Milestone 333 step 1. The write-path standing-rule arm is the only retrieval
surface in Scribe whose usefulness cannot be observed — and, not
coincidentally, the only one that has never declined to fire. 296 calls, zero
zero-result, 100% clearing its threshold, while every other surface declines
most of the time (#3311, and re-measured in note #3430). `retrieval_logs`
gives it scores; scores say what the ranker thought, never whether the hint
landed.
WHY A SIBLING TABLE AND NOT A COLUMN ON note_usage_events. The row carries no
note-specific field and the readout is the same shape, which is the strongest
case for sharing that note #3163 admits. What decides against it is identity at
RESTORE: the note importer maps note_id through note_id_map, so a rule id
parked in that column comes back attached to whatever note holds that number in
the target database. Not dropped — reattached. The restore reports success, the
counters are populated, and every one is about the wrong record, with no other
field to disagree with. rule_versions made the same call for the same reason;
this is the third rule-side sibling and it reads like the first two.
FK-free on rule_id and user_id, matching note_usage_events / retrieval_logs /
app_logs, and deliberately unlike rule_versions. A version belongs to a rule's
history and dies with it; telemetry outlives what it describes. Deleting a rule
must not erase the evidence that it was surfaced forty times and opened never,
because that evidence is the case for having deleted it.
The service uses `background.spawn` rather than a third copy of the
strong-reference dance — that module's own docstring says new callers should,
and a fourth copy is how one of them drifts. The AppLog canary #2663 demands is
kept, and since `rule_usage` needed exactly `note_usage`'s semantics, that
canary moved into `background.report_telemetry_failure` and note_usage now
calls it. `retrieval_telemetry` deliberately keeps its own: its canary is a
different shape (one process-wide flag, no AppLog row), so repointing it would
change behaviour rather than consolidate it.
No ambient bucket, and that is a decision. The note twin splits ranked from
ambient surfacings because enter_project and the skill sync deliver records
without choosing them (#2477). Rules have the same problem waiting —
list_always_on_rules loads them wholesale — but nothing emits here yet, so an
empty AMBIENT_SOURCES would be machinery pretending to a distinction the data
does not contain. `source` stays granular, so the split stays a readout-level
change needing no migration.
Backup carries it (v14). The round-trip test seeds a NOTE alongside the rule so
the target database has a note id to collide with — without that decoy, a
restore running rule ids through the wrong map would merely drop them and the
test would pass by absence, rather than failing on the populated-and-wrong
result that is the actual hazard.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01TcCs1CcQ1ormdnzSshKqvN