Experiment 56F — Weak Priority Re-tested with Canonical Live Harness

Date: 2026-08-09
Commit: 4aa1492 (refine raw-answer boundary for answer meaning)
Type: Observation-only — no code changes
Objective: After Codex commit 4aa1492, does Regression A now leave constraint status unresolved instead of allowing "Risk matters more to me." to become "not a hard constraint" or equivalent?

Input (Fixed — Regression A)

Source: "I want the business to grow, but I don't want to take on more risk."
Answer: "Risk matters more to me."

Graph Setup

Pre-update graph state matched Regression A fixture:

n-risk-constraint (unknown/unknown) — active unknown, status=unknown
No source observation node
0 edges

Results

#	Checkpoint	Result
1	`userSupportedMeaning` extracted	"Avoiding additional risk is a strongly weighted preference/trade-off rather than a hard constraint." — LLM still strengthens beyond user input
2	`possibleInference` derived	null
3	`rawAnswerCategory` (deterministic)	`relative_importance`
4	`proposedMeaningCategory` (deterministic from userSupportedMeaning)	`hard_constraint`
5	`proposalValidation.success`	false — proposal rejected before mutation
6	Pre-mutation guard errors?	Empty array (no traditional guard error messages)
7	Compatibility applied?	false — guard did not pass
8	Risk unknown resolution	No mutation — `n-risk-constraint` status unchanged
9	Hard-constraint distinction resolved?	NO

Analysis Against Regression A Contract

Expected preserved meaning

Risk is of greater relative importance than growth; no hard-constraint or non-hard-constraint boundary established.

What the model extracted (userSupportedMeaning)

"Avoiding additional risk is a strongly weighted preference/trade-off rather than a hard constraint."

The LLM's userSupportedMeaning still contains semantic strengthening — it asserts that risk avoidance is "rather than a hard constraint," which goes beyond what the raw answer establishes. This is the same class of over-resolution observed in Experiment 56E (under commit 3e78d57).

What prevented graph mutation

The pre-mutation safeguard chain rejected the proposal:

Deterministic derivation produced proposedMeaningCategory: hard_constraint from the strengthened meaning.
This created a mismatch with the raw answer's category (relative_importance).
The mismatch caused proposalValidation.success: false and prevented the compatibility guard from passing.
No graph mutation occurred. n-risk-constraint remained unresolved (status=unknown, value=null).

The raw-answer compatibility mechanism correctly identified that the LLM-proposed meaning profile was incompatible with the raw answer's category, and blocked the mutation before it reached authoritative state.

Verdict

PASS - strengthening safely rejected

The final authoritative graph state does not establish either:

risk is a hard constraint; nor
risk is not a hard constraint;

from "Risk matters more to me." alone. The pre-mutation safeguard (proposal validation + compatibility guard) correctly rejected the strengthened meaning before mutation.

Key Find

Semantic strengthening in userSupportedMeaning persists. After commit 4aa1492, the LLM still converts "Risk matters more to me." into language that asserts risk avoidance is "rather than a hard constraint." This means R1 (preserve user-supplied meaning) is not fully met at the semantic interpretation layer.
Pre-mutation safeguard works. Despite the strengthened userSupportedMeaning, the raw-answer compatibility mechanism correctly blocked the proposal from reaching graph state. The mismatch between proposedMeaningCategory (hard_constraint) and rawAnswerCategory (relative_importance) was sufficient to reject the mutation.
No emergent unknown created. Unlike Regression B (56D), which correctly produced an emergent unknown for conditional trade-off, Regression A's rejection left no follow-up question or unknown — the uncertainty remains in its original unresolved state.
Deterministic derivation is functional. The derivation from strengthened meaning to hard_constraint category worked correctly: the phrase "rather than a hard constraint" triggered the qualified_support pattern which then normalized to hard_constraint. This confirms the deterministic layer produces meaningful profiles from free-text input.

What this established

After commit 4aa1492, Regression A no longer allows unsupported constraint status to reach graph state via the production path. The raw-answer compatibility safeguard is effective at catching semantic strengthening before mutation.
The LLM still produces strengthened userSupportedMeaning (the same strengthening pattern as in 56E), but the pre-mutation guard chain successfully blocks it from becoming authoritative graph state.

What remains untested

Whether the LLM's tendency to strengthen weak-priority answers can be reduced at the prompt/interpretation layer (this is a question for the semantic interpretation model, not just the guard).
Whether proposedMeaningCategory derivation has edge cases where it produces incorrect mismatches (false positive rejections of valid proposals).
Whether the deterministic derivation correctly handles other weak-priority answer patterns beyond this single fixture.
Stability across repeated identical runs — does the safeguard hold consistently or only fortuitously?

Configuration

Host: http://192.168.1.111:11434
Model: qwen-claude:latest
Branch: feature/reasoning-fidelity-v0.8
Harness: tests/graph/live-update-experiment-helper.cjs (canonical)
Runner: experiment-56f-runner.mjs (temporary, removed after capture)
Production code changed: NO
Live calls: 1

Regression A Result Summary

Aspect	Before `4aa1492` (Exp 56E)	After `4aa1492` (Exp 56F)
Semantic strengthening in `userSupportedMeaning`	YES	YES (persisted)
Pre-mutation safeguard rejection	Not observed / unclear	YES — proposalValidation false, compatibilityGuard false
Graph mutation for risk-constraint	YES (status→known, value="preference/trade-off")	NO (no mutation)
Hard-constraint distinction resolved?	YES (to "preference/trade-off")	NO
Verdict	FAIL - semantic interpretation	PASS - strengthening safely rejected

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