About 5 min read

Patrol Mode

Karma One's Patrol Mode transforms your Avatar from a passive responder into a proactive intelligence agent -- the AI discovers noteworthy developments on its own, then reaches out to you with analysis and recommendations.

What Is Patrol Mode?

Most AI assistants only respond when you ask a question. Patrol Mode breaks that paradigm -- it is Karma's proactive outreach engine.

When Patrol Mode is enabled, your Avatar will:

  1. Periodically scan multiple information sources
  2. Use AI to evaluate which findings are worth your attention
  3. Proactively send you a message with analysis and suggested actions

Think of it as hiring a 24-hour information analyst who actively watches for important developments on your behalf.

Key distinction: Normal AI waits for you to ask. Patrol Mode means the AI comes to you.

8 Signal Sources

Patrol Mode monitors the following 8 categories of signals, detecting changes worth knowing about:

| Signal Source | Description | Example | |--------------|------------|---------| | Industry News | Major news in your focus areas | Significant AI product launch | | Competitor Activity | Product and strategy changes from competitors | Competitor releases a new feature | | Market Data | Stocks, currencies, cryptocurrency movements | Unusual volatility in a stock you follow | | Technology Trends | New developments in the tech landscape | Emerging framework or tool release | | Policy and Regulation | Relevant regulatory and compliance changes | New data privacy regulation enacted | | Social Trends | Trending topics on social media | Industry-related trending topic | | Academic Papers | Latest research findings | Breakthrough paper in a related field | | Custom Sources | Any monitoring target you specify | Specific website or keyword |

The Haiku Decision Engine

Patrol Mode does not push everything it finds to you -- that would be no different from doomscrolling. Its core strength is intelligent filtering.

How It Works

During each patrol cycle, the system uses a lightweight AI model (Haiku) for rapid evaluation:

New information found -> Haiku quick assessment -> Worth reporting?
                                                   -> Yes -> Notify user
                                                   -> No  -> Silently skip

Haiku Evaluation Criteria

The Haiku model scores each piece of information across several dimensions:

  • Relevance: How closely does this relate to your focus areas?
  • Importance: How significant is this development?
  • Timeliness: Is this breaking news or old information?
  • Actionability: Do you need to take action based on this?

Only when information scores highly on multiple dimensions simultaneously does it get pushed to you.

Why Haiku? Because patrolling requires frequent evaluation of large volumes of information. Using a lightweight model maintains judgment quality while dramatically reducing resource consumption.

4-Hour Quiet Period

Nobody wants to be bombarded with notifications. Patrol Mode has a built-in intelligent rate limiter:

  • 4-hour minimum interval: Consecutive proactive notifications from the same Avatar are spaced at least 4 hours apart
  • Emergency override: Extremely important events may break through the interval limit
  • Silent accumulation: Findings during the quiet period are queued and delivered together in the next notification
  • Nighttime silence: Notifications are suppressed during late-night hours

In practice, this means: even with Patrol Mode active, you will receive roughly 4-6 proactive messages per day at most, each one a curated, high-value update.

Setup Steps

Step 1: Open an Avatar Conversation

Patrol Mode operates within the Avatar system. Navigate to the conversation of the Avatar you want to enable Patrol Mode for.

Step 2: Enable Patrol Mode

Enable patrol mode for me.

Step 3: Define Your Focus Areas

Tell the Avatar what you want it to watch for:

I'd like you to monitor the following areas:
1. Major releases and breakthroughs in large language models
2. Product updates from Apple, Google, and OpenAI
3. AI-related policy and regulatory changes
4. Unusual price movements in stocks I follow (AAPL, TSLA, NVDA)

Step 4: Confirm Configuration

The AI will summarize the configuration and ask for your confirmation:

Patrol Mode is now active. Configuration:
- Patrol frequency: Checks every hour
- Focus areas: LLMs, tech company updates, policy changes, stock alerts
- Notification channels: App + Telegram
- Quiet period: 4 hours between notifications

Telegram Integration

Patrol Mode and Telegram are the ideal pairing. Once enabled:

  • When the Avatar discovers something important, it automatically pushes to your Telegram
  • You receive updates even without opening the Karma App
  • Telegram messages include: a summary of the finding + AI analysis + recommended action

Telegram Push Example

[Patrol Alert] AI Industry Update

OpenAI released GPT-5 Turbo today. Key upgrades:
- 3x faster inference speed
- 1 million token context window
- 40% API price reduction

Impact for you: Your project currently uses the GPT-4 API. This price
cut could significantly reduce your operating costs. Consider evaluating
a migration to the new model.

View full analysis in the Karma App.

Tip: Make sure you have linked your Telegram account to receive Patrol Mode notifications. Without it, notifications only appear in the app.

Patrol Mode vs. Autopilot

These two features are easy to confuse, but they serve different purposes:

| Aspect | Patrol Mode | Autopilot | |--------|------------|-----------| | Core capability | Information discovery and delivery | Autonomous task execution | | AI's role | Intelligence radar | Automated worker | | Output | Notifications + analysis | Completed task results | | Trigger method | AI's own judgment | Runs on a preset schedule | | Typical scenario | "Spotted a new competitor feature" | "Write a daily market report" | | Frequency | Variable (only when there is something worth reporting) | Fixed schedule |

In simple terms:

  • Patrol Mode = Information sentinel (discovers important things for you)
  • Autopilot = Automated worker (completes specific work on a schedule)

Both can be enabled simultaneously on the same Avatar -- they do not conflict.

Managing Patrol Mode

Check patrol status

What is the current status of patrol mode?

Adjust focus areas

Remove stock-related content from patrol.

Add education technology to the watch list.

Pause patrol

Pause patrol mode -- I'm on vacation this week.

Disable patrol

Turn off patrol mode.

Best Practices

  1. Be precise with focus areas: The more specific, the better. "AI news" is less effective than "enterprise applications of large language models"
  2. Use the right Avatar: Create different Avatars for different domains and enable Patrol Mode on each one separately
  3. Iterate based on results: If the AI pushes something irrelevant, tell it -- "Don't notify me about this type of news." It will adjust its filtering criteria accordingly
  4. Combine with Autopilot: Use Patrol Mode to discover information and Autopilot to act on it -- together they form a complete automation loop

FAQ

Q: Does Patrol Mode consume resources continuously?

Patrol Mode uses the lightweight Haiku model for evaluation, so resource consumption is minimal. Only when a notification is warranted does it invoke a more powerful model to generate the detailed analysis.

Q: Can Patrol Mode be enabled on multiple Avatars at the same time?

Yes. Each Avatar's Patrol Mode configuration is independent, allowing them to monitor different domains.

Q: What if the patrol notifications are not accurate enough?

Tell the Avatar directly -- "I don't need this type of update" or "Pay more attention to this area." The AI will adjust its judgment criteria based on your feedback.