feat(retrieval): a System's charter becomes an answer, not just a filter (#4251)
CI & Build / Python lint (push) Successful in 3s
CI & Build / Plugin hooks (push) Successful in 13s
CI & Build / TypeScript typecheck (push) Successful in 54s
CI & Build / integration (push) Successful in 58s
CI & Build / Python tests (push) Successful in 1m38s
CI & Build / Build & push image (push) Successful in 27s

Step 2 of #4251. A System's `description` is a charter — several hundred words
saying what belongs in that area and what does not — and it is the answer to
"which part of this codebase does X live in". There was no semantic path to
one: `list_systems` enumerates, and `search(system_id=…)` uses a System as a
FILTER over notes. So a System could narrow a search and could never be the
answer to one, and an agent asking where a record belonged had to read every
charter or guess.

ITS OWN SEARCH, not a `content_type` over notes, for the reason note 3163
gives about milestones: the row could be shared, the search cannot. A charter
competing with the whole note corpus for one top-k is outranked by the records
filed under it — the right answer crowded out by its own contents — and "where
does this belong?" is a different question from "what prior art is there?",
which a caller asking one should not have to read past answers to.

So `system_embeddings` (0107) joins note_, rule_ and milestone_embeddings as
the fourth sibling, with `system_document`, `upsert_system_embedding`,
`semantic_search_systems`, a startup backfill and `search(content_type=
"system")`. Scoped like milestones: with a project_id, that project's Systems
if the caller can read the project (rule 78); without one, the caller's own.
Archived Systems are excluded — an archived area is one the operator has said
is no longer where things go, which is exactly the question being asked.

`system_document` is the plainest of the four shapes on purpose. A charter is
already written as the thing this search has to match, in the words someone
asking would use — so there is no trigger to synthesise as `rule_document`
must, and no second record to gather as `task_document` must. The stored
charter IS the sharp document, the way a snippet's is. `color`, `status` and
`order_index` stay out: presentation and bookkeeping, and a vector carrying
them would be answering a question nobody asks of a charter.

The search publishes `report["best_chunk"]` from the start rather than being
retrofitted, which is what #4251 asked of any fourth search. It matters more
here than anywhere: a charter runs long and a result shows its NAME, so a match
on the paragraph that actually decides where a record belongs would otherwise
be previewed by two words that cannot say.

The id that comes back is the one `system_id`, `system_ids` and
`list_system_records` already take, so the answer to "where does this belong?"
is directly usable as "show me what is there" and as "file it here".

`embed_system` sits beside `notes.embed_note` at the service for #2056's
reason — every door gets it by construction. Not called on delete: that is a
soft delete and the search joins through `System`, so the vectors are already
unreachable, and leaving them means a restore is findable again immediately.
`system_embeddings` is declared in backup's `_NOT_INCLUDED` as derived, beside
its three siblings.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01821k5B3Ysecp9fNYs92Kuy
This commit is contained in:
2026-09-21 11:25:53 -04:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent aa95c109ea
commit 1fca8c2808
10 changed files with 663 additions and 9 deletions
+39
View File
@@ -128,3 +128,42 @@ class MilestoneEmbedding(Base):
DateTime(timezone=True),
default=lambda: datetime.now(timezone.utc),
)
class SystemEmbedding(Base):
"""One embedding vector per CHUNK of a System's charter (#4251).
The fourth sibling, for the reason note 3163 gives about the third: the row
could be shared, the search cannot. A System's `description` is a charter —
several hundred words saying what belongs in that area and what does not —
and it is the answer to "which part of this codebase does X live in".
Before this there was no semantic path to one: `list_systems` enumerates,
and `search(system_id=…)` uses a System as a FILTER over notes. So a System
could narrow a search and could never be the answer to one.
"Where does this belong?" is a different question from "what prior art is
there?", which is why this is its own search rather than a note_type: a
charter competing with two thousand notes for the same top-k would be
outranked by the records filed under it, and the right answer would be
crowded out by its own contents.
The document is the name and the charter. Derived data: the startup
backfill regenerates it, which is also how a chunker-version bump is
handled.
"""
__tablename__ = "system_embeddings"
system_id: Mapped[int] = mapped_column(
Integer,
ForeignKey("systems.id", ondelete="CASCADE"),
primary_key=True,
)
chunk_index: Mapped[int] = mapped_column(Integer, primary_key=True)
embedding: Mapped[list] = mapped_column(Vector(EMBEDDING_DIM), nullable=False)
chunk_text: Mapped[str] = mapped_column(Text, nullable=False)
chunker_version: Mapped[int] = mapped_column(Integer, nullable=False)
updated_at: Mapped[datetime] = mapped_column(
DateTime(timezone=True),
default=lambda: datetime.now(timezone.utc),
)