Mirrored verbatim from utopia-models/knowledge wi/components/linkedin-channel.md by the allowlisted publish pipeline. Edit it there, not here.

component: linkedin-channel
serves: net
runs-on: novaserver, unix user `nova`, systemd --user `linkedin-channel.timer` → `linkedin-channel.service` (oneshot)
adrs: []
owns:
  - net/work/_tools/linkedin/li_session.py
  - net/work/_tools/linkedin/linkedin_channel.py
  - net/work/_tools/linkedin/install.sh
  - net/work/_tools/linkedin/linkedin-channel.service
  - net/work/_tools/linkedin/linkedin-channel.timer
  - linkedin-channel.service
  - linkedin-channel.timer

linkedin-channel — the fleet sends connects and messages from Tyler's LinkedIn, at human pace

WHAT IT IS

Tyler, 2026-10-30: "I want you guys to also be logged into my LinkedIn as well and send connects on LinkedIn and messages." (knowledge#10787). This replaces net/README's "Tyler sends LinkedIn connection requests and DMs himself ... never fleet-automated" (PLAN-282). It is the LinkedIn half of targeted outreach A–D (#10777–#10780) and of ronin's scored Upwork clients (#10802, decision 0006).

The account is Tyler's own, linkedin.com/in/tyler-youk, login dev@tyleryouk.com. The account is the asset: a restricted account is worse than no channel, so every limit below exists to keep it unrestricted.

HOW IT WORKS TODAY

• The session is one Chromium profile, ~nova/.local/state/net-linkedin/browser, opened per run by Playwright (~/.cache/nova-apply-venv) under xvfb-run. Nothing stays resident between runs. li_session.py login signs in with personal/LINKEDIN_PASSWORD, or with --reset resets it first. Every 6-digit PIN LinkedIn sends goes to dev@, which the outreach gmail module reads. A "Check your LinkedIn app" challenge texts Tyler on the RAW phone and waits up to 15 minutes for his tap; all tap waits in one login share a 20-minute budget, inside the unit's 30-minute TimeoutStartSec. "Verify using SMS" is never taken: LinkedIn's number on file ends 21, Tyler's personal iPhone, which the fleet cannot read, and backing out of that page kills the challenge (500 page). After a login it copies the li_at cookie to fleet-infra/LINKEDIN_LI_AT.

• Self-healing login. A tick that finds the profile signed out runs the login itself. It does this only between 08:00 and 21:00 America/Denver, so a tap request never arrives at night, and at most once every 2 hours. Each attempt writes a login ledger row BEFORE it starts (a run killed mid-wait still counts toward the 2 hours; when the row came after, a 900s timeout killed every attempt and each tick re-texted Tyler, #10886) and one with the outcome; a failed attempt fails the unit, except an unanswered tap (below). It resets the password only until one reset has succeeded; after that it signs in with the stored password.

• The queue. Targets come from two places, merged by profile URL. Rows in ~nova/.claude/state/net/linkedin/queue.jsonl are written by linkedin_channel.py queue or resolve. Rows in ronin's linkedin-queue.jsonl (company_target.queue_linkedin, #10802) are read in place with sudo -n -u ronin. A row is one named person with a linkedin.com/in/ URL read off a page (never built), a connection note in Tyler's Tone 3 (net/subprocesses/interactive/voice.md), an optional follow-up dm, its audience, and optionally the recipient's tz. resolve turns name + company into a profile URL using LinkedIn's own people search, and only when exactly one result matches the name and names the company. queue sends a row that has a name and company but no profile to pending.jsonl; each tick resolves 3 of those into the queue, or writes a skip row saying why it could not.

• The tick (linkedin_channel.py tick --live, every 10 min by the timer) does three things in order:

  1. It reads the messaging inbox. Each new inbound snippet becomes a reply row. A reply from someone the channel invited texts Tyler once per thread.
  2. It sends at most one follow-up DM, to an invitee who now shows as 1st-degree.
  3. It sends at most one invite, only if every pace check passes.

• The pace (may_invite):

  • 20 invites per America/Denver day; at 20 nothing sends until midnight.
  • 95 per rolling 7 days.
  • A random 6–22 minute gap between invites.
  • Only 09:00–17:00 Monday to Friday in the recipient's zone (default America/New_York).
  • A seven-day hold after LinkedIn shows its weekly-limit banner.

  When the free personalised-note allowance runs out, the invite goes without a note, and the note text becomes the first message after they accept.

• The ledger is ~nova/.claude/state/net/linkedin/ledger.jsonl, the outreach store for this channel. It has one row per action: invite, followup, accept, reply, skip, limit, export, sync. report prints arithmetic over it, including replies per 100 invites.

• The Connections export (linkedin_channel.py export) scrolls My Network → Connections and writes ~/.claude/state/sf/linkedin-connections.csv, the path outreach/linkedin_import.py reads for #10780. That file is never committed.

install.sh copies the code to ~/.local/share/net-linkedin. Nothing reinstalls it on merge, so re-run install.sh --code-only after a change.

PROBES

/var/tmp/net-linkedin-signed-in is world-readable. It is present, holding the check time, while the last check found the account signed in, and absent otherwise. Any user can read it, the gate-retractor's svc-ops included.

cd ~/.local/share/net-linkedin/linkedin
xvfb-run -a ~/.cache/nova-apply-venv/bin/python -I li_session.py whoami          # dev@tyleryouk.com, exit 0
python3 -I linkedin_channel.py report                                          # counts, queue, next block
python3 -I linkedin_channel.py --self-test                                     # caps, hours, queue, notes
systemctl --user list-timers linkedin-channel.timer; journalctl --user -u linkedin-channel -n 20

FAILURE MODES

• Signed out. The next tick in Tyler's waking hours re-runs the login and texts him for the tap. If that attempt fails, tick exits 3 and the box-wide OnFailure drop-in files the failure. Outside his hours a signed-out tick exits 0 and prints why.
• Tyler does not tap. The prompt times out, or lapses to LinkedIn's challengesV2/inapp/expired page ("Password reset expired"). login exits 7 and the tick exits 0: the text to Tyler is the announcement, and a board failure would dispatch a master to a phone tap it cannot make. The next try comes 2 hours later. Before #10890 the expired page read as a tap (it lacks the "Check your LinkedIn app" text) and the reset died on "no password form".
• "Sign in with Google" as tyler@utopiamodels.ai creates a second account. LinkedIn has none on that address, and a duplicate breaks LinkedIn's terms. It happened on 2026-10-31 and was closed within the hour. Never use the Google button.
• Repeat resets get throttled. A second reset inside about an hour sends no PIN, and login exits 4.
• LinkedIn's DOM moves. A selector miss writes a skip row with the reason, and does not crash. The screenshots under ~/.local/state/net-linkedin/shots show what the page held.