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feat(research-loop-cap): give the discovery ceiling a reader, not just a sentence

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The bounded-cost NFR asks for explicit ceilings on BOTH axes - max
conversation turns and max discovered dimensions. The turn axis got
MAX_CONV_TURNS, a ledger-backed reader and a PreToolUse enforcer. The
discovery axis got one sentence in Phase 4.5 prose ("append candidates only
while the whole list stays at or below maxDimensions: 8") with no constant
of its own, no reader, and no test that a run exceeding it is caught. That
is the brief_reviewer_iter_cap shape the operator decision warned about: a
cap nothing reads.

checkDimensionCeiling() is the reader, exposed on the CLI as
--check-dimensions N (exit 0 within, exit 1 rejected), and Phase 4.5 step 3
now calls it once the final list is settled instead of merely describing the
bound.

Three deliberate choices:

- The ceiling IS MAX_TOTAL_DIMENSIONS, the constant that sizes the turn
  budget. Both axes read one settings.json:16 value, so they cannot end up
  enforcing different numbers - a second constant is how that drift starts.
- An unreadable count is REJECTED ('abc', null, undefined, {}, -1, NaN,
  non-integers). A cost ceiling that waves through what it cannot measure is
  not a ceiling.
- --check-dimensions requires no run id, effort or VOYAGE_STORM_ENABLED.
  Phase 4.5 never calls the budget gate - that is why its skip-guard reads
  the flag directly - so the ceiling check must not inherit the gate's
  preconditions.

The mitigation the review already verified still holds and is unchanged:
MAX_TOTAL_DIMENSIONS bounds actual retrieval cost regardless of how many
dimensions discovery appends. What was missing was anything that FAILS on a
list over the bound, and now a run over it is rejected by exit code.

Review finding 96a3ee51152dfe72aca703f771843f2f3639e7b6 (MINOR).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LuGhWAbWyRFBFeemfhxoVv
This commit is contained in:
Kjell Tore Guttormsen 2026-08-12 23:09:11 +02:00
commit 84612b2641
4 changed files with 137 additions and 2 deletions
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17
commands/trekresearch.md
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@ -418,6 +418,23 @@ agent surfaced that no interview dimension claims.
raised here, so the documented 3–8 dimension range stays true and the
README prose about it stays untouched. If the interview already produced 8
dimensions, this phase discovers nothing and says so.
**The ceiling has a reader — use it.** Once the final list is settled, run
the check below. Exit 1 means the list exceeded the ceiling: drop discovered
dimensions until it passes. Do not proceed to Phase 5 on a rejected list —
the turn budget is sized against this same ceiling, so a list over it spends
a budget that was never approved for it.
```bash
# Same VOYAGE_ROOT resolution as the per-turn protocol in Phase 5. Exit 0 =
# within the ceiling, exit 1 = rejected. JSON on stdout: {ok, count, ceiling, reason?}
node "$VOYAGE_ROOT/lib/util/research-loop-cap.mjs" --check-dimensions {final dimension count}
```
The ceiling constant is `MAX_TOTAL_DIMENSIONS` in
`lib/util/research-loop-cap.mjs` — deliberately the same constant that sizes
the Phase 5 turn budget, so the two axes of the bounded-cost NFR cannot end
up enforcing different numbers for one `settings.json:16` value.
4. **Record the baseline.** Keep the interview-derived count as
`dimensions_baseline` so the discovered delta is machine-readable against
the final `dimensions` (Phase 8 stats).