Owner design round 2026-10-01: every multiple-choice quiz answer now
carries the learner's stated probability that his selected answer is
correct — calibration data for the prober and teacher, the flow itself
unchanged.
Definition (owner ruling, after weighing chance-normalization): RAW
probability. Sub-chance reports are diagnostic gold, not dead space —
'picked an option, believes it wrong' is a real state. The agents get
the sophistication: new shared/25-confidence.md composes for both
agents (chance level, sub-chance = distrusts the pick, correct+low =
fragile, wrong+high = committed misconception, IDK = genuine gap).
- question-core: AnswerRequest/QuestionAnswerData.confidence (quiz
only, optional — old records valid), buildAnswer clamps and drops it
on dontKnow, formatAnswerMessage states the line, CONFIDENCE_STOPS +
DEFAULT_CONFIDENCE_INDEX exported.
- question-dock: snapped slider below 'I don't know', above 'Your
thinking' — native range over the stop INDEX so ←/→ step the uneven
grid cleanly, Tab chain rows → slider → thinking, Enter submits from
the slider too. Rests at 50 and always sends (owner: 50 must mean a
real coin flip, never 'untouched'). 'I don't know' GRAYS it out —
layout holds, no value sent.
Deliberately untouched: explain free-recall card (quiz-only scope),
answered-card rendering of confidence, ask flow.
The owner's capture-vs-composition check confirmed the wire sends exactly
what composes (byte-identical save the nodeId paragraph ebfe058 had since
changed). This wave removes the implementation meta that leaked into the
prompts and reorders so the method carries weight:
- base: owner's new opener verbatim (install understanding; the
understanding definition — which absorbs the old 'Understanding is
structure' paragraph); Voice moved in from shared/10 (deleted); the
philosophy keeps edge-dependence + logistics ('standard learning'
dropped per owner); intro's two-agents/fragments sentence gone.
- teacher/05-method opens with the owner's methodology bridge ('No other
teaching methods come close') — paragraph 3 of the opener, placed here
so the shared base never points the prober at methodology it doesn't
carry.
- deleted: teacher/60-probing-in-brief (self-evident from shared history;
its mid-lesson mini-probe move salvaged into 20-teaching as one
sentence), the 'Session shape — the durable artifact' section
(extraction-pipeline meta), the fragments-meta lines in shared/20 and
05-method, 'the transcript's seam' phrasing, prober's 'the teacher
that takes over' / 'the handoff is automatic'.
- composition reorder (listSourceSegments): base -> the agent's own
fragments -> shared/ appendix. Teacher method now starts at 12% in
(was 62%); prober doctrine at 34%. shared/20 opens with the owner's
decision rule (quiz only for known-correct-answer, ask for everything
else).
- HANDOFF_TEXT: the owner's user-message version — first-person, paces
the planning (unconditional truths, motivated derivations), ends at
plan_init + accept-or-changes.
Teacher 31.4k -> 28.7k chars; prober 10.0k -> 9.6k. Gates: typecheck 0,
1018/1018, lint clean, build green. (Suite runs 16s; the earlier 10-min
timeout was stale node_modules after master's df1328e 0.87.1 sync —
npm install fixed it.)
Contract-fix interlude (2026-09-26), two bugs from UI's prompts-overhaul
(6edc220):
(a) ORPHAN-400 TRAP: an ON switch whose override file dies orphaned the
record; every agent-section write then 400'd (ON-must-have-file) while
the disabled toggle couldn't reach the OFF escape hatch — a user stuck
unable to write settings. Verified live on 3004 before the fix.
Two-layer fix:
- DELETE /api/settings/prompts/[...segment] now clears the record's
switch in the same operation (switch-first order: a crash between the
two leaves the valid off+file state, never an orphan). Response gains
switchCleared (additive). Overrules the 2026-09-19 switch-survives-
delete note — the delete route and the record agree by construction.
- PUT /api/settings/[section] agent writes HEAL an orphaned ON to OFF
(key dropped) inside the write — never a 400 (defense in depth: disk
wipes outside the app can still orphan). A valid ON with its file
stays valid; the invariant: a user can never get stuck unable to
write settings, and the record never contradicts file reality for
long. Heal logs at info.
(b) TEST WIPES REAL DATA: tests/prompt-overrides.test.ts wiped
data/prompts/ (REAL user override files) in after() and its empty-list
case — every npm test killed actual overrides and orphaned their ON
switches (feeding trap a). Isolated via the established LH_DATA_DIR
seam (mkdtemp + env set before the first config.ts-loading import; all
app-module imports dynamic). after() now snapshots the REAL repo
data/prompts before/after and fails the suite if it changed; the seam is
pinned (writes land under the temp dir).
Pins: delete-clears-switch (incl. idempotent no-op), the exact repro
(disk-level wipe → mirror-the-orphan + tool toggle → 200, healed key,
rest of the write landed), vanished-fragment ON heals, valid ON stays.
Live: the 400-forever write now lands 200, heal info-logged, record
clean.
Gates: 967/967 (+5), typecheck, lint, build green.
Owner decision 2026-09-22: 'it doesn't make sense to have any default
model configured anywhere; the application is bring your own keys.'
config.ts: MODELS deleted; ModelRole becomes an explicit 9-role union;
DEFAULT_THINKING_ORDER (medium, low, high, minimal, xhigh, max) bakes
the unset-level default — first entry the model supports; explicitly
set levels keep pi's native nearest-clamp.
core/settings-resolution: the factory layer dissolves — the chain is
role override → slot → NOTHING. resolveSettings(record) takes no
factory. Empty chains resolve to null/undefined; a thinkingLevel-only
slot is inert (stored, never run). resolveConversationSpec: chat.model
override over the strong slot, null when both empty. resolveRoleSpec
spans all nine roles for the job/extraction engines.
Refusal envelope (core/settings.ts): modelsNotConfigured(missing) —
{error, code: 'models_not_configured', missing: [slot tiers]} +
ModelsNotConfiguredError with .envelope. Per-need gates, each honest:
- chat-handler: universal turn gate (new + continuing turns) returns
503 before beginTurn — no liveness, no write-ahead persist, no graph
trigger before the gate fires.
- runner.runJob: unresolvable engine lands the job as error with the
envelope wording; no phantom loop, no result steer.
- extraction: refuseIfStagesUnconfigured throws before any stage
(turn-service info-skips so coverage retries next turn; the import
route surfaces per-file code+missing); labeler-less runs skip
cluster naming with a console line and still merge.
Write side: slot entries must carry a model — level-only slot writes
are 400s (absent slot key = clear). piEngineForSpec resolves unset
thinking levels via DEFAULT_THINKING_ORDER; piEngineFor now throws
honestly; thinkingLevelFor/modelIdFor deleted; teacher-agent, pi-run,
visual-maker, pdf-reader all read engine.level.
model-catalog: defaults/slots/rolePins null when the chain is empty
(contracts nullable) — no phantom ids in payloads. Stores drop
MODEL_PINS entirely.
Tests: pin-leaners converted to explicit injection (per-chat model
pins on scripted chats — exactly what the setup flow writes; faux
engines for agent-construction tests). New coverage: the 503 gate
envelope, the runner refusal, the extraction refusal + labeler skip.
Gates: typecheck, lint, 815/815, build.
The other half-wired seam: Platform's settings 'agent.prompts' switches
had no consumer in the agent layer, and their effectivePromptSegments
mirrored the PRE-sources-v1 loader — the shared/ fragments dir (the
learner-files doctrine) was invisible to it, so a naive delegation would
have silently dropped the segment from both agents' prompts.
- src/core/prompt-segments.ts (NEW, pure): the mirror-layout path
grammar + segment types, defined exactly once; core stays zero-IO.
- src/agent/prompt-segments.ts (NEW, the CANONICAL discovery): base +
shared/ + per-agent fragments, override resolution, allSegmentPaths.
Composition is an agent concern; the agent layer reads its own tree
(the architecture law pins agent and store apart — the first direct
refactor attempt tripped the enforced import/no-restricted-paths
zone, hence the three-layer split).
- src/store/prompt-overrides.ts: slimmed to the override-file CRUD
behind the core port; shares the core grammar. Its doc no longer
claims to be the canonical mirror.
- teacher-agent: composeInstructions(kind, switches?) composes through
effectivePromptSegments — a segment whose switch is ON and whose
override file exists composes the override text. Switches-less calls
use the cached pure-source composition (byte-identical to the old
loader, pinned by test); AgentBuildOptions.promptSwitches threads
effective.agent.prompts per turn, composing fresh so override-file
writes flip the very next turn.
- server barrel: re-exports the agent module's resolution for the
settings routes (server→agent, the lawful direction).
Tests: byte-identical source pin, override swap-in (on/off/file-absent),
shared/ overridability in both agents, agent-construction threading,
updated segment-list pins with shared/ in composition order. This file
keeps owning PROMPTS_OVERRIDE_DIR (parallel-test discipline).
Gates: 671/671, typecheck, lint, build.
amosblomqvist