Signal Filter

Problem

Every information feed — news, social media, research — is optimized for engagement. This means the most attention-grabbing content rises to the top, regardless of its actual value to the reader.

Insight

The solution isn't better algorithms for ranking content. It's helping users define what "valuable" means to them, then filtering ruthlessly against that definition. The bottleneck is clarity of intent, not quality of filtering.

What I Built

A system that:

• Asks users to define their current priorities and goals
• Scores incoming information against those priorities
• Presents a daily digest of high-signal content
• Adapts based on what users actually engage with

What I Learned

The most valuable feature wasn't the filtering — it was the priority-setting exercise. Forcing users to articulate what they care about turned out to be more useful than any downstream filtering. The tool's greatest value was as a thinking aid, not an information tool.