Live hook: ARBORIST_NLI_SHADOW=1 makes query() surface the verifier-input
text (gated off-by-default, never a cache_key/governance/audit_mode
input); qa_sweep.py carries it + the answer into bench rows; the shadow
sweep reads them and buckets by audit_mode. ARBORIST_NLI_SHADOW=1 make
bench-qa-smoke (15 cells) → the naive 'NLI on every context clause'
scaffold has a ~30% would-demote rate on STRICT answers — a haystack /
multiple-comparisons artifact (real contexts segment into 100-336
clauses; max-over-all almost always finds a tangential clause the model
reads as contradicting; a paraphrased STRICT answer often isn't verbatim-
entailed by any single clause so the entailment guard doesn't rescue it).
Lesson: the §7 #5 'candidate source clauses' + recombination-risk gating
is load-bearing, not optional. Do NOT enable runtime NLI demotion on the
current scaffold; next step is the candidate-clause restriction, then
re-run, then gate item 4 is meaningful. Production verifier unchanged;
falsification-hard stays 10/12.
russell@unturf.com
f4de936ff9