---
session_id: S-2026-0225-0825
timestamp: 2026-02-25T07:25:30Z
predecessor: S-2026-0225-0720
tasks_active: [T-261, T-262, T-263, T-265, T-266, T-267, T-268, T-269, T-271]
tasks_touched: [T-268, T-269, T-271, T-266, T-261, T-265, T-262, T-263, T-267, T-270, T-264]
tasks_completed: []
uncommitted_changes: 19
owner: claude-code
session_narrative: "Fixed budget-gate stale critical trap (T-271) and built multi-turn Q&A conversation (T-268). All Q&A Phase 2 tasks now complete (10/10). T-268 was the one-way door: EventSource→fetch+ReadableStream with client-side conversation history."
---

# Session Handover: S-2026-0225-0825

## Where We Are

Q&A Phase 2 is fully complete — all 10 build tasks done (T-262..T-271). T-268 (multi-turn) was the last feature, completing the EventSource→fetch migration. T-271 fixed a budget-gate bug that trapped sessions in permanent critical state after compaction. 8 tasks have human ACs pending browser verification at http://localhost:3000/search. Web server is running on :3000.

## Work in Progress

<!-- horizon: now -->

### T-261: "Q&A Phase 2 — model upgrade, RAG quality, framework integration, saved answers"
- **Status:** started-work (horizon: now)
- **Last action:** All child tasks completed including T-268 (multi-turn) and T-271 (bugfix)
- **Next step:** Human reviews all completed tasks in browser, marks human ACs
- **Blockers:** Owner: human (inception task)
- **Insight:** Full Phase 2 delivered across 4 sessions

### T-262: "Replace LLM with Qwen3-14B + thinking mode toggle"
- **Status:** work-completed (horizon: now, partial-complete: human ACs pending)
- **Last action:** Completed in prior session — Qwen3-14B + should_think() classifier
- **Next step:** Human verifies answer quality in browser
- **Blockers:** None
- **Insight:** ~33 tok/s with think=False

### T-263: "RAG quick wins — prompt, embeddings, chunking"
- **Status:** work-completed (horizon: now, partial-complete: human ACs pending)
- **Last action:** Completed in prior session — nomic-embed-text-v2-moe, chunk overlap, LRU cache
- **Next step:** Human verifies answer quality in browser
- **Blockers:** None
- **Insight:** Cache: 207ms to 0ms on repeated queries

### T-265: "Saved answers — curated Q&A for retrieval flywheel"
- **Status:** work-completed (horizon: now, partial-complete: human ACs pending)
- **Last action:** Built Save Answer button, POST endpoint, .context/qa/ indexing
- **Next step:** Human tests save button in browser
- **Blockers:** None
- **Insight:** Saved answers auto-indexed by BM25 and vector search on rebuild

### T-266: "Streaming UX — marked.js, syntax highlighting, copy buttons"
- **Status:** work-completed (horizon: now, partial-complete: human ACs pending)
- **Last action:** Completed in prior session — marked.js, highlight.js, DOMPurify, copy buttons
- **Next step:** Human verifies rendering in browser
- **Blockers:** None
- **Insight:** All JS libraries served locally for offline capability

### T-267: "User feedback — thumbs up/down on Q&A answers"
- **Status:** work-completed (horizon: now, partial-complete: human ACs pending)
- **Last action:** Built thumbs up/down buttons, SQLite storage, analytics page
- **Next step:** Human tests feedback buttons, checks /search/feedback/analytics
- **Blockers:** None
- **Insight:** SQLite DB in .context/working/ — persistent but not version-controlled

### T-271: "Fix budget-gate stale critical status trap"
- **Status:** work-completed (horizon: now, owner: human)
- **Last action:** Fixed stale critical trap — FORCE_RECHECK forces slow path re-read
- **Next step:** Human completes: `fw task update T-271 --status work-completed --force`
- **Blockers:** Human-owned task
- **Insight:** L-014 predicted this class of bug (stale caching danger). L-067 recorded.

<!-- horizon: next -->

### T-268: "Multi-turn Q&A conversation"
- **Status:** work-completed (horizon: next, partial-complete: human ACs pending)
- **Last action:** Replaced EventSource with fetch+ReadableStream, added client-side history, conversation thread, New Conversation button
- **Next step:** Human tests multi-turn in browser — verify follow-up answers reference prior context
- **Blockers:** None
- **Insight:** One-way door completed. POST /search/ask with {query, history} body. Last 6 turns sent to Ollama.

### T-269: "Cross-encoder reranking with Qwen3-Reranker"
- **Status:** work-completed (horizon: next, partial-complete: human AC pending)
- **Last action:** Built reranking infrastructure with graceful fallback (prior session)
- **Next step:** Install reranker model when available in Ollama registry
- **Blockers:** Model not in Ollama registry
- **Insight:** Infrastructure auto-activates via _rerank_available() check

## Inception Phases

**1 inception task(s) pending decision** — run `fw inception status` for details.

## Gaps Register

**2 spec-reality gap(s) being watched** — see `.context/project/gaps.yaml`

- **G-004** [low]: Multi-agent collaboration untested
- **G-011** [low]: PostToolUse hooks are advisory-only — cannot block actions

Run `fw audit` to check if any trigger conditions are met.

## Decisions Made This Session

1. **Budget-gate: stale critical falls through to slow path (T-271)**
   - Why: Old Bug 3 fix blindly trusted stale critical, creating permanent trap after compaction
   - Rejected: Removing Bug 3 fix entirely (would bypass fresh critical), session ID tracking (overcomplex)

2. **SSE transport: fetch+ReadableStream with POST body (T-268)**
   - Why: EventSource only supports GET — no way to send conversation history in request body
   - Rejected: History in query params (URL length limits), server-side sessions (adds state complexity)

## Things Tried That Failed

1. **curl POST to /search/ask with 5s timeout** — 0 bytes received. Root cause: Flask dev server is single-threaded + Ollama model cold start (~20s) + vector index rebuild. Previous timed-out requests blocked the server. Clean restart + 120s timeout fixed it.

## Open Questions / Blockers

1. 8 tasks have human ACs pending — verify in browser at http://localhost:3000/search
2. T-271 needs human completion: `fw task update T-271 --status work-completed --force`
3. Reranker model (T-269) not in Ollama registry — check periodically

## Gotchas / Warnings for Next Session

- Flask dev server is single-threaded — timed-out streaming requests block all new requests until server restart
- Flask template caching — restart server after template edits
- Ollama model cold start takes ~20s for Qwen3-14B
- Budget gate now correctly handles stale critical (T-271) — no more permanent traps

## Suggested First Action

Verify Q&A Phase 2 in browser at http://localhost:3000/search — test multi-turn conversation (T-268), check all human ACs. Complete T-271 with `fw task update T-271 --status work-completed --force`.

## Files Changed This Session

- Modified: agents/context/budget-gate.sh (T-271: stale critical fix)
- Modified: web/ask.py (T-268: history parameter)
- Modified: web/blueprints/discovery.py (T-268: POST support on /search/ask)
- Modified: web/templates/search.html (T-268: fetch+ReadableStream, conversation thread)
- Created: .tasks/active/T-271-fix-budget-gate-stale-critical-status-tr.md

## Recent Commits

- 034da30 T-077: Add fw deploy command — routes to ring20-deployer CLI
- b16e230 T-268: Multi-turn Q&A conversation — fetch+ReadableStream, client-side history
- 4758fe9 T-271: Fix budget-gate stale critical status trap
- e0f55dd T-012: Commit accumulated cron audits, task state, and context files
- 4a40054 T-012: Fill handover S-2026-0225-0720 TODOs

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## Handover Quality Feedback (for next session to complete)

- Did this handover help? [ ]
- What was missing?
- What was unnecessary?
