- switch the math authoring/rendering contract from \(...\)/\[...\] to the
standard $...$ inline / $$...$$ display: prompts (20-question-tools,
40-formatting), singleDollarTextMath on the renderer, legacy reader kept,
and escape-debris recovery extended to dollar spans (mirroring micromark
delimiter-run rules)
- exact answer membership now precedes debris cleanup in
coerceCorrectAnswer (calculus incident: an exact sentence-final-period
label was stripped as model debris, then rejected); option keys are
passed at the boundary/grading seams, the dock no longer pre-coerces
- a complete, phase-correct JSON-escaping example rides the probe/quiz
tool descriptions (serialized from one canonical body; quiz leads with
type+nodeId), plus the one-sentence JSON-escaping rule in 40-formatting
- ask option descriptions render markdown/LaTeX in the pending dock;
settled cards keep the details line and option descriptions
retroactively, read from the persisted call arguments (chat passes
part.input to AnsweredCard)
1566/1566 tests on both navigator configs; typecheck, lint, production
build, standalone packaging, and Electron-runtime smoke all green.
THE START BUG (owner report, reproduced live both kinds): new sessions
(?prompt flow — practice and teach alike) sat dead until a second
message, which then persisted WITHOUT the first. Root cause, proven
both directions: the submit POST rode the view's consumeAbort
controller; React StrictMode's simulated remount fires Diet A's
unmount cleanup (model.stop()) ~8ms in and killed the POST mid-flight;
the page's sentInitial guard had already flipped, so it never retried.
Teach was equally broken — only unnoticed, because every teach chat in
use predates the diet and practice starts are always fresh. Fix: the
submit law — POSTs are not abortable by view teardown (they are ~100ms
acks since Diet B and cannot starve the pool); after the ack, a
consumeAbort identity check guards the stream attach. Pinned with the
stop-mid-submit regression test. Live: StrictMode on, practice draft
POST 200/67ms, stream attached, message persisted, problem posed.
PRACTICE PROMPT (00-base): the opening rule — material arrives two
ways, both first-class (picked propositions primary; free-form —
topics, course material, files/PDFs — fully supported, never refused);
as soon as material exists the reply poses, at most one short line
before the problem call, no warm-up interview. Plus the hard law: no
problem is ever conversation — every problem through the tool (no
thinking field/no reveal/no verdict attaches to prose).
GRAPH-CONTEXT PREAMBLE: custom markers flatten to user-role on the
wire, so the old "Contextualization — the learner picked…" read like a
system broadcast in the learner's voice channel. Now the bracket
convention: "[Session context] — picked from the learner's knowledge
map…".
SIDEBAR: busy rows unify to "Working…" for both kinds (the spinner's
default label included); "Practicing…"/"Teacher is working…" retired.
Gates: 1490/1490, typecheck, lint. doctrine's stale doc pointer fixed.
The tools_fails_2 diagnosis (glm-5.3 dropping trailing required fields):
- probe-phase quiz/explain renamed to probe/recall — a shared name carried
the probe call shape into teaching (the first teach quiz dropped nodeId);
display seams accept the old names forever
- teach quiz+explain schemas lead with the required pair (type, nodeId);
explain gains the predict/check type and joins the reveal law (checks
collapse, predictions arrive open; no-type records render check-style)
- plan_init/probe_done results go context-slim (owner, context diet):
content = validated nodeIds + binding-id reminder / fixed ack; details
keeps the tree for the popup and {ok:true} — serializer-verified that
details never reaches the model; failure echoes dropped
- the cards carry the tool's own name (Probe/Recall) and the quiz type
reads on the label (Prediction/Check) in composer and transcript
Limits out (owner rulings): the 'Typically 5-15 nodes' cap and the
'keep the map small' pressure are dead — a plan is as elaborate as the
subject needs; what keeps it readable is correct structure (unconditional
truths as the hanging points), not compression. Labels stay short; size
is free. The method section now carries the goal reiteration: thorough,
deep, real understanding — sessions run as long as the understanding
needs, plans as elaborate as the subject requires; no schedule, nothing
to rush. (Code was already limit-free: no maxTurns, no parser caps.)
The adaptation + detour law, merged into one section ('The map moves
with him'): when the ground shifts mid-lesson — a missing foundation, a
deeper confusion — never rush the repair; no wall of text that 'covers'
the ground to get back on plan. Update the map if the structure changed,
then build the missing ground the only way anything is built here: one
reasoning step at a time, verified, at the session's one and only pace.
Detours are the teaching, not interruptions to get through.
The probe enters at the top (owner-observed failure: eigenvectors, then
high-school chain rule, then partials — strands opened at textbook
floors). New entry-point rules: open near the hardest thing the goal
needs and let a miss walk you down; strands inform each other (a strand
crushed at height says neighbors start high); the verdict + confidence +
thinking field TOGETHER set the next question's difficulty — confident
correct jumps sharply, hesitant correct steps gently. Efficiency is
resolution: never descend into already-bracketed territory; the
questions you save buy the specific, nuanced ones that locate the edge.
The one emphasis device for load-bearing ideas: GitHub-style alert
callouts. The prompt teaches only > [!IMPORTANT] (one device, one
meaning — an unconditional truth laid down, a payoff landed, a hinge
definition) with the restraint law: everything else stays in prose, if
everything is boxed nothing is. The renderer accepts all five GitHub
markers and boxes them identically — a stray [!NOTE] still meant 'this
deserves emphasis', and a marker line must never leak as text.
Rendering (owner rulings): SHARP corners, white stroke, no background,
no label, no icon — just the outline — and the box hugs its text
(width: fit-content capped at the column) instead of stretching
full-width into empty space. Same grammar as the plan blocks: this is
structure, not chrome.
Seam: the Streamdown blockquote override in md-blocks. parseAlertMarker
is pure and exported — Streamdown wraps blocks in its own styled
components, so detection reads the hast node's tagName, and a standalone
marker drops its <br> hard-break artifact along with the empty
paragraph. Plain blockquotes pass through untouched.
Rider (owner, same round): tables hug their contents — width:
max-content on the data-streamdown table (width:auto would still
stretch, the classic table trap); wide ones keep the md-blocks
overflow-x scroller. Graceful in exports: a callout is still a
blockquote there.
6 render pins: the box mounts with white stroke + fit-content + no
rounding, all five markers box, standalone-marker drops the empty
paragraph, multi-paragraph structure kept, plain quotes untouched.
Accuracy (shared, one law across every agent): the target shifts from
surface facts to understanding itself — 'the deeper risk isn't a wrong
name or date, it's a wrong understanding: an interpretation of an idea
that seems solid and isn't.' The bar is the doubt itself: checks are
cheap, and weighing whether a doubt is worth checking is how errors slip
through. Thinking stays the agent's own.
Research (teacher 40-jobs): floor framing — verify your understanding
before it becomes his; dispatch before the fact crosses your lips, teach
around the gap until the brief lands. Planning (10-planning): planning is
the natural moment for verification; the map is a hypothesis and the
probe only its first sketch — rewriting is a normal, common event (the
session adapts to what teaching reveals); and plan_init IS the
presentation — never draw the plan again in prose (the double-plan bug).
New shared segment 16-mental-model.md: the thinking fields are the
session's primary data — read them in full, measure what they reveal,
adapt everything on the model they build. Composes into teacher, prober,
and practice (shared-fragments list updated).
Practice: the rarely-needed framing is dead — fact checks get their own
law (a wrong model solution grades the learner against a lie; pose once
the brief lands), files and map readers become plain side tools.
LaTeX: the question-tools craft list gains the point-of-use bullet
('LaTeX everywhere — plain-text math in a question is a craft failure'),
the formatting law names EVERY field, and the practice problem statement
line carries it too.
Prompt pins updated: felt-doubt bar + mental-model doctrine in both
teacher and practice compositions, no-double-plan rule, rewrite-is-
normal law, rarely-needed framing asserted gone.
Owner ruling (2026-10-06): every concluded problem opens a pause. The
agent may speak its closing words about the learner's last thinking
after the conclude result, then ENDS ITS TURN — a system-prompt law
deliberately, per owner correction, NOT tool-level terminate. The next
problem is never posed until the learner explicitly moves on; the pause
is the session's teaching space (repairs, clarifications, follow-ups —
still surgical, never re-teaching).
The move-on signal is a first-class input: { type: "next" } appends a
practice-next marker (content = single-sourced NEXT_PROBLEM_TEXT — the
model's unambiguous go-ahead: pose per the selection rules or wrap if
the arc is complete). Honest 400s: practice sessions only, nothing
active (mid-problem input rides the dock), riding after any pending
dismissal synthesis exactly like text.
The fast path (owner approved: composer-band chip + Enter-on-empty):
- Composer.enterAction gains "next" — Enter on an EMPTY composer in
the pause fires the signal; typing anything makes Enter a send again;
busy (steer/stop) outranks the pause.
- The Next chip hovers at the composer band's top-right (pick-pill
chrome register) whenever the pause is live and a problem has ever
been posed; the placeholder becomes the hint ("Ask about this
problem — or press Enter for the next one…", exact);
- the transcript renders the signal as a compact centered NEXT PROBLEM
line (mono-caps chrome); session-core appends it optimistically.
CONCLUDE_ACK_TEXT rewritten to carry the law; doctrine §VIII gains the
pause law (owner-sanctioned edit #3); 00-base's conclude/dismissal
bullets rewritten + the between-problems section added.
- shared/10-voice.md (agent-neutral) + shared/15-accuracy.md (research-tool
truth contract) compose for teacher, prober, AND practice
- PRACTICE_SHARED_FRAGMENTS grows beyond 40-formatting.md
- practice 00-base.md drops its stale near-copy ("You have no research tool
here" was false since round 10); the solve-and-shortcut-hunt line folds
into the problem paragraph
- teaching system-prompt.md slims (Voice/Accuracy sections removed)
- pins updated: practice-agents composition, prompt-overrides segment mirror
A session whose material is not in the map is a SUPPORTED mode now:
target is optional (absent = untagged problem, poses freely), an
explicit [] heals away at the seam (the record's canonical form is
tagged-or-absent), and when targets ARE present the round-9 law is
unchanged — whole-graph validation, names normalized to ids. The
rejection message teaches the exit ('omit target entirely'), so a
model inventing targets for an off-graph topic converges to omitting
on the retry; omitting always works, no brick is possible. Prompt
carries the clause: material in the map → ids; not → omit, problems
stand on their own.
The practice registry widens beyond problem+conclude: read/ls/find/grep
(the learner-filesystem set, always), research + pdf jobs (research
honestly absent when no engine is live; demo/visual stay teach-only),
and the prober's map readers behind the SAME settings gate as the
prober's (graphToolsEnabled at the composition root). Base prompt
carries the conditional doctrine: reach for them only when the
situation genuinely requires — no propositions → look at the map;
learner references a file → read it; load-bearing uncertainty →
research it. Not toggle-filtered: problem/conclude are the session,
these are exceptions.
Four pins on the mastery-trace contract: a name target normalizes to
the canonical id (case-insensitive, whole-graph set), an id passes
through untouched, an unknown target rejects one-line AND does not arm
the gate (honest activation — the next valid pose goes through), and
the legacy node-source-less wiring stays unvalidated. The base prompt
now states the convention: target takes the proposition ids from the
session context — ids are how problems are traced.
Owner round 2 (2026-10-05), Slice H: the Nudge/Commit two-lane buttons
are gone. One Send; Enter sends, Shift+Enter is a newline. Whether a
submission claims an answer is apparent from the thinking itself — the
agent reads it (hint ladder for traces, moves+verdict for claims).
- The thinking input loses the commit field end-to-end: ChatInput,
parseChatInput, newThinkingMessage (details and the model-facing label
both collapse to the single 'Your thinking'), the optimistic marker.
- Legacy records' commit flags are deliberately unread.
- Doctrine: the two labeled channels become one read instruction; 'answer
commits' section retitled 'Claimed answers' — a claim is not a
progress signal.
- ThinkingCard: one label, collapsed arrival (the unified row).
- The dock placeholder no longer explains lanes that no longer exist.
Owner round (2026-10-05): the problem pose only really needs statement,
mode, target, modelSolution; conclude needs no reveal field.
- problemInputObject drops decisionPoints, expectedWrongMoves, strategy,
rationale. Halves the pose payload (the GLM incident's failing args
were 3.3KB — a direct weak-model hardening).
- concludeInputObject drops solutionReveal: the reveal is the
modelSolution committed at pose time, shown verbatim at conclude.
- Doctrine pass (00-base mechanics, 10-doctrine V.4/V.5): the commitment
is the solution alone; the reveal instruction points at it.
Fixtures slimmed to the new shapes (flow, agents, heal). ConcludeCard's
render of legacy solutionReveal input stays until the card redesign
lands (Slice C).
- tools/practice.ts: problem (terminate pose; commitment hidden in args)
and conclude (non-terminating; outcome/verdict/reveal/rung/missClass/
retest), gated by activeProblemOf — pose-while-active and conclude-
with-nothing-active both return invalidInputResult.
- prompts/practice/00-base.md (voice + accuracy + tool mechanics) and
10-doctrine.md (the owner's doctrine verbatim; one approved edit —
§I material arrival generalized). Practice composes its own directory
ALONE: no teaching base, no shared fragments.
- createPracticeAgent (teacher-agent.ts); chat-handler branch — kind
'practice' builds the practitioner from turn 1 and skips extraction.
- problemResult/concludeResult acks in tool-execute (conclude text
single-sourced: CONCLUDE_ACK_TEXT).
The teaching cycle gains its motivation question. The teach quiz schema
now carries a REQUIRED type field — predict (posed before the teaching,
arrives open, the learner predicts the next step) or check (posed after,
arrives collapsed behind the reveal). The prober's quiz stays role-less.
- core: quizInputObject.type union + normalizeQuizType + the reveal law
as pure quizNeedsReveal; QuestionData.questionType; note → thinking
rename (legacy reads fold back); readingThinking channel on answers;
compactAnswerForModel emits thinking / thinkingWhileReading
- tools: descriptions stripped to mechanics — QUIZ_OPTION_CRAFT and
EXPLAIN_DOCTRINE deleted, doctrine moved to the prompt layer
(reverses the 2026-09-27 placement, owner 2026-10-03); shared
quizDescription/explainDescription builders differ only in deltas
- prompts: shared/20-question-tools.md rewritten (option craft,
transcribed-speech leniency, the two thinking channels); new
teacher/28-predictions.md (cycle, roles, skip rule, resolution law);
20-teaching + 30-question-principles scoped to the new taxonomy
- UI: predictions render open with a Prediction eyebrow, verdict shows
but the explanation tucks behind a toggle; the reading-thinking field
mounts while a check waits (dictation claims it until reveal);
answered card separates thinking vs thinking-while-reading blocks
- requiresReveal gates on pending.tool === 'quiz' (owner: only graded quizzes
arrive collapsed; ask/explain always open)
- ESC-abort chain opens AbortTurnDialog everywhere (owner ruling); from a
pending question abort IS dismissal — dismissedAnswer rides the answer
path, the teacher acknowledges the skip in its next turn; popup-Esc is
claimed via the state gate (two window listeners fire per Esc)
- 25-confidence.md: stripped the slider/JSON/calibration mechanics — pure
reading doctrine remains
- toolQuestionKind named once in core (dock parity), dock switched to it
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.
Two follow-up rulings on the explain tool:
1. No 'I don't know' row — not needed in free recall. If he doesn't
know, he says so in his own words; his text is the only answer
channel. Dock: text mode is rowless again (the composer IS the
surface); doctrine and the shared prompt chunk updated; the format
branch and card revert to quiz-only dontKnow.
2. explanation + correctAnswer collapse into ONE field — the separate
explanation was quiz remnant (MC needs the why outside its options;
a free-text commitment carries its own reasoning). Schema is now
{question, correctAnswer, details?}; the reveal shows the single
committed answer; no explanation snapshots anywhere on the explain
path.
1047/1047 tests, typecheck/lint/build green.
Sycophancy mitigation as a structural commitment: the model writes its
full correctAnswer (plus explanation, in that order) BEFORE the learner
sees the question; the commitment rides the persisted call args, is
revealed on submit, and grades his free text in the model's next reply —
the client never grades free recall.
- tools.explain setting (segmented 'Quizzing — Multiple choice | Free
recall' in Agent settings' Tools group): free arms explain and drops
quiz for BOTH agents (prober variant carries no nodeId, same pattern
as the probe quiz); mechanics keys never pass filterEnabledTools —
quiz stays unwritable (the 2026-09-19 wedge ruling stands)
- doctrine lives pi-natively in the tool descriptions (owner ruling —
no conditional system-prompt chunks): explain carries the commitment
rule; the MC option-building craft moved out of the prompt into the
quiz description; shared/20-question-tools.md slims to the
quiz-agnostic core
- display seams: parseExplainInput (LaTeX-debris restoration included),
dock text-mode with an 'I don't know' row (kbd row 0), AnsweredCard
reveal (The answer / Why, no verdict chips), [Explain answer] format
- phases/plan seams recognize both quizzing tools' nodeId tags; explain
answers deliberately feed no ledger evidence (no client grading to
key on — a future ruling can parse the model's grade)
1049/1049 tests, typecheck/lint/build green.
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.)
The probe intro was redundant with 60-probing-in-brief.md (and its
no-probe fallback described a state the code can't produce — the teacher
only exists post-probe). 'How the map tracks itself' folded into one
tagging paragraph; grain and rewriting compressed; the live-map context
kept to one sentence. The discovery-chain thinking block stays verbatim,
and the stress-test stays. Presenting: ask him to confirm the plan
before teaching begins — medium unprescribed (owner ruling 2026-09-27;
dock-question confirmation leaves the teach divider floated next to the
planning divider when no text reply splits the group — accepted as
cosmetic).
The inferred teach seam sat as a ternary branch in the messages.map
chain (alongside the no-bubble marker branches), so the ENTIRE first
teaching group — thinking, prose, the tagged quiz call — rendered AS
the divider and vanished below it (the Lacan session, 2026-09-27).
The marker branches replace contentless scaffolding; the teach group is
a real message. The divider now prepends inside the group's Fragment.
Also tightens 10-planning.md: the presenting turn asks NOTHING — no
quiz, no ask_user_question, no 'shall we begin?' (the teacher was
substituting a confirmation question for the dead verdict buttons).
The Accept/Decline verdict gate is gone (owner ruling 2026-09-26):
presenting the plan ends the teacher's turn; the learner's next message
is a natural reply. Teaching begins at the first quiz call tagged with a
nodeId (probe quizzes carry none) — both folds (view phaseAt3, native
phaseAt3Lh) advance on the call itself, and the teach divider renders
before that whole assistant block. No backwards compat: verdict markers,
the verdict input event, optimistic appends, composer buttons, and
projection all deleted; prompts and docs rewritten to the natural flow.
The prober was planning perfect 7-question batches instead of probing. Three
surfaces now say the same thing — one question, adapt, next question:
- prober/10 rewritten to ~2.6k (from 5.6k): serial discipline leads (ask,
wait, choose the next question from the answer); 'How your questions
arrive' deleted (owner: does nothing); 'You cannot get there by thinking'
deleted (owner: didn't reduce thinking); 'never plan a batch' and the
first-message-length line dropped per owner — no overcorrection, no
strong-instruction inflation. Binary search compressed to four moves.
- tool descriptions: the async-era fossil 'Ask exactly one question per
tool call; after calling, end your turn and wait' — which permitted
multi-call batches — swapped for 'ONE question per turn: ... his answer
determines the next' in all four places (prober quiz + ask descriptions,
teacher quiz description, both zod question-field describes).
- shared/40-formatting: markdown/LaTeX coverage now explicitly names quiz
questions, options, and explanations ('in prose and in quiz questions
alike') — the prober wasn't using LaTeX in questions.
Prober composed prompt ~13.2k -> ~10.0k chars. Pins preserved verbatim
('measurement should be efficient', 'the read tool can inspect it directly').
Gates: typecheck 0, 986/986, lint clean, build green.
The owner's zero-configuration ruling (2026-09-23): nothing configures
the graph beyond chat models. The prior-knowledge injection — its budget
dial, its runner, its marker part, its dock/dispatch entries — is
removed across all bands; the prober now reads the learner's persistent
knowledge map on demand through two gated tools instead:
- list_sessions: every birth session, names + kinds + counts + dates
(graphSessionIndex, Platform's core seam)
- list_propositions(session): what was born there + the session's own
latest understanding level + that evaluation's date
(graphSessionPropositions) — names/levels/dating ONLY, no statement
text (owner ruling: the map's organization is the prober's business,
its prose is not)
Registered via createProberTools when chat-handler passes graphStore
(the graphToolsEnabled gate decided server-side, per-turn fresh); the
prober doctrine gains the map-review nudge at session start.
Also: runner's JobKind special-casing collapses (KIND_ROLE/KIND_RUNNERS
are plain records again), semantic-clusters.ts dies with its test, the
embedder dep's doc tells the wave-7 stub story, and ports.ts's
readClusterLabels/readNamingRuns surface stays untouched for Platform's
ledger-port interlude.
848/848 tests, typecheck/lint/build green.
The fix wave (4e1f545) put research + pdf in the prober's registry per
the owner ruling, but the doctrine never mentioned them. Owner chose
(2026-09-22) a brief grounded mention over schema-only discovery: the
paragraph extending 'read his actual material' now covers pdf (same
grounding for his PDF material, no copy-pasting) and research
(sparingly, only when pinning a fact would genuinely sharpen a probe
question — probing is measurement, not exploration, and a research
brief is never a reason to stall the questions).
User pivot (2026-09-19): no attachments UI at all. Pasting paths is native
for technical users and alien for everyone else - so the agent gets the
tools to find what the learner merely NAMES. The learner communicates in
messages; the agent locates and reads. Zero cross-stream seams: paths
already live in tool parts, so the sources "list" is the transcript.
- ls/find/grep: pi-verbatim schemas, descriptions, and output formats
(fd's glob semantics, rg's path:line: match format, pi's truncation
notices), ported to pure Node - no binaries, no shell-out, read-only by
construction. Deltas from pi: home-anchored resolution (the harness has
no cwd), .gitignore replaced by hard noise exclusions
(node_modules/.git/Library/.Trash), 10s walk timeout with partial results.
- read: description swapped to pi-verbatim (doctrine moved to the prompt);
relative paths now resolve against the learner's home like the rest.
- prompts/shared/05-learner-files.md: one minimal doctrine fragment
composed into BOTH agents (composeInstructions grew a shared/ dir,
before the agent's own fragments). teacher/30-jobs.md keeps only the
pdf-dispatch addendum.
- ToolCallCard: the generic quiet tool-call card the user specced -
collapsed one-liner (tool name + headline argument), expandable to full
input/output, errors red, image payloads never render. Registered for
read/ls/find/grep.
- ui-message.ts: TeacherUITools entries for the four tools (mechanical).
- tests: fs-tools suite (glob semantics, pi formats, exclusions, limits),
registry/card renders, shared-fragment composition pins, tool-registry
key updates, read re-anchor.
Learner source files, on the teacher's own terms (nothing auto-injects):
- read tool (src/agent/tools/read.ts): pi-read port — path/offset/limit,
2000-line/50KB truncation with use-offset continuation notices, image
files (jpg/png/gif/webp/bmp) returned as native image content parts
(new LhToolImageResult escape hatch in lh-tool.ts). Always-on in both
the prober and teacher registries (user-decided 2026-09).
- pdf-reader sub-agent (JobKind 'pdf', toggleable, ack-and-steer): triage
via pdf_info (pdfjs text layer: per-page text/image/math-density),
targeted pdf_extract, regex pdf_search (hits count as consultation),
and pdf_render — pages painted by pdfjs onto a canvas shim in headless
Chrome (the pdfium viewer doesn't paint headless), screenshot fed back
image-in-the-loop (visual-maker idiom, providerSafePng applied). The
unread-finish gate bounces a zero-consultation brief once. Teacher gets
a text brief with page citations only; renders never leave the loop.
- MODELS.pdfReader = qwen/qwen3.8-flash (user override 2026-09-19: the
look-at-renders workload wants the vision-proven model; catalog listed
glm-5.3-flash as image-capable but qwen is the known-good daily driver).
- UI: PdfCompleteBadge + PdfBriefCard (steer-card, job-card), dispatch
card + activity-dock kind entries (type-forced, flagged for UI review).
- Prompts: 'Learner source files' section in teacher/30-jobs.md; read
line in prober/10-probe-doctrine.md. Doctrine rides tool descriptions
per the self-contained-tools principle.
Part 1 — tool availability (the settings seam, machinery generic):
- core/pending.ts: TOGGLEABLE_TOOLS (today: research, demo, visual —
the model-facing tool names), EnabledTools = the JSON-native seam
shape Partial<Record<string, boolean>> (absent key = enabled, so old
records behave exactly as today), filterEnabledTools shared helper.
quiz/ask_user_question are always-on FOR NOW (user-decided); the
filtering is generic so future toggleables (question-tool variants,
the read tool, …) need no factory change.
- createProberTools/createTeacherTools take enabled?: EnabledTools; the
composition root (chat-handler, Platform's lane this wave) passes the
resolved settings through. probe_done is re-added after the filter —
always-on by construction (it ends the phase; a prober that can never
conclude is a lockout).
- Prompts stay STATIC under toggles this wave (user-decided); standing
principle recorded: tools ship self-contained usage guidance in their
descriptions; system prompts reference only always-on tools.
Part 2 — phase-based question-writing principles (user-locked wording,
drafted with the user over three iterations):
- NEW teacher/21-question-principles.md (composes after 20-teaching):
answerable-by-reasoning-from-the-session (the fairness rule that
filters unanswerable questions without forbidding visible answers),
never-just-reciting-your-words-back, PREFER problems that apply the
knowledge (preference, not hard rule — honest recall is the fallback,
not the habit), catch-confusion-early-and-nameable (wrong options as
real misconceptions), answer-is-signal-not-verdict.
- prober/10-probe-doctrine.md: 'no rush' retired; quick-measurement
directive in — every question moves an edge (bracket, narrow, or
characterize); a bracketed strand is done.
Tests: TOGGLEABLE_TOOLS pin, prober/teacher filtering (absent = full,
false drops exactly that tool, probe_done survives), prompt pins (the
principles compose verbatim into the teacher prompt, the no-rush
framing is gone from the prober). 547/547, typecheck/lint/build green.
Two user-reported problems from the muscle-protein-synthesis session,
both diagnosed from the live data (chat_mtxeml9e_6118e59f).
The freeze: after probe_done, the open session never showed the
teacher's wake turn — only navigating away and back loaded it. Not an
agent-switch problem: the server-side handoff worked perfectly
(write-ahead persist, liveness registry, the sidebar's busy dot saw the
wake the whole time). The gap was client attach: the only mid-session
wake detector the open page has is the jobs poll, and probe-phase
sessions have zero job traffic, so that poll is OFF; the post-turn
adoption poll read turnInFlight=false at ~0ms (the wake fires at
~0.75-1.2s, after the pump's grace), adopted, and stopped. Fix: the
post-turn adoption effect now keeps a short WATCH WINDOW after adopting
(~4s, 8x500ms) — if turnInFlight flips true, it hands off to the
existing wake-adoption poll (busy shimmer, adopt at finish).
The mermaid failures: four failed plan_init calls, all caused by ONE
hidden rule — underscores are forbidden in node ids (mps_translation,
net_balance, per_meal). The id regex rejected '_' BEFORE the slug check,
so the specific, actionable message never fired; the generic 'can't read
the edge — expected a[title] --> b[title]' lied (the syntax was exactly
that), and the teacher spent three attempts hunting punctuation it
suspected (colons, commas, multi-word labels) — visible in its own
reasoning trail. Per the user's principle — enforce only the slugs,
free everything else: underscores are first-class slug chars; the id
CANDIDATE class is broad so every bad id reaches the specific slug
message; chained edges (a --> b --> c) expand to pairs; ==>, -.-> are
edge synonyms; any direction header accepted (we layout ourselves);
id["title"] quote pairs are stripped. The tool description, zod
describe, and the teacher's planning prompt now state the one strict
rule instead of the old subset liturgy.
Verified: tsc, 305/305 (the exact muscle-protein mermaid is now a
passing test), lint, build; real-browser puppeteer smoke on live GLM —
the teacher's wake turn appeared in the open page ~50s after the probe
concluded with ZERO navigation, verdict gate + first teach check +
plan window all live in-page (the single console 404 is the app's
missing favicon, environmental noise).
The accept-plan UI lands (docs/probe-teach-split.md §4, formerly the
interim rule): presenting the plan no longer moves the phase — the
learner's ACCEPT does. While the presented plan awaits its verdict, the
composer's send square becomes two stacked buttons (green Accept plan /
red Decline); typed text rides the verdict as his note, Enter keeps
sending plain side questions (phase unmoved), decline asks for a
revision and the buttons stay.
The seam: accept sends a user message carrying a data-plan-accepted
part (PlanAcceptedData in contracts/chat.ts, TeacherUIDataParts
'plan-accepted'); phaseAt3 reads it as the plan→teach event (plan_init
demoted to presentation-only); convertToModelMessages drops data parts,
so the teacher sees only the text. Mid-lesson rewrites need no fresh
verdict — acceptance happens once, at the first presentation.
The teacher's planning prompt now ends the turn at presentation and
waits for the verdict (never teaches into an unaccepted plan).
Gates: tsc clean, 304/304 (phases tests rewritten to the acceptance
seam incl. decline/side-question/failed-init cases; composer verdict
render tests), lint, build. Live GLM smoke ALL PASS: phase pinned at
'plan' after plan_init, presentation turn carried NO check, accept
click flipped the summary to 'teach', then tagged checks moved the map
(current=rates, visited=composite); zero console errors.
Diagnosis (2026-09-11 user testing, minimal-effort GLM): sessions stuck on
'plan' forever. Two causes: (1) the three-phase view read the stored tree's
currentNodeId, which nothing ever writes post author-once (2026-09-03) — a
structural dead seam; (2) the teacher stochastically left quiz.nodeId
untagged, and done-by-quiz-result semantics would have falsely completed
nodes anyway.
The redesign (docs/probe-teach-split.md) abolishes derived occupancy in
favor of explicit events:
- Two agents over one transcript: createProberAgent (quiz without a
nodeId field, ask, probe_done) and createTeacherAgent (full toolset,
plan_init onward). The chat-handler construction branch keys on a
probe_done part in the transcript. MODELS.prober added.
- probe_done: server-side seam tool — carries the learner assessment
(strands + free-form edge read), refuses while a question is open or
the probe is already concluded, and queues a handoff steer through the
generalized wake pipeline (steers now dedupe by id, not jobId; job
finalization only for job steers). The teacher auto-wakes and authors
the plan; the learner sees the assessment via the probe-done card.
- phases: probe ends at a concluded probe_done, plan ends at a
successful plan_init — strictly sequential, no skipping, no legacy
compatibility (data wiped at the pivot per doctrine).
- Plan map = position, not completion: derivePlanStatuses reads only
tagged quiz CALLS (state/outcome feed nothing); current = latest
tagged node with consecutive duplicates collapsed, visited = earlier
distinct stays (a revisit stays in both — current wins at render).
PlanTree is structure-only; currentNodeId/doneNodeIds and the dead
mutation helpers are gone. No fallback current.
- Prompts split per agent (prompts/prober/, prompts/teacher/ over the
trimmed shared base); graph-context injection removed entirely
(shelved, docs/probe-teach-split.md §5); knowledge-graph context no
longer reaches either agent.
- Plan blocks are full-only snapshots at plan_init (neighborhood
machinery retired; the persistent DAG window is the future UI wave);
usage capture unchanged.
Gates: tsc clean, 294/294 tests (phases/plan-tree/plan-blocks/question-
tools rewritten to the new semantics; probe-done + handoff-wake tests
added), lint, build. Live GLM smoke PASS: prober concluded with an honest
assessment, teacher auto-woke, authored a 10-node plan with the block
attached, then tagged checks on slope-instinct → secant derived current/
visited exactly as designed; grading honest both ways (driver off-by-one
proved a wrong answer grades false).
Wave 4 (agent-side observability + control), reconciled with the dock
contract (master relay 2026-09):
- abortJob in src/server/jobs.ts, exported through the server barrel for
POST /api/activity/abort (master's thin route): fires the job's
AbortController (real kill — the in-flight model call aborts, not just
the next loop check), drops any queued result steer, flips the record
to error "Aborted by learner" + activity "aborted" synchronously, and
queues a one-line abort steer (buildAbortSteer) through the same wake
pipeline so the teacher's promise doesn't hang in the lesson. Shares
the result steer's deterministic id space, so abort + racing result
can never both deliver (steerDelivered dedupe).
- Abort registry (src/agent/subagents/aborts.ts) on globalThis, mirroring
the wake pipeline's module-state pattern; runner registers/unregisters
per run, so the route's module instance sees the loop's controller.
- Runner usage capture: LoopContext (abortSignal + onUsage) threads into
all three kind loops; per-step usage folds via accumulateJobUsage into
JobRecord.usage (model from config MODELS, absent-never-zero), flushed
in runJob's finally so an aborted job's money record survives the kill.
- Contracts: JobUsage token fields optional + lastStep (most recent
call's accounting, for the dock's per-blob context line vs
CONTEXT_LIMITS); SubagentResultMeta.aborted; AbortSteerMessage;
buildAbortSteer; SteerMessage union generalized.
- demo-builder/visual-maker accept abortSignal + onUsage (visual folds
generateText usage per iteration).
- stillRunning/finishJob/jobContext guards: an aborted job is never
overwritten by the runner (terminal no matter what the wake does);
failJob and the pump's finalizeJob keep the flip.
- UI: abort steer renders a quiet aborted chip (job-aborted-badge).
- Prompt 20-jobs.md: one line about aborted jobs.
Tests: accumulateJobUsage folds (undefined-preservation, lastStep),
runner usage capture, real-kill abort (sync flip, silent unwind,
abort steer wakes), usage-so-far survives the kill, aborting a
delivering job drops the queued result steer, outcome reasons,
abort-chip render. 330/330, typecheck/lint/build green.
Wave 3: the plan protocol collapses to one re-callable mermaid plan_init
(seven mutation tools deleted by design; statuses derive from quiz checks;
live quiz-nodeId validation with mid-turn retry). The steer-starvation arc:
steers deliver coalesced with the learner's answer (claimSteers), persist
dedupes same-id continuation copies, jobs settle-sync defers while a turn
is busy. Research steers gain the collapsed full-brief affordance. Model
reasoning effort set to minimal across roles.
- plan_init is now the ONLY plan tool: a mermaid 'graph TD' block parsed by a
constrained-subset parser (mermaid-plan.ts) with line-precise errors; the
seven mutation/tracking tools are gone by design (2026-09-03 design pass).
- Re-call plan_init = sanctioned wholesale rewrite; slugs are permanent.
- derivePlanStatuses (contracts/plan.ts): done = passed check tagged with a
quiz nodeId; current = open check's node else first topo-ready node — the
tracking the teacher no longer declares by hand.
- questionToolsFor(ctx) (tools.ts): the quiz schema chains a dynamic plan-
nodeId validation against the LIVE record — an invalid nodeId is rejected
at the call boundary and the teacher retries mid-turn, before any UI.
Static questionTools stay validator-less for the default path.
- Prompts rewritten for mermaid authoring + derived position.
- Out-of-lane surgical touches (flagged for master review):
src/core/question-core.ts (quizInputObject export + nodeId description),
src/core/contracts/plan.ts (derivePlanStatuses + doc).
Seam from the state-class strip: renderGraphContext tags nodes with raw
latest-quiz outcomes ([miss] / [dont-know] / [correct] / [never probed]);
50-graph-context.md still taught the deleted state classes ([missed] /
[known] / [candidate]). Re-aligned, guidance unchanged.
The minimal implementation of the 2026-09-02 graph vision (docs/vision.md §1):
- contracts/graph.ts: every node is a TRUE proposition (statement is both
rendering label and identity key; required description; no kind, no name).
Edges are follows (derivable) / supports (grounds without entailing) with
message-granular provenance points {chatId, messageId}. Events reduce to
correct/miss/dont-know plus observation (understanding notes); no taught
events, no misconception kind.
- extraction.ts: extractor is TREE-BLIND (transcript only, no plan tree) and
free-form; auditor sees findings + the current graph, owns faithfulness and
identity (link-or-create verdict per proposition, recorded as linkTo);
transcriptView tags every line with its message id (provenance anchors).
- core/graph.ts merger: applies verdicts deterministically — linkTo appends
a link line (phrasings join aliases, provenance unions; reads merge by id),
absent creates; NO string matching anywhere. Quiz events rebuilt from tool
parts with attribution-only nodeId resolution; understanding notes become
observation events (obs:<sourceId>); mapping lines are the verdict audit
trail and make re-merges idempotent.
- deriveNodeStates: transitional — latest quiz event wins (known/missed/
dont-know, else candidate); taught unreachable until the state-model
ideation lands.
- graph-context.ts + 50-graph-context.md: follows chains, hotspot grouping,
state vocabulary updated for the new event kinds.
- graph-view.tsx: node label is the statement; detail shows statement +
description.
- tests: merger verdicts (link, no-string-match, cross-chat assertions),
tree-blind pipeline end-to-end, follows vocabulary in context tests.
276/276 green.
composeInstructions loaded EVERY .md in src/agent/prompts — including
README.md, the directory's human documentation, which rode into the
system prompt as its own section (visible in OpenRouter logs, old POC
paths and all).
The loader now enforces the documented convention: only numeric-prefix
fragments (\d+-*.md) compose. README.md stays in the directory as docs
and can never reach the model again. README's rule text updated to
match; composeInstructions exported for tests; regression test asserts
the README never leaks and every numeric fragment composes verbatim.
The job tools (research/demo/visual) switch from client-side turn-breaking
calls to pi's model: execute resolves IMMEDIATELY with a fire-and-forget
ack, the teacher's turn continues, and the result arrives later as an
injected user-role steer message that wakes the teacher in a new
server-side turn.
- contracts.ts: THE ASYNC PROTOCOL rewritten (ack now, steer later); steer
types (SubagentSteerMessage, metadata.subagentResult + data-subagent-
artifact part), pure buildSubagentSteer/steerDelivered/isSubagentFailure
- tools/jobs.ts: jobTools(ctx) factory — server-side execute creates the
job (deduped by toolCallId), fires spawn with the dispatch-time input
(the part isn't persisted yet at execute — a transcript scan would race)
- runner.ts: runJob(jobId, input?) builds the steer and hands it to the
injected deliver seam; pipeline owns the done/error flip (a polling
client re-syncs once, at the end); failures still steer
- server/jobs.ts (new pipeline): per-chat serialized queues on globalThis,
idle gates (turn liveness + pending question, 1.5s grace), 409 retry
with backoff, idempotent per jobId, stale-job recovery sweep (re-deliver
or re-spawn); wake turns run through the same handleChatRequest
composition via setTurnRunner injection
- chat-handler.ts: wires runner+deliver+tools ctx; drops spawnTurnJobs
from onFinish; teacher default registry = question tools only
- plan.ts: PlanToolContext split out (plan tools need no job wiring)
- visual-maker: edit_svg added (pi parity — exact-match single
replacement, fuzzy context on a miss); researcher: pi's kept/dropped
source accounting restored
- prompts 20-jobs/40-demos: async discipline rewritten (announce and keep
teaching, no waiting/polling/fabricating, parallel dispatch, teach with
the artifact when it arrives)
- tests: jobs.test.ts rewritten (dispatch ack mid-turn, runner steers,
wake pipeline: deferral/409/idempotency/failure), demos.test.tsx runner
tests ported to runJob + fake deliver; 222 green
FLAGGED surgical touches outside the stream's owned files, for master
review at merge: src/core/contracts.ts (protocol doc + steer types),
src/core/ui-message.ts (job tool + data-part types), src/server/
chat-handler.ts (wiring), src/server/turn-service.ts (spawnTurnJobs
retirement), src/agent/teacher-agent.ts (default tools), src/agent/tools/
plan.ts (context type split).
Verified live on PORT=3003 with real models: teacher dispatched research
mid-turn, researcher ran real searches/fetches, steer injected on quiz
answer, wake turn wove the brief in citing its sources, job flipped done;
a client/wake race correctly 409'd.
amosblomqvist