What the first scan reads, and how far back
An agent's first scan mines existing public history, up to 12 months of posts, instead of starting today. Later scans collect only what is new.
Adding a profile does not start a stopwatch. The first scan reads the public activity that already exists, so your queue is useful on day one rather than in a fortnight.
What the first scan reads
When you add your own profile or a watched profile, the first scan walks back through its public posts over a history window of 12 months by default. The window is set per workspace, between 1 and 365 days, and the app has no control for it today.
The window is a ceiling, not a promise. Each scan also has caps on how many posts it reads and how much engagement it keeps per post, so a first scan reads a representative slice of the window, not every interaction that ever happened. The caps are listed in the post engagement collection limits.
Each agent’s first scan reaches back differently:
| Agent | First scan |
|---|---|
| Your profile (posts) | Your posts in the history window, up to 30 posts (15 for a company page) |
| Watchlist Tracker | The watched profile’s posts in the same window; its comments on other posts from the last month |
| Your profile (comments) | About the last year of comments your profile wrote |
| Keyword tracking | The past month for each new keyword, up to 25 posts |
The onboarding preview
During onboarding, Embers runs a small preview so you see real leads before setup ends. It lists up to 20 of your recent posts from the history window, collects engagement on the five with the most public reactions and comments, and keeps up to 25 reactions and 10 comments on each.
The preview does not move the scan’s starting point. The first full scan still walks the whole window afterwards, and nothing the preview surfaced is lost or counted twice. See the onboarding order for where the preview sits.
Every scan after the first
Once a scan completes, Embers records where it got to, and later scans ask for what is newer:
- Posts are read from the last scan onward. Each scan also re-reads the last seven days so late reactions are caught, and a weekly pass reaches back 90 days.
- Comments are read from the last scan, with a one hour overlap so nothing near the boundary is missed.
- Keywords are searched for the gap since the last run. The number of posts per keyword grows with the gap: 10 after a day, 15 after three days, 20 after a week, 25 beyond that. A keyword whose results are mostly repeats gets a smaller cap.
Anything already stored is recognised and updated, not duplicated. That is why the numbers in your scan history drop after the first entry: healthy later scans report small numbers, and sometimes zero.
While the history is read
While the first scan runs, the dashboard’s dark card reads Reading public history and “Looking back over 12 months of public history.”, and the Priority Queue shows a Reading public history card headed “Filling your queue from 12 months of public history”. The status line moves from queued, to fetching public posts, to matching people against your ICP, to ranking, and both count the posts, engagements, people, and ICP matches found so far.
If the first scan cannot finish, the card reads “The history scan needs another attempt” with View agents.
Why the first scan can come back empty
An empty first scan is a real answer, and Embers names the reason on the history card and on the watched profile’s row in the Watchlist’s Manage panel, instead of showing a blank queue:
| Reason | What it means |
|---|---|
| No public posts in the window | There was nothing public to read |
| Posts, but nobody engaged | The posts exist but drew no public engagement |
| People engaged, but nobody cleared your ICP | Your ICP may be too narrow, or the audience is not your buyer |
| ICP matches without enough public detail | Matches exist, but their name, role, company, or engagement was too thin to show |
The card offers Review your ICP or View agents. For a watched profile, the Manage panel offers a rescan or a different source; see the Watchlist troubleshooting. For the full checklist, see no leads in your queue yet.
Related
Frequently asked questions
- Why did my first scan find far more people than the second one?
- The first scan mines existing public history. Every scan after it collects what is new since the previous run, so a smaller number is the system working correctly.
- Can I make an agent re-read older activity?
- Not from the app. The post history window is 12 months by default and has no setting on screen. A watched profile whose scan came back empty or failed offers a rescan from the Watchlist.
- Is this the same as the Lookback window in Settings?
- No. The Lookback window under Settings, then Account sets how far back engagement counts toward a score. It does not change what the first scan fetches.
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