experiment: validate cold-start project recovery

docs/cold-start-validation.md

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+# Cold-Start Validation — Experiment 38
+
+## 1. Context Initially Loaded
+
+- `docs/current-handoff.md` (primary entry point, per handoff §6 step 1)
+- `docs/current-project-state.md` (per handoff §6 step 2 and section 7 routing table)
+- `docs/task-context-packs.md` (per handoff §6 step 3)
+
+## 2. Additional Context Loaded
+
+None required. All project state, capability boundaries, and context-pack selection were determined from the three initial documents without loading the full design-evolution log, archived material, or source code.
+
+## 3. Project-State Recovery
+
+The Confidence Engine helps users decide whether they have enough justified confidence to act on a complicated problem, one step at a time. It reconstructs situations, separates observations/assumptions/relationships/unknowns, builds reasoning graphs, selects unresolved uncertainties, asks questions, and updates from answers until action is justified.
+
+**Active capabilities:** deterministic reasoning pipeline (scenario reconstruction → graph update → propagation → confidence/completeness), unknown selection via atomicity/answerability checks, question formulation within a reasoning pattern, scenario API (analyseScenario/updateCase), investigation turn cycle orchestration.
+
+**Passive/diagnostic only:** investigation-state assessment, behaviour selection, decision condition status evaluation, question-to-condition relevance scoring, evidence direction classification, evidence scope detection, scope-aware condition status via phrase matching — all from Experiments 18–25B, none control the user-facing investigation.
+
+**Paused work:** engine experiments (after Exp 25B), UI experiments.
+
+**Active work:** none currently; knowledge-management phase concluded pending Rob's review.
+
+**Why KM phase:** documentation had grown large enough to overload Claude and make returning across sessions difficult.
+
+## 4. Context-Pack Selection
+
+- **Pack selected:** Pack 1 — Engine Experiment Work.
+- **Default documents:** `docs/current-project-state.md`, `docs/current-working-principles.md`, `.claude/architecture-guardrails.md`, `docs/current-implementation-verification.md`.
+- **Deliberately excluded:** full design-evolution history, archived documents, UI mock reference, deferred UX backlog.
+- **Additional required document:** none — the three initial files fully determined the pack choice and all boundaries.
+
+## 5. Resume Boundary
+
+The active reasoning loop is intact: deterministic pipeline processes scenario reconstruction → graph update → propagation → confidence/completeness. Everything from Experiments 18–25B remains isolated diagnostic layers outside this loop. Specifically:
+
+- Investigation-state assessment: passive, no active integration.
+- Behaviour selection: no callers outside its own module.
+- Decision/evidence classifiers: passive recording signals only.
+
+A safe starting boundary for resumed engine work would be one isolated passive module at a time — not connecting anything to the active pipeline until Rob chooses which passive classifier to test first.
+
+## 6. Engine-Work Resume Brief
+
+Experiment 25B established scope-aware condition status — distinguishing direct evidence from relevant-but-different claims by checking subject, timeframe and claim type independently. Phrase-based language interpretation remains provisional scaffolding: narrow, targeted, replaceable, not a finished language-understanding system. The active runtime file to inspect first would be `docs/current-implementation-verification.md` to confirm current module boundaries. Behaviour Selection (or investigation-state assessment) from Experiments 18–25B is the likely subject of the next passive-to-active integration experiment. Nothing must change until Rob chooses and designs the next experiment.
+
+## 7. Handoff Defects Found
+
+None found. The handoff accurately describes the stopping point, identifies all seven completion criteria as met, provides correct resume instructions, and includes the appropriate routing table and return-to-work note format.
+
+## 8. Overall Result
+
+**Ready to resume engine experiments**
+
+Evidence: A genuinely cold session (no prior conversation context) recovered the complete project state from three documents, correctly identified the Engine Experiment pack, distinguished active vs passive capabilities without reading source code or full history, found no handoff defects, and confirmed all seven knowledge-management criteria are met. The reduced context system works for a fresh session.
+
+Knowledge-management phase is complete enough for Rob to choose when engine experiments resume.