confidence-engine/docs/experiment-60b45.md

Experiment 60B.45 — Closure metadata capture in canonical live harness

Date: 2026-08-14 Branch: feature/closure-metadata-capture-v0.39

Purpose

Expose activeUnknownNodeId and selectedQuestion explicitly in the canonical live harness output/capture layer so the exact 60B.44 live closure case can be rerun and classified from direct evidence rather than inference.

Why this was needed

60B.44 already confirmed live graph-level closure:

• customer factor resolved in place
• decision resolved in place
• both options preserved
• zero new unknowns

But the canonical harness did not explicitly emit/store:

• final activeUnknownNodeId
• final selectedQuestion

That meant null closure had to be inferred from omission instead of being evidenced directly.

Exact harness change

Modified only the canonical harness layer:

• scripts/reproduce-multi-turn-investigation.mjs
• tests/reproduce-multi-turn-investigation.harness.test.js

For accepted updates, the harness now explicitly exposes:

• finalActiveUnknownNodeId
• finalSelectedQuestion

Raw source of each field

• finalActiveUnknownNodeId ← updatedSituationGraph.activeUnknownNodeId
• finalSelectedQuestion ← updateResult.json.selectedQuestion

If either value is actually null, the harness now prints/stores null explicitly rather than omitting the field.

Explicit null distinction

This was the critical apparatus gap:

• null means the production result explicitly cleared the field
• omitted/unavailable means the harness never captured it

The updated harness now preserves that distinction.

Focused deterministic tests

Added focused coverage in tests/reproduce-multi-turn-investigation.harness.test.js for:

1. explicit null finalActiveUnknownNodeId
2. explicit null finalSelectedQuestion
3. populated values surviving unchanged
4. all existing harness capture/regression behaviour remaining green

Validation

Command run:

npx vitest run tests/reproduce-multi-turn-investigation.harness.test.js

Result:

• PASS — 67/67

What is now possible

The exact 60B.44 live closure case can now be rerun once and classified from direct harness evidence for:

• finalActiveUnknownNodeId: null
• finalSelectedQuestion: null

without changing any production reasoning logic or production API shape.