confidence-engine/docs/archive/experiments/decision-closure-integration/experiment-60b26.md

Experiment 60B.26 — Proposition Question Formulation Fix

Branch: feature/proposition-question-shape-v0.30
Date: 2026-08-13
Status: COMPLETE

Objective

Implement the smallest deterministic fix so whether... propositions are turned into concise evidence questions without carrying explanatory rationale, while preserving direct interrogatives and wh-questions.

60B.25 Diagnosis Applied

60B.25 isolated two deterministic causes:

1. extractMeaning(...) returned the full description, including explanatory rationale.
2. isInterrogativeMeaning(...) treated whether... propositions as if they were already finished direct questions.

The intended correction was:

clean unresolved proposition + existing evidence framing

not grammatical rewriting into Will/Does/Is....

Exact Proposition-Extraction Rule

The bounded extraction change stays inside lib/graph/question-formulator.js.

For the existing narrow path where:

• the label is nominal / status-like (status|likelihood|probability|chance|risk|uncertainty)
• and the description begins with whether...

the formulator now extracts only the proposition portion.

Implemented rule:

• match whether ...
• stop at the first clear rationale boundary:
  • ;
  • , so that ...
  • , because ...
  • matters because ...

This is bounded to explicit whether... proposition extraction only. It is not a global semicolon truncation rule.

Exact Whether / Evidence-Framing Rule

The formulator now distinguishes:

• direct interrogatives
  • Will our largest client leave if we relocate?
  • What would change the preferred option?
• indirect unresolved propositions
  • whether the supplier will renew the contract

whether... is no longer treated as a direct interrogative.

Instead, it is routed through the existing deterministic evidence phrasing:

What evidence would clarify whether X?

No subject/auxiliary inversion was added.

Preserved Direct Interrogatives

Direct question labels remain preserved as question-ready:

• yes/no direct interrogatives still pass through unchanged
• wh-questions still pass through unchanged

This also preserves 60B.20-style behaviour.

Focused Test Result

Command run:

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

Result:

PASS (29/29)

Covered regressions:

1. Exact 60B.24 rationale stripping regression
2. Clean whether... proposition without rationale
3. Direct interrogative preserved
4. Wh-question preserved
5. Source node description unchanged
6. Non-whether semicolon content not globally truncated

What Remains Unproven Until Live 60B.24 Rerun

This experiment proves the deterministic question-formulation layer behaves correctly for the fixed regression shape and focused test coverage.

Still unproven live:

• the exact end-to-end 60B.24 continuation through the full runtime path
• whether any upstream live-model variation changes the selected unknown or surrounding graph state before formulation

Production Boundary Confirmed

Changed:

• lib/graph/question-formulator.js
• tests/graph/question-formulator.test.js

Not changed:

• prompt builder
• schema
• apply-proposal
• question-target selection
• materiality
• reasoning-context compatibility
• provider integration
• harness