# Experiment 60B.23 — Narrow decision-audience routing to genuine audience-identity uncertainty

**Branch:** `feature/question-family-specificity-v0.29`  
**Date:** 2026-08-13  
**Status:** COMPLETE  
**Type:** BOUNDED IMPLEMENTATION

## Objective

Implement the smallest deterministic narrowing so proposition-specific decision unknowns containing audience nouns do not get hijacked by the generic `decision_audience` route.

The target regression from 60B.21 / 60B.22 was:

```text
label:
Prospective enterprise customer signing status

description:
Uncertainty about whether the prospective enterprise customer will sign if we launch this year, so that its resolution is needed to decide which timing option provides superior net value.
```

This should not be treated as audience discovery merely because `customer` appears in the text.

## 60B.22 diagnosis carried forward

60B.22 established two linked causes:

1. `selectQuestionFamily()` routed any decision-pattern node containing `customer|user|buyer|stakeholder|recipient|audience` into `decision_audience` via first-match early return.
2. `extractMeaning()` also genericised any such noun occurrence into `the relevant customer, user, or value recipient`, bypassing the underlying unresolved proposition.

The implementation boundary for 60B.23 was therefore:

> audience-family routing depends on the semantic role of the audience term, not mere lexical presence.

## Exact semantic narrowing implemented

### 1. Audience-family routing now requires explicit audience-identity phrasing

Added a shared deterministic helper in `lib/graph/question-formulator.js`:

- `hasAudienceIdentityQuestion(text)`

This fires only for explicit audience-identity forms such as:

- `Who is the target customer?`
- `Which buyers are we building this for?`
- `Who would receive the value?`
- `Which audience should this serve?`
- `Who experiences this problem?`

It does **not** fire merely because a customer/user/buyer/stakeholder/recipient noun appears as the subject of another proposition.

### 2. Proposition-preserving extraction now prefers explicit `whether...` descriptions for status-like labels

When the label is a nominal status phrase (`status`, `likelihood`, `probability`, `chance`, `risk`, `uncertainty`) and the description begins with:

```text
Uncertainty about whether ...
```

`extractMeaning()` now returns the explicit `whether ...` proposition directly instead of the nominal label phrase.

This preserves proposition-specific meaning for cases like:

- customer will sign
- customer will renew
- users will adopt the change
- stakeholder will approve the plan

without hardcoding any product-launch wording.

### 3. Decision threshold routing no longer preempts proposition-specific `whether ...` decision unknowns

Within decision-pattern family selection, if extracted meaning is already a `whether ...` proposition, the node stays on `decision_evidence_clarification` rather than being diverted into `decision_threshold_outcome`.

### 4. Legitimate audience questions remain valid through post-build validation

The formulated audience question still resolves to the `decision_audience` family and survives existing question validation. No prompt, schema, provider, or targeting logic changed.

## Behaviour preserved

### Legitimate audience-discovery cases preserved

True audience-identity questions still route to `decision_audience`.

### 60B.20 direct interrogative behaviour preserved

Existing direct proposition-style interrogatives such as:

```text
Will our largest client leave if we relocate?
```

remain unchanged and still produce direct proposition-specific wording.

## Focused test results

### Dedicated question-formulator suite

```bash
npx vitest run tests/graph/question-formulator.test.js
```

Result: **PASS (25/25)**

Covered:

- 60B.21 signing-status regression
- legitimate audience identity preservation
- customer-as-subject non-audience case
- user-as-subject non-audience case
- buyer/stakeholder lexical mention non-audience case
- existing direct interrogative preservation

### Smallest broader regression suite containing decision-family tests

```bash
npx vitest run tests/graph/question-formulator.test.js tests/graph/question-formulation-v0.24.test.js
```

Result: **PASS (45/45)**

## What is now guaranteed

1. Raw audience/customer/user/etc. noun occurrence is no longer sufficient to trigger `decision_audience`.
2. `decision_audience` now requires that audience identity itself be unresolved.
3. Proposition-specific decision unknowns with audience nouns can preserve their unresolved proposition into the final question.
4. Existing audience-discovery questions still route to the audience family.
5. Existing interrogative direct-question behaviour remains unchanged.
6. No schema, prompt, apply-proposal, question-target selection, materiality, compatibility, provider, or harness logic changed.

## What remains unproven until live rerun

Still unproven until the exact 60B.21 live product-launch regression is rerun:

- whether the live model-selected node + final deterministic wording path now yields the expected proposition-specific question in the full end-to-end launch-timing case.

## Production code changed

YES — `lib/graph/question-formulator.js`

## Tests changed

YES — `tests/graph/question-formulator.test.js`

## Prompt changed

NO

## Schema changed

NO

## Apply-proposal changed

NO

## Question-target selection changed

NO

## Materiality changed

NO

## Reasoning-context compatibility changed

NO

## Provider changed

NO

## Harness changed

NO

## Ollama calls

0

## Live API calls

0

## Full suite run

NO