Six items from fox's de-novo synthesis (2026-05-01) landing as one
atomic commit. Each item references its motivation and respects the
v9.8 honesty boundary (no claims of semantic truth, no proof-path
contamination by soft signals).
NEW DOCS
--------
docs/cti-architecture.md
Maps today's modules onto the architectural layer cake fox named
in his synthesis: PROMETHEUS-Σ (controller) / CTI (claim-lattice
reasoning IR) / Merkle-AGI-DAG (commitment) / Reverse-RAG
(evidence direction) / v9.8 Providence (admissibility ledger) /
Hermes (weak proposer). Per-layer responsibility table + module
map showing which existing files implement which layer. The
architecture is real; the labels above name what's already there.
docs/naming-deferral.md
Argues why we keep internal terms (claim_lattice,
claim_lattice_pointer, verify_claim_lattice) instead of renaming
to architectural labels (CTI, PROMETHEUS-Σ). The rename costs
cache invalidation, ~150 test fixture references, schema CHECK
migration, blame-history disconnect, mesh peer coordination.
The bridge is the cti-architecture mapping doc — read it once,
then read code in code's vocabulary and prose in prose's
vocabulary. Lists four triggers that would invert the decision.
docs/self-reference-distillation-design.md
Successor to docs/self-reference-thought-chains-design.md (the
flat-source MVP). Maps STRICT claims onto the existing Distiller
/ Core / derivations infrastructure: each STRICT record becomes
a Fact-Core via a new ProvidenceDistiller, with per-cited-chunk
Merkle inclusion proofs back to Wikipedia source_roots. The
fact-graph grows; new claims attach by inheriting the proof
chain. CompositionDistiller (combining facts into new claims)
is explicitly deferred — that's reasoning machinery, not
infrastructure.
docs/test-coverage-audit-2026-05-01.md
Maps fox's §11 test list (16 items) against the codebase. 16/16
covered. Documents item #9's manual-quote-rule lifecycle: the
rule was retired from pointer mode in commit 224bfd6 after the
bench journey identified it was rejecting factually correct
claims; retained in JSON variant where the punctuation-rationale
argument doesn't apply. The audit doc itself is the requirements-
drift defense.
CODE
----
aborist/qa/keys.py:verifier_policy_hash
New pure function. Hashes the verifier-relevant subset of policy
(answer_mode + claim_lattice_* verifier knobs + entity_policy
fields + base_version). Folded into cache_key as an optional
9th dimension via a new keyword arg with backward-compat default
None — legacy 8-dim callers continue to work and produce the
pre-2026-05-01 hash result.
aborist/qa/{runner,query}.py
Compute verifier_policy_hash from the policy_variant and pass
to cache_key as the 9th dim. Records written from this commit
forward bind to the verifier-policy identity. Pre-existing 8-dim
records become cache-misses on next lookup — same migration cost
as any governance_policy_hash bump. The 9-dim form makes the
question "did the verifier rules change?" answerable from
cache_key diff alone, separate from "did the prompt change?"
CLAUDE.md
Adds "old maps vs runtime maps" engineering discipline to the
bench-maxing section. Codifies the principle: every base model
carries old maps from training time; the runtime carries the
fresh map; when they disagree, the runtime wins. Move authority
OUT of the model's prior and INTO runtime artifacts (pointer IDs
the runtime mints, source spans the runtime interpolates by
offset, evidence maps assembled per query, policy hashes that
fold prompt/verifier/retrieval into cache_key, hard checks run
by the verifier). Hermes' content-addressed-evidence-id
hallucination (commit bb8450d) is the canonical case study.
TESTS
-----
tests/test_keys.py
Six new tests for verifier_policy_hash:
- only hashes verifier subset (non-verifier fields don't change it)
- changes when verifier-relevant field changes
- empty-policy → stable
- 9-dim cache_key distinct from 8-dim
- 9-dim distinct under different verifier hashes
- 8-dim form preserved for legacy callers (None == omit)
DEFERRED (per fox + naming-deferral.md)
---------------------------------------
- PROMETHEUS-Σ as an extracted controller module — the dispatch
logic in runner.py + query.py already IS PROMETHEUS-Σ; an
explicit prometheus.py is a refactor with no behavior change.
Defer until a §5-rename-trigger fires.
507 tests pass (was 501 before, +6 from verifier_policy_hash
coverage).
Two related changes that tighten the dedup + grounding signals
without lowering quality bars.
1. question_hash drops standalone English articles (the/a/an).
Fox 2026-04-29: `who is the batman?` and `who is batman?`
produced different cache records; same question, different hash.
Articles are filler at the question-equivalence layer. Add a 4th
canonicalization step to question_hash: after lowercase + trailing
punctuation strip, split on whitespace & drop tokens equal to
"the" / "a" / "an", then rejoin.
Equivalence class now includes:
"who is X" ┐
"who is the X" │
"who is a X" │ -> same question_hash
"who is an X" │
"Who Is X？" ┘ (CJK question mark)
"thesis" stays untouched — exact-match standalone tokens only,
not substring. Conservative on i18n: ASCII English articles only;
"el / la / le / der / die / das" etc. await demand.
2. _token_coverage filters stopwords and per-token punctuation.
Fox asked: should we lower the 0.85 paraphrase threshold? Honest
answer: no — that would promote the Q1 Batman fabrication
("wealthy/businessman/resides" missing from corpus) to STRICT.
Tighten the signal instead so 0.85 means more.
- Per-token punctuation strip (.,;:!?\"()[]{}) so `wayne,` lines
up with bare `wayne` in context. Apostrophes deliberately stay
so `batman's` is distinct from `batman`.
- English stopword filter on length-≥4 fillers (from / with /
have / been / would / which / where / their / etc., curated set
in _ENGLISH_STOPWORDS). These match almost any English text &
inflate coverage scores when topical content is missing.
Net effect on Q1 Batman case: missing tokens are
`wealthy/businessman/resides` — all topical. Coverage stays well
below 0.85, span stays UNGROUNDED. Net effect on a stylistic
paraphrase (model wrote `from` instead of `with`): coverage
computed only over topical tokens, both copies match → 1.0 →
correctly promoted.
Tests: 8 new in tests/test_keys.py (article-strip equivalence
classes, substring preservation, distinct-topic non-collapse) +
2 in tests/test_verify.py (stopword filter doesn't inflate; 0.85
threshold still rejects fabrication). 335 passed, 1 skipped.
Note for fox: the underlying retrieval issue surfaced in Q1/Q2 is
independent — Batman main article IS in shard 002.db but FTS5 +
title rerank ranked List_of_Batman_comics higher. Different fix,
separate commit.
Per fox: ASCII-only stripping leaves CJK full-width forms behind, so
"who is X？" and "who is X" still produce different cache_keys
despite being the same question. Expanded strip set:
ASCII: . ? ! , ; :
CJK: ？(U+FF1F) ！(U+FF01) 。(U+3002) 、(U+3001)
ellipsis: …(U+2026)
Pairs deliberately stay out of the set:
" ' ) ] }
Stripping one side of a pair breaks balance. `who said "X"?` after
stripping `?` is balanced; further stripping `"` would yield
`who said "X` — different equivalence class than the original. And
apostrophes carry meaning: `X's` is a different question from `X`.
Lifted the strip set into a module constant `_QUESTION_TRAILING_STRIP`
so anyone considering an addition has a documented anchor.
Tests: 11 new in tests/test_keys.py — 6 CJK / ellipsis equivalences,
5 pair-preservation cases (double-quote, single-quote, paren, bracket,
brace). 24 keys tests + 297 default suite, all passing.
Whitepaper sibling change in ~/git/unfirehose-nextjs-logger/whitepaper/
merkle-providence-reverse-rag-whitepaper.rst — expanded the
question_hash bullet to document the equivalence class. Not committed
in this commit (different repo).
Today `question_hash` canonicalizes (NFC, ws-collapse, lowercase) but
preserves trailing punctuation. So "who is X?" and "who is X" produce
different hashes, different cache_keys, different providence_cache
records — the cache misses on what's semantically the same question.
Add `rstrip(".?!,;:")` as the third canonicalization step inside
question_hash specifically. Local to question hashing — chunk leaf
hashes go through `canonicalize()` directly and are unaffected.
Equivalence class after this:
"who is X" \
"who is X?" |
"who is X." | -> all same question_hash, all same cache_key
"who is X!" |
"Who Is X" /
Internal punctuation is preserved on purpose: "X, then Y" carries
meaning that "X then Y" doesn't, even though both have the same
content tokens.
One-time impact: prior cached records whose canonical question ended
in punctuation become orphans on lookup (re-derive on next ask).
History stays on disk; nothing burned automatically.
New test file tests/test_keys.py with 13 tests pinning the question_hash
equivalence class plus light coverage of the other dim hashes
(model_profile, conversation, governance, cache_key 8-dim invariant).
286 passed, 1 skipped.
