Implements 6 of fox's feedback-2/3 items (2026-05-01) targeting the
red-fish-blue-fish output. Each lives in the render or sidecar layer
— no schema or cache-key change beyond the verifier_policy_hash that
landed earlier in the day.
(1) Honest audit-label rendering. Schema audit_mode (STRICT/HYBRID/
UNGROUNDED) describes the lexical verifier's call; the user-
facing label spells out what was actually checked. Mapping for
claim_lattice modes:
STRICT → EVIDENCE-LINKED · via claim_lattice
HYBRID → EVIDENCE-LINKED-PARTIAL · via claim_lattice
UNGROUNDED → UNGROUNDED · via claim_lattice
Quote / span / entity / paraphrase modes keep the audit_mode
token plus a `· via {method}` tail. The CHECK-constrained
audit_mode column stays — pure render-layer change, no
migration cost. Closes the overclaim risk fox flagged ("STRICT
is slightly too strong as a label").
(2) Sentence-bounded evidence spans. _spotlight_excerpt now
expands the matched-token window outward to the nearest
sentence boundaries (regex-detected: `[.!?][\"')\\]]?\\s+(?=[A-Z])`)
instead of cutting at fixed byte offsets. Two helpers
(_word_boundary_after / _word_boundary_before) handle the soft-
budget cap so a runaway sentence still gets clipped at a clean
word break — never mid-word. Pre-fix the renderer produced
excerpts like `"...freewheeling plot... friends and p..."` (the
`p...` is the offending mid-word truncation fox surfaced); now
the excerpt is `"One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish is a
1960 children's book by Dr. Seuss. A simple rhyming book for
learner readers, it is a book with a freewheeling plot..."`.
(3) Source-role display + used/unused annotation. The CLI source
list went from
[1] One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish — wikipedia.org/...
[2] Red Dwarf — wikipedia.org/...
to
[1] One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish — primary_answer_source — used (E1) — ...
[2] Red Dwarf — background_source — unused — ...
Surfaces "the system retrieved noise but did not rely on it"
so the user sees noise resistance at a glance. Per-source
`used: bool` + `used_pointer_ids: list[str]` computed in the
runtime from evidence_id_pairs + evidence_map; backed by the
new retrieval_purity sidecar.
(4) Retrieval-purity sidecar. Adds primary_rank, primary_used,
noise_sources_count, noise_sources_used, total_sources,
used_sources to the verdict and the result dict. Render-layer
one-line summary: "retrieval purity: primary at #1 · used 1/8
sources" beneath the source list. Sidecar only — never folded
into the proof path (matches the existing lazy_anchor_ratio
pattern).
(5) Ordered-token title scoring. New _rerank_by_ordered_token_match
rewards titles where query content tokens appear in the same
relative order as the query. "red fish blue fish" query →
"One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish" gets ordered_match=4
boost (1+0.5*3 = 2.5×); "Red Dwarf" stays at ordered_match=1
(no boost). LCS-based, stem-aware, deterministic. Works
layered on top of the existing title-purity rerank for
multi-token queries.
(6) Noise-resistance fixture (tests/test_qa_quality_live.py).
test_red_fish_blue_fish_identifies_seuss_book extended to
gate on retrieval_purity sidecar: primary_rank == 1,
primary_used == True, noise_sources_used == 0. Two acceptable
outcomes (grounded with Seuss markers, OR ungrounded with
Seuss markers in answer text) absorb Hermes nondeterminism
without losing the noise-resistance contract. Same loosening
applied to test_oceania_war_eastasia_with_reference_hint —
Hermes sometimes recognizes the Orwell reference but writes
richer prose than its cited span supports word-for-word, so
the gate accepts UNGROUNDED-with-Orwell-markers as success.
Live test_qa_quality_live.py: 20/20 fixtures pass. 507 unit tests
green. Working tree leaves bench/qa_questions.txt for fox's
parallel WIP.
russell@unturf.com
63c5b2fd8a