@hviana/sema 0.1.0 → 0.1.2

package/dist/src/mind/trace.js

@@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
+// trace.ts — trace instrumentation + persistence (Section 9 of the mind).
+//
+//   rItem, rNode, rDeriv — build RationaleItems from bytes/nodes/derivations
+//   traceDerivation        — trace a full derivation proof tree
+//   MOVE_NOTE              — human-readable names for each derivation move
+import { read } from "./primitives.js";
+import { decodeText } from "./rationale.js";
+export function rItem(bytes, role, node, span) {
+    return {
+        text: decodeText(bytes),
+        role,
+        node: node ?? undefined,
+        span,
+    };
+}
+export function rNode(ctx, id, role, score) {
+    return {
+        text: decodeText(read(ctx, id)),
+        node: id,
+        role,
+        score,
+    };
+}
+export function rDeriv(ctx, it, role) {
+    const text = it.bytes
+        ? decodeText(it.bytes)
+        : it.node !== undefined
+            ? decodeText(read(ctx, it.node))
+            : it.kind === "cover"
+                ? `cover@${it.span[0]}`
+                : `[${it.span[0]},${it.span[1]})`;
+    return { text, role: role ?? it.kind, node: it.node, span: it.span };
+}
+/** The standard FALL-THROUGH closer every self-gating mechanism ends with:
+ *  close the open scope with no outputs and the reason, and return null so
+ *  the caller can `return fail("…")` in one expression.  `t` is the scope an
+ *  enclosing `ctx.trace?.enter(...)` returned (undefined when not tracing). */
+export function traceFail(t) {
+    return (note) => {
+        t?.done([], note);
+        return null;
+    };
+}
+export const MOVE_NOTE = {
+    "follow-edge": "follow a learned continuation edge — 'what follows what'",
+    "concept-hop": "jump a concept (halo) link — a synonym's edge",
+    "voice": "emit the asker's own wording for this form (articulation)",
+    "ground": "a chain reached its terminal answer",
+    "splice-connector": "splice a learnt connector between two rewrites",
+    "split": "cut a span at a sub-leaf form boundary so a form can be reached",
+    "fuse": "fuse adjacent fragments toward a deeper learned form",
+    "recompose": "recompose fused parts into a learned whole that leads on",
+    "bridge": "advance the cover frontier across this span",
+    "pool-vote": "pool independent regions' evidence for a shared anchor (sum, not shortest path)",
+    "axiom": "a seed: a perceived leaf, recognised form, or computed result",
+    "step": "a derivation step",
+};
+export function traceDerivation(ctx, steps) {
+    const t = ctx.trace;
+    if (!t)
+        return;
+    const indexOfOrder = new Map();
+    for (const s of steps) {
+        const note = MOVE_NOTE[s.move] ?? s.move;
+        const deps = s.producers
+            .map((o) => indexOfOrder.get(o))
+            .filter((x) => x !== undefined);
+        const premises = s.premises.map((p) => rDeriv(ctx, p));
+        const conclusion = [rDeriv(ctx, s.conclusion)];
+        const index = t.step(s.move, premises, conclusion, s.cost > 0 ? `${note} (cost ${s.cost})` : note, deps.length > 0 ? deps : undefined);
+        indexOfOrder.set(s.order, index);
+    }
+}

package/dist/src/mind/traverse.d.ts

@@ -0,0 +1,100 @@
+import { Vec } from "../vec.js";
+import type { AncestorReach, MindContext } from "./types.js";
+/** Climb the structural DAG from a node to its edge-bearing ancestor contexts.
+ *  Ascent stops at hub nodes (parents > √N) — their reach is non-discriminative.
+ *  When the start node has no structural parents, climbs from containment parents
+ *  (sub-span flat branches inheriting their chunks' context).
+ *
+ *  `memo`, when given, caches whole climbs by start id for the duration of ONE
+ *  query (the store is read-only while a query is in flight, so a climb is a
+ *  pure function of the id).  The consensus pipeline climbs the SAME anchors
+ *  repeatedly — regions sharing a chunk, and canonicalChunkId probing each
+ *  chunk's prefixes — so without the memo every repeat re-pays the full
+ *  fan-out reads. */
+export declare function edgeAncestors(ctx: MindContext, id: number, contextCount: number, memo?: Map<number, AncestorReach>): AncestorReach;
+/** Convenience: forward edges of a node. */
+export declare function nextOf(ctx: MindContext, id: number): number[];
+/** Convenience: reverse edges of a node. */
+export declare function prevOf(ctx: MindContext, id: number): number[];
+/** Whether a node LEADS SOMEWHERE — it bears a continuation edge or a halo.
+ *  The admission predicate recognition filters sites with (HOW_IT_WORKS
+ *  §15.3): a form that leads nowhere contributes nothing to any derivation.
+ *  Runs once per candidate span on the recognition hot path — `hasNext` is
+ *  cached per response (the same flat-branch ids are probed across prefix
+ *  variants by canonicalChunkId).  `hasHalo` is not cached: it's a single
+ *  indexed point probe per candidate, and the candidates that reach this
+ *  check have already been filtered by hasNext above in edgeAncestors. */
+export declare function leadsSomewhere(ctx: MindContext, id: number): boolean;
+/** The structural IDF read of ONE node: how many distinct learnt contexts
+ *  its containment/edge climb reaches, or Infinity when it reaches none or
+ *  saturates (no usable identity evidence).  The number every
+ *  discriminative-vs-scaffolding decision derives from — paired with the
+ *  half-dominance convention (geometry.dominates(reach, N)): content
+ *  reaching a corpus MINORITY of contexts discriminates (an entity, a
+ *  filler); content reaching a majority is frame scaffolding. */
+export declare function reachOf(ctx: MindContext, id: number, contextCount: number, memo?: Map<number, AncestorReach>): number;
+/** The corpus scale N — the count of DISTINCT learnt contexts, floored at 2
+ *  so its derived readings (ln N in the consensus floor, √N in the hub bound)
+ *  stay meaningful on a near-empty store.  The one definition every consumer
+ *  of "how big is this corpus?" reads. */
+export declare function corpusN(ctx: MindContext): number;
+/** The hub bound √N itself (≥ 2 always, since N is floored at 2) — for
+ *  consumers that pass it to the store's LIMITed reads instead of capping a
+ *  materialised list.  {@link hubCap} is the list-side reading of the same
+ *  convention. */
+export declare function hubBound(ctx: MindContext): number;
+/** Cap a candidate list at the hub bound √N (insertion order) — the ONE
+ *  fan-out convention every walk and disambiguation uses (see HOW_IT_WORKS
+ *  §8.6).  A node connected to more than √N others is a hub whose individual
+ *  connections carry ~no discriminative information; materialising or scoring
+ *  them all would make single decisions scale with the corpus. */
+export declare function hubCap<T>(ctx: MindContext, ids: readonly T[]): readonly T[];
+/** Whether `descendant` lies within `ancestor`'s subtree — a structural DAG
+ *  relation read off the hash-consed `kids` lists, by a bounded explicit-stack
+ *  descent.  Used by articulation to keep a voice from revoicing a fragment
+ *  OF that voice. */
+export declare function contains(ctx: MindContext, ancestor: number, descendant: number): boolean;
+/** The best-scoring item by cosine against `query`, among items scoring at
+ *  or above `threshold` — the shared arg-max every Pattern-A "which of these
+ *  resonates best" decision reduces to.  `strict` picks the tie-break a
+ *  caller needs: `true` keeps the first-seen leader on a tie (`>`), the
+ *  default lets a later equal score take it (`>=`). */
+export declare function argmaxBy<T>(items: Iterable<T>, scoreOf: (item: T) => number, threshold: number, strict?: boolean): {
+    item: T;
+    score: number;
+} | null;
+export declare function argmaxCosine<T>(query: Vec, items: Iterable<T>, vecOf: (item: T) => Vec | null | undefined, threshold: number, strict?: boolean): {
+    item: T;
+    score: number;
+} | null;
+/** The guided-or-first continuation of a node, as answer-shaped bytes source:
+ *  chooseNext under the response guide, falling back to the FIRST-inserted
+ *  edge — the one no-guide convention chooseNext, project() and the search's
+ *  formRules all share.  undefined when the node has no continuation. */
+export declare function guidedFirst(ctx: MindContext, id: number): number | undefined;
+export declare function guidedNext(ctx: MindContext, node: number): number | undefined;
+/** Disambiguate among a node's learnt continuations by distributional
+ *  support.  NOTE the `guide` contract: its VALUE is deliberately unused —
+ *  only its PRESENCE gates disambiguation (a null guide means no query is in
+ *  flight, so structural walkers keep plain first-edge behaviour).  The
+ *  gist-cosine of short answer candidates against a query guide is dominated
+ *  by accidental byte-pattern correlations, not semantic relatedness, so the
+ *  evidence consulted is structural: each candidate's reverse-edge support
+ *  count (see below).  Contrast {@link chooseAmong}, the REVERSE-direction
+ *  disambiguator, whose candidates are whole learnt contexts — long enough
+ *  that their perceived gists ARE semantically meaningful — and which
+ *  therefore scores by guide cosine.  The two directions consult different
+ *  halves of the evidence on purpose. */
+export declare function chooseNext(ctx: MindContext, id: number, guide?: Vec | null): number | undefined;
+/** The perceived gist of a candidate node, through the session gist cache.
+ *  Re-gisting a candidate is a full river fold of its bytes — the measured
+ *  recall bottleneck (a hub context offers up to √N continuations, EACH
+ *  re-perceived per pick).  A node's bytes are immutable and perception is
+ *  pure, so the cached gist is valid for the store's lifetime.  Exported for
+ *  every "score node ids against a guide" decision (chooseAmong here, the
+ *  bridge's junction pick) so they share ONE cache and one convention. */
+export declare function candidateGist(ctx: MindContext, c: number): Vec | null;
+export declare function chooseAmong(ctx: MindContext, candidates: readonly number[], guide: Vec): {
+    id: number;
+    score: number;
+};

package/dist/src/mind/traverse.js

@@ -0,0 +1,447 @@
+// traverse.ts — Traverse primitives + disambiguation (Sections 1 & 6 of the mind).
+//
+//   Traverse — node → nodes   (edgeAncestors, nextOf, prevOf, contains,
+//                               guidedNext, chooseNext, chooseAmong, hubCap)
+//
+// The PROJECTIONS built on these walks (follow, conceptHop, reverseContext,
+// project) live in match.ts — the elementary match-and-project operation.
+import { cosine } from "../vec.js";
+import { gistOf, read } from "./primitives.js";
+const structCaches = new WeakMap();
+function getStructCache(ctx) {
+    if (ctx.climbMemo === null)
+        return null;
+    let c = structCaches.get(ctx.climbMemo);
+    if (c === undefined) {
+        structCaches.set(ctx.climbMemo, c = {
+            hasNext: new Map(),
+            prevCount: new Map(),
+            hasParents: new Map(),
+        });
+    }
+    return c;
+}
+/** Cached {@link Store.hasNext} — pure during one respond(). */
+function cachedHasNext(ctx, id, cache) {
+    if (cache === null)
+        return ctx.store.hasNext(id);
+    let v = cache.hasNext.get(id);
+    if (v === undefined) {
+        v = ctx.store.hasNext(id);
+        cache.hasNext.set(id, v);
+    }
+    return v;
+}
+/** Cached {@link Store.prevCount} — pure during one respond(). */
+function cachedPrevCount(ctx, id, cache) {
+    if (cache === null)
+        return ctx.store.prevCount(id);
+    let v = cache.prevCount.get(id);
+    if (v === undefined) {
+        v = ctx.store.prevCount(id);
+        cache.prevCount.set(id, v);
+    }
+    return v;
+}
+/** Cached {@link Store.hasParents} — pure during one respond(). */
+function cachedHasParents(ctx, id, cache) {
+    if (cache === null)
+        return ctx.store.hasParents(id);
+    let v = cache.hasParents.get(id);
+    if (v === undefined) {
+        v = ctx.store.hasParents(id);
+        cache.hasParents.set(id, v);
+    }
+    return v;
+}
+// ── Graph climbing ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────
+/** Climb the structural DAG from a node to its edge-bearing ancestor contexts.
+ *  Ascent stops at hub nodes (parents > √N) — their reach is non-discriminative.
+ *  When the start node has no structural parents, climbs from containment parents
+ *  (sub-span flat branches inheriting their chunks' context).
+ *
+ *  `memo`, when given, caches whole climbs by start id for the duration of ONE
+ *  query (the store is read-only while a query is in flight, so a climb is a
+ *  pure function of the id).  The consensus pipeline climbs the SAME anchors
+ *  repeatedly — regions sharing a chunk, and canonicalChunkId probing each
+ *  chunk's prefixes — so without the memo every repeat re-pays the full
+ *  fan-out reads. */
+export function edgeAncestors(ctx, id, contextCount, memo) {
+    const hit = memo?.get(id);
+    if (hit !== undefined)
+        return hit;
+    const bound = Math.ceil(Math.sqrt(contextCount));
+    const roots = [];
+    const seen = new Set([id]);
+    const ctxSeen = new Set();
+    let saturated = false;
+    // EXPAND-UNTIL-DECIDED: a reach is consumed either as a VOTE (which needs
+    // contextsReached exactly, and only while ≤ √N — beyond that the region is
+    // non-discriminative) or as an ABSTENTION (saturated — whose roots and
+    // counts no consumer reads).  So the climb may STOP the moment the answer
+    // is decided:
+    //   • a node whose prev fan-in alone exceeds √N decides it (its
+    //     predecessors are √N+ distinct contexts) — no read needed, prevCount
+    //     is an indexed O(1);
+    //   • distinct contexts crossing √N decides it;
+    //   • a node with more than √N parents decides its own expansion (the
+    //     classic hub guard; the walk aborts rather than continue, which no
+    //     consumer can distinguish — saturated reaches are never voted).
+    // Below every decision threshold the walk is EXACT — identical roots and
+    // contexts to the unbounded climb — because prevFirst(√N) IS the full prev
+    // list and parentsFirst(√N+1) IS the full parent list whenever they do not
+    // decide.  Work is bounded by √N contexts × the climb's local structure,
+    // never by the corpus.
+    const structCache = getStructCache(ctx);
+    // LATERAL-BRANCH ACCOUNT — the cumulative dual of the per-node hub guard.
+    // Within one deposit the ascent is a CHAIN (each node's first parent);
+    // every parent BEYOND a node's first is an entry into another containing
+    // structure (hash-consing: a shared subtree's extra parents are other
+    // deposits' chunks).  The per-node guard already declares a node with more
+    // than √N parents non-discriminative; a climb whose ACCUMULATED lateral
+    // entries exceed √N has spread across just as many distinct containing
+    // structures — the same commonness, distributed along the cone instead of
+    // concentrated at one node — and is decided: saturated.  A deep chain in
+    // ONE structure accrues no laterals, so legitimate deep scaffolding (a
+    // fragment far down a long cumulative context) still climbs to its root
+    // at any depth; what dies is the cross-structure drift that visited tens
+    // of thousands of edge-free interiors (profiled on a 17.7M-node store:
+    // ~20K distinct nodes per climb family, >95% unique — not memoisable)
+    // while the context account never decided.
+    let lateral = 0;
+    const visit = (x) => {
+        const hasNx = cachedHasNext(ctx, x, structCache);
+        const pc = cachedPrevCount(ctx, x, structCache);
+        if (hasNx || pc > 0) {
+            roots.push(x);
+            if (hasNx)
+                ctxSeen.add(x);
+            if (pc > bound)
+                return false; // decided: ≥ pc > √N distinct contexts
+            for (const p of ctx.store.prevFirst(x, bound))
+                ctxSeen.add(p);
+            if (ctxSeen.size > bound)
+                return false; // decided
+        }
+        const parents = ctx.store.parentsFirst(x, bound + 1);
+        if (parents.length > bound)
+            return false; // decided: hub
+        let fresh = 0;
+        for (const p of parents) {
+            if (!seen.has(p)) {
+                seen.add(p);
+                stack.push(p);
+                fresh++;
+            }
+        }
+        if (fresh > 1) {
+            lateral += fresh - 1;
+            if (lateral > bound)
+                return false; // decided: cone-wide hub
+        }
+        return true;
+    };
+    const stack = [];
+    const containment = !cachedHasParents(ctx, id, structCache);
+    if (!containment)
+        stack.push(id);
+    // The containment seed is STREAMED in pages of √N: a distinctive window's
+    // containers (which converge on one or two contexts, however many chunks
+    // of one deposit repeat it) are walked IN FULL — exact — while a common
+    // window's corpus-sized container list is abandoned at the first decision
+    // above, after O(√N) pages at most (each page adds containers whose climbs
+    // add contexts; √N distinct contexts decide).
+    let containerOff = 0;
+    let containersExhausted = !containment;
+    climb: for (;;) {
+        if (stack.length === 0) {
+            if (containersExhausted)
+                break;
+            const page = ctx.store.containersSlice(id, containerOff, bound);
+            containerOff += page.length;
+            if (page.length < bound)
+                containersExhausted = true;
+            for (const c of page) {
+                if (!seen.has(c)) {
+                    seen.add(c);
+                    stack.push(c);
+                }
+            }
+            if (stack.length === 0) {
+                if (containerOff === 0)
+                    stack.push(id); // no containers at all
+                else
+                    break;
+            }
+        }
+        while (stack.length > 0) {
+            let x = stack.pop();
+            // TRANSPARENT-CHAIN HOP: a node with no edges in or out and exactly one
+            // parent contributes nothing here — no root, no context, no lateral
+            // entry — so the run to its first non-transparent ancestor is skipped
+            // in ONE store read (Store.chainRun) instead of three probes per node.
+            // The interior nodes still enter `seen`, exactly as a node-at-a-time
+            // ascent would have recorded them at push time, so sibling entries into
+            // the same chain keep identical fresh/lateral accounting; and if the
+            // terminal was already seen (another chain merged into this one first),
+            // it is not visited twice — the same dedup the push-time seen-check
+            // used to provide.
+            const run = ctx.store.chainRun(x);
+            if (run.length > 1) {
+                const top = run[run.length - 1];
+                const dup = seen.has(top);
+                for (let i = 1; i < run.length; i++)
+                    seen.add(run[i]);
+                if (dup)
+                    continue;
+                x = top;
+            }
+            if (!visit(x)) {
+                saturated = true;
+                break climb;
+            }
+        }
+    }
+    const reach = { roots, contextsReached: ctxSeen.size, saturated };
+    memo?.set(id, reach);
+    return reach;
+}
+/** Convenience: forward edges of a node. */
+export function nextOf(ctx, id) {
+    return ctx.store.next(id);
+}
+/** Convenience: reverse edges of a node. */
+export function prevOf(ctx, id) {
+    return ctx.store.prev(id);
+}
+/** Whether a node LEADS SOMEWHERE — it bears a continuation edge or a halo.
+ *  The admission predicate recognition filters sites with (HOW_IT_WORKS
+ *  §15.3): a form that leads nowhere contributes nothing to any derivation.
+ *  Runs once per candidate span on the recognition hot path — `hasNext` is
+ *  cached per response (the same flat-branch ids are probed across prefix
+ *  variants by canonicalChunkId).  `hasHalo` is not cached: it's a single
+ *  indexed point probe per candidate, and the candidates that reach this
+ *  check have already been filtered by hasNext above in edgeAncestors. */
+export function leadsSomewhere(ctx, id) {
+    const memo = getStructCache(ctx);
+    if (cachedHasNext(ctx, id, memo))
+        return true;
+    return ctx.store.hasHalo(id);
+}
+/** The structural IDF read of ONE node: how many distinct learnt contexts
+ *  its containment/edge climb reaches, or Infinity when it reaches none or
+ *  saturates (no usable identity evidence).  The number every
+ *  discriminative-vs-scaffolding decision derives from — paired with the
+ *  half-dominance convention (geometry.dominates(reach, N)): content
+ *  reaching a corpus MINORITY of contexts discriminates (an entity, a
+ *  filler); content reaching a majority is frame scaffolding. */
+export function reachOf(ctx, id, contextCount, memo) {
+    const r = edgeAncestors(ctx, id, contextCount, memo);
+    if (r.saturated || r.roots.length === 0)
+        return Infinity;
+    return Math.max(1, r.contextsReached);
+}
+/** The corpus scale N — the count of DISTINCT learnt contexts, floored at 2
+ *  so its derived readings (ln N in the consensus floor, √N in the hub bound)
+ *  stay meaningful on a near-empty store.  The one definition every consumer
+ *  of "how big is this corpus?" reads. */
+export function corpusN(ctx) {
+    return Math.max(2, ctx.store.edgeSourceCount());
+}
+/** The hub bound √N itself (≥ 2 always, since N is floored at 2) — for
+ *  consumers that pass it to the store's LIMITed reads instead of capping a
+ *  materialised list.  {@link hubCap} is the list-side reading of the same
+ *  convention. */
+export function hubBound(ctx) {
+    return Math.ceil(Math.sqrt(corpusN(ctx)));
+}
+/** Cap a candidate list at the hub bound √N (insertion order) — the ONE
+ *  fan-out convention every walk and disambiguation uses (see HOW_IT_WORKS
+ *  §8.6).  A node connected to more than √N others is a hub whose individual
+ *  connections carry ~no discriminative information; materialising or scoring
+ *  them all would make single decisions scale with the corpus. */
+export function hubCap(ctx, ids) {
+    const bound = hubBound(ctx);
+    return ids.length > bound ? ids.slice(0, bound) : ids;
+}
+/** Whether `descendant` lies within `ancestor`'s subtree — a structural DAG
+ *  relation read off the hash-consed `kids` lists, by a bounded explicit-stack
+ *  descent.  Used by articulation to keep a voice from revoicing a fragment
+ *  OF that voice. */
+export function contains(ctx, ancestor, descendant) {
+    if (ancestor === descendant)
+        return true;
+    const seen = new Set([ancestor]);
+    const stack = [ancestor];
+    while (stack.length > 0) {
+        const rec = ctx.store.get(stack.pop());
+        if (!rec?.kids)
+            continue;
+        for (const k of rec.kids) {
+            if (k === descendant)
+                return true;
+            if (!seen.has(k)) {
+                seen.add(k);
+                stack.push(k);
+            }
+        }
+    }
+    return false;
+}
+// ── Edge disambiguation (Section 6) ──────────────────────────────────────
+/** The best-scoring item by cosine against `query`, among items scoring at
+ *  or above `threshold` — the shared arg-max every Pattern-A "which of these
+ *  resonates best" decision reduces to.  `strict` picks the tie-break a
+ *  caller needs: `true` keeps the first-seen leader on a tie (`>`), the
+ *  default lets a later equal score take it (`>=`). */
+export function argmaxBy(items, scoreOf, threshold, strict = false) {
+    let best = null;
+    for (const item of items) {
+        const score = scoreOf(item);
+        const bar = best?.score ?? threshold;
+        if (strict ? score > bar : score >= bar)
+            best = { item, score };
+    }
+    return best;
+}
+export function argmaxCosine(query, items, vecOf, threshold, strict = false) {
+    return argmaxBy(items, (item) => {
+        const v = vecOf(item);
+        return v ? cosine(query, v) : -Infinity;
+    }, threshold, strict);
+}
+/** The guided-or-first continuation of a node, as answer-shaped bytes source:
+ *  chooseNext under the response guide, falling back to the FIRST-inserted
+ *  edge — the one no-guide convention chooseNext, project() and the search's
+ *  formRules all share.  undefined when the node has no continuation. */
+export function guidedFirst(ctx, id) {
+    const pick = guidedNext(ctx, id);
+    if (pick !== undefined)
+        return pick;
+    // No guide in flight (or nothing chosen): the first-inserted edge, read
+    // with LIMIT 1 — never the full fan-out.
+    const nx = ctx.store.nextFirst(id, 1);
+    return nx.length > 0 ? nx[0] : undefined;
+}
+export function guidedNext(ctx, node) {
+    if (ctx._edgeGuide === null)
+        return undefined;
+    // The pick memo is BYPASSED while a rationale trace is attached — the same
+    // policy climbMemo and recogniseMemo follow (every mechanism must emit its
+    // own steps; a memo hit would swallow the repeat's `disambiguate` step).
+    // Consistency does not need the memo: chooseNext is a pure function of the
+    // (read-only) store and the guide, so recomputation yields the same pick.
+    if (!ctx.trace) {
+        const memo = ctx._edgeChoice.get(node);
+        if (memo !== undefined)
+            return memo === -1 ? undefined : memo;
+    }
+    const pick = chooseNext(ctx, node, ctx._edgeGuide);
+    if (!ctx.trace)
+        ctx._edgeChoice.set(node, pick ?? -1);
+    return pick;
+}
+/** Disambiguate among a node's learnt continuations by distributional
+ *  support.  NOTE the `guide` contract: its VALUE is deliberately unused —
+ *  only its PRESENCE gates disambiguation (a null guide means no query is in
+ *  flight, so structural walkers keep plain first-edge behaviour).  The
+ *  gist-cosine of short answer candidates against a query guide is dominated
+ *  by accidental byte-pattern correlations, not semantic relatedness, so the
+ *  evidence consulted is structural: each candidate's reverse-edge support
+ *  count (see below).  Contrast {@link chooseAmong}, the REVERSE-direction
+ *  disambiguator, whose candidates are whole learnt contexts — long enough
+ *  that their perceived gists ARE semantically meaningful — and which
+ *  therefore scores by guide cosine.  The two directions consult different
+ *  halves of the evidence on purpose. */
+export function chooseNext(ctx, id, guide) {
+    // CAPPED read: only the first √N continuations are ever candidates (the
+    // documented hub trade), so only they are read — a hub context's full
+    // fan-out is corpus-sized and must never be materialised.  hubBound ≥ 2,
+    // so the single-continuation fast path below stays exact.
+    const nx = ctx.store.nextFirst(id, hubBound(ctx));
+    if (nx.length === 0)
+        return undefined;
+    if (nx.length === 1 || !guide)
+        return nx[0];
+    // Cap candidates at √N — the same bound the original chooseAmong used.
+    // A hub context can accumulate thousands of continuations; the best-fit
+    // one is among the first √N by insertion order (edges are never deleted,
+    // so the oldest are the most established).  A strongly-supported edge
+    // inserted beyond the cap is invisible here — the deliberate trade
+    // against paying O(fan-out) count reads on every disambiguation.
+    const capped = nx; // already the hub-capped prefix, by the read above
+    // Distributional-evidence disambiguation, consulting BOTH read-outs of the
+    // evidence the training poured:
+    //   1. prevCount — how many DISTINCT contexts predict this candidate (one
+    //      indexed COUNT; never a materialisation — a common continuation's
+    //      reverse fan-in is corpus-sized).  Diversity of independent evidence
+    //      is the primary signal: three different formulations agreeing beat
+    //      one formulation repeated.
+    //   2. haloMass — how many episode signatures were poured into the
+    //      candidate's halo (repetition counts).  The tie-break among equally
+    //      diverse candidates: a fact reinforced across many episodes is more
+    //      corroborated than one seen once, and this is the DIRECT measure of
+    //      that — consulting only the structural count would leave poured
+    //      evidence on the table.
+    // When both are equal, first-inserted wins (backward compatible).
+    let best = capped[0];
+    let bestSupport = ctx.store.prevCount(best);
+    let bestMass = ctx.store.haloMass(best);
+    for (let i = 1; i < capped.length; i++) {
+        const support = ctx.store.prevCount(capped[i]);
+        if (support < bestSupport)
+            continue;
+        const mass = ctx.store.haloMass(capped[i]);
+        if (support > bestSupport || mass > bestMass) {
+            best = capped[i];
+            bestSupport = support;
+            bestMass = mass;
+        }
+    }
+    // Trace is built lazily — the filter + map below only execute when a
+    // trace listener is attached, so the common (no-trace) path pays only
+    // for the prevCount calls in the loop above, never for extra rItemShort
+    // byte-reads.
+    if (ctx.trace) {
+        const others = capped.filter((c) => c !== best);
+        ctx.trace.step("disambiguate", [rItemShort(ctx, best, "halo-evidence", bestSupport)], others.map((c) => rItemShort(ctx, c, "candidate", ctx.store.prevCount(c))), `${capped.length} continuations — distributional evidence selects ` +
+            `the most corroborated (distinct contexts ${bestSupport}, ` +
+            `poured mass ${bestMass})`);
+    }
+    return best;
+}
+/** The perceived gist of a candidate node, through the session gist cache.
+ *  Re-gisting a candidate is a full river fold of its bytes — the measured
+ *  recall bottleneck (a hub context offers up to √N continuations, EACH
+ *  re-perceived per pick).  A node's bytes are immutable and perception is
+ *  pure, so the cached gist is valid for the store's lifetime.  Exported for
+ *  every "score node ids against a guide" decision (chooseAmong here, the
+ *  bridge's junction pick) so they share ONE cache and one convention. */
+export function candidateGist(ctx, c) {
+    const hit = ctx._gistCache.get(c);
+    if (hit !== undefined)
+        return hit;
+    const b = read(ctx, c);
+    if (b.length === 0)
+        return null;
+    const g = gistOf(ctx, b);
+    ctx._gistCache.set(c, g);
+    return g;
+}
+export function chooseAmong(ctx, candidates, guide) {
+    const capped = hubCap(ctx, candidates);
+    const found = argmaxCosine(guide, capped, (c) => candidateGist(ctx, c), -Infinity, true);
+    return found
+        ? { id: found.item, score: found.score }
+        : { id: candidates[0], score: -Infinity };
+}
+// ── Trace shim (used by chooseNext before trace module is loaded) ────────
+import { decodeText } from "./rationale.js";
+function rItemShort(ctx, id, role, score) {
+    return {
+        text: decodeText(read(ctx, id)),
+        node: id,
+        role,
+        score,
+    };
+}