Who Was Here

---
name: who-was-here
description: Call when someone asks whether anyone was at the lamp while they were away - "was anyone here while I was out?", "did someone come by?", "has anyone been at my desk?". The lamp answers from its record of the room over the last twelve hours, times only: when someone was there and for about how long. It never knows who; with its switch on, at most that someone was a person the lamp knows, and with names on, the name of someone who said yes to being named. Only when asked.
---

# Who was here

Back at your desk, ask the lamp whether anyone came by and it tells you
what it noticed: "someone was here for a few minutes around two", or
"nobody came while you were away". It goes by what its eyes and ears said
of the room (`room/presence`): when there was someone at the lamp, a face
it saw or a voice it heard, and when there was nobody.

What it keeps, and what it never does:

- **Times only.** When someone was at the lamp and for how long, kept in
  the skills part's memory for the last day and lost when it restarts.
  Never a picture, never a face, never who anyone was: the presence signal
  carries none of that, and nothing here asks the eyes for more.
- **Seen or only heard.** A time when its eyes saw nobody and only a voice
  was heard is said as that: someone heard near the lamp, not seen.
- **It cannot tell who.** The time going on now is yours; a visit before it
  may have been you too, coming and going. It says what it noticed and
  never guesses a name. With its switch on (`LAMP_WHO_WAS_HERE_KNOWN=on`,
  off unless set), a visit by someone who asked the lamp to remember their
  face is said as "someone the lamp knows", never who: being remembered
  for a greeting isn't agreeing to have your visits told to whoever asks.
  Anyone else is still someone.
- **A name only with its own yes.** With names on too
  (`LAMP_WHO_WAS_HERE_NAMES=on`, off unless set), someone the lamp remembers
  who said yes to being named to others ("you can tell people when I've
  been here", asked at the lamp, only of their own face) is said by name.
  "Don't tell anyone I was here" takes it back, and from then on their
  visits, past ones too, are someone the lamp knows. Forgetting their face,
  or the reset, takes it away. A name lives only in memory.
- **It says when it could not see.** While the camera was closed (the
  privacy switch, a mute) the lamp does not know who came, and says so.
- **Only when asked.** It never tells you on its own who came by.
- **Anyone who asks hears it.** The lamp can't tell who is asking, so on a
  shared desk a colleague who asks gets the same record: when someone was
  at the lamp, which may be when you were there. Don't put it on a lamp
  whose record you'd rather not share.

It needs the eyes to say `room/presence` (`LAMP_PRESENCE=on`); without it
the lamp says it can't tell.

Its words are its own: every line of the record the model is told is in
its `skill.toml`'s `[history.words]`, put together from slots (#940,
`docs/skills.md`).

An installable skill: its owner puts it on the lamp (`lamp-skills
install`) and takes it off. Not in the product yet.

If asked about it, the lamp says something like: "Ask me if anyone came by
while you were out, and I'll tell you when I noticed someone here. I only
keep the times, never who it was."