is a candidate variable, not implemented — it cannot gate anything until defined with source/threshold/fail-closed behavior.
  3. Event map: forward calendar of catalysts with expected IV behavior per skew and term structure patterns; flags the "no-new-risk before X" windows.

Boundaries

  • The intelligence function frames decisions; it never makes them. Its outputs are inputs to the decision function.
  • Uncertainty is recorded, not averaged away: an ambiguous read produces a narrower structure choice, not a confident one.

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