Re-bench legacy vs providence_query on fold themes (accent, hyphen,
honorific, brit, numeral) after the proxy memory fix.
Result (15 question-pairs through Hermes-3-8B): 12 regressions,
2 improvements, 1 tie. Net-negative on these themes, BUT all 12
regressions trace to a single root cause — the 5 fold-variants
helpers (_hyphen, _numeral, _accent, _honorific, _brit) live inside
_title_query_tokens at query.py:288-325 and providence_query
lazy-imports the WRAPPER without lifting the fold helpers.
Same gap manifests two ways:
- Wrong primary (5): Dr Who → pathology; Albert/Ahmed/Alaric the
third/first → wrong articles; Casa Batlló → error
- STRICT → HYBRID on correct primary (7): the verifier's Rule 8
title-overlap check calls the SAME _title_query_tokens —
without folds, "Andre-Marie" (claim) and "André-Marie" (title)
are distinct tokens, overlap fails, audit_mode demotes
Path A v3 surfaces: lift the fold-variants stack to _text_norm.py,
re-export from query.py, drop the lazy-imports in source_roles.py +
retrieval_routes.py. ~250 LOC moved + ~50 LOC import-rewrites,
half-day. Lower risk than v1 (pure code motion, helpers are
identical between paths).
Themes deliberately skipped this round (need their own gates ported
separately): quantifier_subset, metacog_subset, warrant_chain_probe,
es, fr. Re-bench AFTER v3 lands.
Also commits bench/legacy_vs_providence_bench.py + the result JSONL
so the regression set is reproducible.
russell@unturf.com
618b7846c5