fix(recommendation): don't shrink a candidate arm ordered by unseeded random()
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Fixes the integration failure from f367eeaa:
"same-day rebuild produced different track lists".

Cutting RandomFill 30→10 for Songs-like broke
TestBuildSystemPlaylists_DailyNonceDeterminism, and the reason is worth
stating because the number is not the bug.

`likes_overlap` and `random_fill` end in a bare `ORDER BY random()` with no
daily seed (recommendation.sql:118, :161). Such an arm returns a STABLE set
only while its LIMIT exceeds the rows eligible for it — then it returns all
of them, and the random order stops mattering because scoreAndSortCandidates
sorts by track id before drawing jitter. Below that threshold the arm
returns a random SUBSET, and two builds on the same day draw different ones.

So the test was green by accident. It seeds ~20 tracks against a default
RandomFill of 30; the limit exceeded the library, so the arm returned
everything. Determinism held for a reason unrelated to the code being right.

Which means it does NOT hold in production. Any real library is larger than
30, so same-day rebuilds have been drawing different mixes since that arm
was written — invisible, because a mix changing after a refresh looks like a
feature. Filed as #3889; the fix is a seeded ordering per (user, day), which
needs a .sql change and sqlc regeneration and so cannot land from here.

The correction: grow an arm freely, never shrink one whose ordering is
unseeded random. LikesOverlap and RandomFill go back to the defaults;
TasteOverlap stays halved because it sorts by `tpa.weight DESC, t.id` and is
genuinely deterministic. Guarded by a test that names the reasoning, so the
next person to trim these has to read why first — and it should be DELETED
once #3889 lands rather than worked around.

The cost is honest: the seed-independent share of the Songs-like pool falls
from 29% to 20% instead of the intended cut. That matters less than it
sounds. The pool only biases the draw; the songs_like WEIGHTS are what
actually demote sim_score-0 candidates, and they are untouched here — a
perfect match still scores 5.00 against an unrelated favourite's 2.00.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01SQ31KQpYbStyK5y58UmPLH
This commit is contained in:
2026-09-10 20:59:39 -04:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent f367eeaa9d
commit ecfa056d4d
2 changed files with 73 additions and 11 deletions
@@ -59,3 +59,41 @@ func TestSongsLikeLimits_KeepThePoolRoughlyTheSameSize(t *testing.T) {
"this was meant to re-weight the pool, not starve it", s, d)
}
}
// The constraint that is invisible in the numbers, and that this file exists
// to keep visible.
//
// `likes_overlap` and `random_fill` end in a bare `ORDER BY random()` with no
// daily seed (recommendation.sql:118, :161). Such an arm returns a stable set
// only while its LIMIT exceeds the eligible rows; below that it returns a
// random SUBSET that differs between two builds on the same day, and the
// daily-determinism promise quietly stops holding.
//
// This is not hypothetical — it is how this change first failed CI. Cutting
// RandomFill to 10 broke TestBuildSystemPlaylists_DailyNonceDeterminism,
// whose library is smaller than the default limit and whose determinism was
// therefore an accident of the limit exceeding the library.
//
// Growing these arms is always safe. Only shrinking is, and the fix that
// would make shrinking safe is a seeded ordering (#3889), not a smaller
// number here.
func TestSongsLikeLimits_DoNotShrinkTheUnseededRandomArms(t *testing.T) {
d := DefaultCandidateSourceLimits()
s := SongsLikeCandidateSourceLimits()
for _, tc := range []struct {
arm string
songsLike, dflt int
}{
{"RandomFill", s.RandomFill, d.RandomFill},
{"LikesOverlap", s.LikesOverlap, d.LikesOverlap},
} {
if tc.songsLike < tc.dflt {
t.Errorf("%s cut from %d to %d. That arm is ordered by unseeded random(), "+
"so a smaller limit makes pool membership vary between same-day "+
"rebuilds — it breaks daily determinism rather than merely narrowing "+
"the mix. Fix the ordering (#3889) before trimming this.",
tc.arm, tc.dflt, tc.songsLike)
}
}
}