refactor(confidence-engine): compact current-handoff to operational snapshot; archive v0.61 experiment history to ch19

- Reduce docs/current-handoff.md from 2003 → 185 lines (90% reduction)
- Move all initial-decomposition v0.61 experiment narrative to
  docs/archive/experiments/vol-1-chapters/ch19/initial-decomposition-v0.61.md
- Update design-evolution/README.md with ch19 Era 8 entry
- Add CURRENT MVP DIRECTION section (frozen; OpenAI investigation is next question)
- Fix stale branch reference in current-project-state.md
- Update Return-to-Work Summary to reflect v0.61 completion
- Update Verification Marker for v0.60/v0.61 status
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# Ch19 — Initial Decomposition Hardening (v0.61)
**Status: COMPLETE (frozen)**
**Branch:** `feature/initial-decomposition-v0.61`
**Final HEAD:** `5878ce4` experiment(confidence-engine): add reconstruction-only helper flag
## v0.61 Objective
How stable is the initial semantic decomposition of the same fixed scenario across repeated runs using the same model, prompt version and production API path?
## Fixed manufacturing scenario (used throughout)
```
I run a small manufacturing business. Customer complaints have risen by 35% over the last six months, while production volume increased by 40%.
Most complaints mention late delivery or minor product defects, but our complaint categories changed when we introduced a new CRM tagging system three months ago. During the same period we also changed one supplier and introduced a weekend production shift.
I am deciding whether to spend about £120,000 on automated quality inspection now or wait until we understand whether there is actually a quality problem.
I do not yet know the complaint rate per unit, whether defect rates differ by shift or supplier, or whether the new tagging system changed what gets counted as a complaint.
```
## v0.61.3 — Matched Provider Reconstruction Evidence Checkpoint
**Status:** DOCUMENTATION-ONLY CHECKPOINT
**Purpose:** Record six matched reconstruction-comparison observations (Qwen + Terra) against the canonical manufacturing fixture before closing out. No live model calls. No production changes.
### Production prompt / schema frozen
- **Prompt:** `reconstruct-v0.5` (production default)
- **Rule:** Rule 5a
- **Salience check:** semantic-preservation
- **Schema:** canonical reconstruction schema
- **Path:** reconstruction-only experiment path
### Qwen / Ollama evidence (3 matched observations)
| Channel | Finding |
|---|---|
| A — complaints +35%, production +40%, complaint-rate-per-unit uncertainty | semantically stable |
| B — CRM tagging / complaint-count comparability uncertainty | semantically stable |
| C — late-delivery versus minor-product-defect distinction | meaning preserved, representation varied |
| D1 — supplier-related defect uncertainty | meaning preserved, but supplier and shift frequently recombined |
| D2 — weekend-shift-related defect uncertainty | meaning preserved, but supplier and shift frequently recombined |
| E — intervention-fit dependency | core dependency preserved, graph topology varied |
**Important observed pattern:** compound supplier/shift unknown appeared in all three Qwen runs.
### Terra / OpenAI evidence (3 matched observations)
| Channel | Finding |
|---|---|
| A — complaints +35%, production +40% | stable |
| B — CRM comparability | stable |
| C — late-delivery vs defects | semantically stable and separately represented in all three |
| D1 — supplier-related defect uncertainty | stable |
| D2 — weekend-shift-related defect uncertainty | stable |
| E — intervention-fit dependency | core dependency stable |
All three Terra runs: supplier transition distinct=YES, weekend-shift distinct=YES, compound supplier/shift=NO, unsupported expansion=NO, causal strengthening=NO.
### Cross-provider conclusion
> Exact graph topology is not stable for either provider and should not be treated as a reconstruction invariant. The more important invariant is preservation and independent recoverability of supplied distinctions and uncertainties.
> Terra showed stronger stability in preserving independently investigable C and D1/D2 distinctions as separate graph structures. Qwen preserved their meaning but more frequently compressed them into combined representations.
## v0.61 Experiment 5 — Repeated Same-Input Initial Decomposition Stability
**Status:** INCOMPLETE — five runs required; obtained four successful plus one validation failure.
### Execution
- **Route:** POST /api/cases/start
- **Requests made:** 5 (4 successful, 1 validation failure)
- **Model:** `qwen-claude:latest`
- **Prompt version:** v0.2
### Structure Range
| | Nodes | Unknowns | Assumptions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Run 1 | 16 | 3 | 3 |
| Run 2 | 20 | 7 | 2 |
| Run 3 | 21 | 3 | 3 |
| Run 4 | 14 | 3 | 2 |
Unknown count: 37. Assumption count: 23. Total node count: 1421.
### Semantic Channel Frequency (Runs 14)
```
A Normalisation: 4/4 present, 0/4 partial, 0/4 absent
B CRM comparability: 4/4 present, 0/4 partial, 0/4 absent
C Delivery vs defects: 1/4 present, 3/4 partial, 0/4 absent
D Supplier/shift/source: 4/4 present, 0/4 partial, 0/4 absent
E Intervention fit: 1/4 present, 0/4 partial, 3/4 absent
```
### Key findings
- Run 2 introduced speculative subdivisions not grounded in source text (customer segment variation, QC team capability shifts, responsibility distribution impact, batch-size/equipment utilization correlation).
- No run contained steering language, unsupported causal claims, premature arithmetic conclusions, or action recommendations.
- The £120k intervention was represented neutrally in all runs.
### Conclusion
Initial decomposition represents core factual uncertainty channels (normalisation, CRM comparability, supplier/shift ambiguity) to varying degrees. Primary instability: intervention-fit mapping and speculative subdivision risk. Graph topology varies materially (1421 nodes).
## Focused-deconstruction plumbing fix (historical)
**Root cause:** focused route passed full provider envelope `{ response, providerApiPath, providerExecution }` into `validateFocusedDeconstructSchema()`. Validator expected semantic fields at top level but they lived on `wrapper.response`, not the wrapper. All six fields appeared absent → structured-output 502.
**Fix:** Route extracts `const deconstruction = wrapper.response` and passes inner object to validation and serialization. Provider diagnostics preserved but do not interfere with semantic fields.
**Tests:** `tests/focused-deconstruct-boundary.test.js` — 48 focused-investigation-boundary tests pass on first run. Previous two pre-fix semantic runs remain invalid as semantic evidence.
### Post-fix repeatability (3 controlled Qwen/Ollama runs)
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Qwen/Ollama calls | 3 |
| HTTP 200 | 3/3 |
| schema valid | 3/3 |
| supplier evidence preservation | 3/3 PASS |
| weekend-shift uncertainty preservation | 3/3 PASS |
| epistemic separation | 3/3 PASS |
| unsupported inference | 0/3 |
| steering | 0/3 |
**Product interpretation:** For the fixed compound supplier/weekend-shift case, Qwen's initial compression did not prevent focused-investigation stage from repeatedly recovering the epistemic distinction once substantive user evidence was supplied. This supports tolerating some initial representation compression when meaning survives downstream.
This is **not yet generalised to a production invariant.**
## v0.61 — Closed experiment boundaries
| Boundary | Status |
|---|---|
| Repeated-same-input decomposition experiments | FROZEN |
| Qwen/Terra reconstruction comparison | FROZEN |
| Initial prompt refinement | FROZEN |
| Supplier/weekend-shift decomposition experiments | FROZEN |
| Relationship-preservation experiments | FROZEN |
| Causal-fidelity experiments | FROZEN |
## v0.4 initial reconstruction — implementation status
**Status:** COMPLETE — deterministic tests pass, one live smoke accepted
**Prompt:** `prompts/reconstruct-v0.4.md` (replaced by v0.5 in production default)
**Tests:** 89/89 passed on first run, zero reruns
Key principles proven: provenance-preserving decomposition, relationship preservation, explicit stop boundary, interpretation separation. All documented and verified.
## Git
- **Documentation commit:** `docs(confidence-engine): record focused deconstruction repeatability`
- **Working tree:** clean after this session's commit
---
*This chapter records the initial-decomposition v0.61 experiment line. The line is frozen for the current MVP stage. See `docs/current-handoff.md` §CURRENT MVP DIRECTION.*