Assessment was scheduled to fire 2026-05-03 but the one-shot task was never registered (operator-side gap during account transition). This assessment was run interactively on 2026-05-14, covering the originally-intended 7-day window. Phase 4a continued running through 2026-05-14 — current state files reflect the full 18 days, which gives additional confidence beyond the formal soak window.
| Metric | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Daily run completeness | 7 / 7 | All v2 briefings present ✓ |
| Total Top Stories published | 58 | avg 8.3 / day |
| Daily Top Stories: min / median / max | 7 / 8 / 10 | floor enforced ✓ |
| Days at 7 (force-fill activated) | 1 (2026-04-27) | Day 1 — no carryover yet (expected) |
| Days at 8+ | 6 | healthy organic distribution |
| Days under 7 | 0 | floor never breached ✓ |
Update: prefix count (all sections) | 4 | 2 Top Stories (Musk-OpenAI trial); 2 Alerts (Israel-Lebanon URGENT bypass) |
Carried over from in Top Stories | 3 | genuine promotions |
Carried over from in Also Noted | 12 | de-facto continuity tag |
Continued from (suppressed Top Story candidates) | 11 | dedup-demoted to Also Noted |
| Date | Top Stories | Alerts | Update: | Carried (Top) | Carried (Also) | Continued |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-04-27 | 7 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2026-04-28 | 10 | 0 | 1 (Musk-Altman) | 0 | 3 | 1 |
| 2026-04-29 | 8 | 3 | 1 (Musk-Altman day 2) | 0 | 5 | 2 |
| 2026-04-30 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 3 |
| 2026-05-01 | 9 | 0 | 1 (Israel-Lebanon ALERT) | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| 2026-05-02 | 8 | 2 | 1 (Israel-Lebanon ALERT day 2) | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2026-05-03 | 8 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Total | 58 | 12 | 4 | 3 | 12 | 11 |
| Metric | Value | Threshold | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
story_memory.json entries | 72 | retention 7 days × ~8–10/day | ✓ in range |
| Oldest date | 2026-05-07 | ≥ today − 7d | ✓ pruning works |
| Entries older than 7 days | 0 | 0 | ✓ |
carryover_candidates.json entries | 11 | ≤ 20 | ✓ |
Max age_days | 5 | ≤ 5 | ✓ at cap |
Entries with age_days > 5 | 0 | 0 | ✓ |
Entries with current_rank < 2.0 | 0 | 0 | ✓ |
| State file corruption | none observed | none | ✓ |
The state-file snapshot is from 2026-05-14 (18 days of Phase 4a operation). The design's invariants are about retention/pruning/decay behaviour rather than time-of-snapshot, so the later snapshot is actually a more demanding test — and the system passes it.
All 11 Continued from items spot-checked. None look like false-positive suppression. Sample evidence:
Result: 0 false-positive suppressions observed. ✓
Result: 0 false-positive Update: republishes. ✓
15 Carried over from markers total. Max age observed in soak window = 1 day.
Result: 0 stale carryovers in soak window. Max age 2d vs. 5d cap. ✓
Result: Force-fill activated exactly once, on the structurally-expected day. ✓
Update: prefix (5 day-pairs spot-checked).Update: on stories that haven't materially changed — none; all 4 justifiedContinued from marker renders with multiple class names (continued, continued-from, continued-marker, also-continued) and text format varies (_Continued from {date}_: vs Continued from {date}:). Cosmetic only — doesn't affect dedup logic. Could be tightened in a future prompt iteration. Not a Phase 4a issue.Update: republish on the Trump-Xi-Iran cluster — same mechanisms still working at day 18.CONTINUE. Phase 4a is working as designed.
The seven-day window shows the system doing exactly what improvements (a) and (c) were specified to do: same-story content gets demoted (11 Continued items + 12 Carried-Also-Noted markers across the week, with the full Musk-Altman trial saga being a textbook example), genuine updates surface with the right prefix (Musk-Altman day-2 testimony; Israel-Lebanon URGENT bypass days 1 and 2), and high-rank stories from packed days survive to slower days as Top Stories (3 carryover promotions over the week, all justified). The 7-story floor was enforced cleanly: 1 force-fill on Day 1 (structurally expected), 6/7 days at the natural 8–10 range. State files are healthy — pruning works, decay works, no zombie entries, no corruption.
No failure signals fire. No false-positive suppressions in spot-checks. No Update: prefixes on stale content. No state-file growth pathology. The minor marker-class inconsistency is cosmetic.
Phase 4b — the deferred single-source non-urgent hold queue — should now be built. Phase 4b reuses the fingerprinting infrastructure proven out here, adds a 2-day hold with URGENT bypass, and is the final piece of the briefing-continuity axis. Design is already locked from 2026-04-26; implementation is mechanical.
Pick one decision prompt and paste verbatim into a fresh RSS Smart Agent Claude Code session. The CONTINUE branch unlocks the Phase 4b build.
Phase 4a assessment returned CONTINUE. Read assessments/phase4a-2026-05-03.md for the evidence. Now build Phase 4b: hold queue for single-source non-urgent stories. The design decisions are already locked from 2026-04-26 — see the Phase 4b section of SYNTHESIS_DEPTH_PLAN.md. Summary: - Hold window: 2 days. Stories with cluster_rank ≥ 4.0, only 1 RSS source, and NO alert get held. - URGENT bypass: any alert (critical/elevated/monitor) skips the hold and publishes immediately. - Suppression during hold: held stories appear NOWHERE in the briefing (not even Also Noted) — they're delayed, not surfaced as "coming soon". - Promotion: each run, promote held stories whose hold_until has expired OR which gained a second RSS source today (whichever comes first). Promoted stories enter the normal candidate flow, including Phase 4a dedup. Implementation: 1. Add a new state file pending_stories.json (gitignored) — array of held stories with hold_until ISO date. 2. Insert Step 4.7 between current 4.6 (Phase 4a dedup) and 5 (HTML) in SCHEDULED_TASK_PROMPT.md and ~/.claude/scheduled-tasks/rss-smart-task/SKILL.md. Step 4.7 reads pending_stories.json, applies promotion rules, and adds promoted stories to the candidate list. NEW single-source non-urgent ≥4.0 clusters from today get APPENDED to pending_stories.json with hold_until = today + 2 days. Held stories are removed from today's Top Story / Also Noted candidate sets. 3. Update Step 5.5 (state writeback) to also write pending_stories.json (replace, not append). 4. Append v3 to PROMPT_HISTORY.md with full new prompt embedded. 5. Update SYNTHESIS_DEPTH_PLAN.md decision log: Phase 4b → Built (pending soak). 6. Update CLAUDE.md project structure (add pending_stories.json) and pipeline steps. 7. Update .gitignore. Schedule a Phase 4b assessment as a one-shot scheduled task firing 2026-05-22 at 10:00 local (7-day soak from likely 2026-05-15 build date). Same shape as PHASE4A_ASSESSMENT_PROMPT.md but adapted to Phase 4b's success criteria (held stories actually surface within 2 days; URGENT bypass works; no high-rank stories get permanently lost). Then propose whether Phase 2 (Google News RSS) is worth pursuing — review whether under-triangulation has been a real pattern in the last 14 days of Phase 1 logs, or if Phase 4a/4b have already addressed the briefing-shape issues.
Phase 4a assessment returned TUNE. Read assessments/phase4a-2026-05-03.md for the specific issues. Apply the recommended tuning to SCHEDULED_TASK_PROMPT.md and the live ~/.claude/scheduled-tasks/rss-smart-task/SKILL.md. Append v3 to PROMPT_HISTORY.md with summary of what changed and why. Extend the soak window 7 more days. Schedule a new one-shot assessment task for 2026-05-22 at 10:00 local using PHASE4A_ASSESSMENT_PROMPT.md as the shape (override the date references). Do NOT build Phase 4b yet — Phase 4b is gated on Phase 4a returning a clean CONTINUE. Common tuning levers (the assessment will recommend specific values): - Fingerprint match Jaccard threshold: 0.5 default. Lower = stricter (more clusters considered fresh, less dedup); higher = looser (more clusters considered duplicates, more dedup). - Material-update threshold conditions: drop one of the three (rank ≥ 1.5×, +2 RSS, new primary source) if it's producing false positives. - Carryover decay rate: 0.85 default. 0.80 = faster decay; 0.90 = gentler. - Carryover max age: 5 default. 3-4 if items feel stale; 7 if too aggressive. - Briefing floor: 7 default.
Phase 4a assessment returned ROLLBACK. Read assessments/phase4a-2026-05-03.md for the evidence. Revert the daily prompt to v1 (pre-Phase-4a). Steps: 1. Copy the v1 code block from PROMPT_HISTORY.md into both ~/.claude/scheduled-tasks/rss-smart-task/SKILL.md and SCHEDULED_TASK_PROMPT.md (replacing their contents). Update the version line in SCHEDULED_TASK_PROMPT.md back to v1. 2. Append a new entry to PROMPT_HISTORY.md labeled "v3 — Phase 4a rollback" containing the v1 prompt and a short rationale citing the assessment. 3. Update SYNTHESIS_DEPTH_PLAN.md decision log: Phase 4a → Rolled back. Phase 4b → Cancelled (depended on 4a). 4. Leave story_memory.json and carryover_candidates.json on disk but unused. Update CLAUDE.md to mark them as orphaned state files. 5. Do NOT restart Phase 4a immediately — diagnose what failed first. The three improvements (a/b/c) were proposed for good reasons. If 4a rolled back, propose an alternative design before attempting again — possibly (b) hold queue first as a less invasive change.
Phase 4a assessment returned EXTEND. Read assessments/phase4a-2026-05-03.md for what was missing. Not enough data to decide yet. Reschedule the assessment for 2026-05-22 at 10:00 local using a new one-shot scheduled task. Reuse PHASE4A_ASSESSMENT_PROMPT.md (override the date references). Do NOT change the prompt; do NOT build Phase 4b. Keep running. If after the second 7-day extension the data is still incomplete, escalate: investigate whether the daily scheduled task is firing reliably, whether story_memory.json / carryover_candidates.json are being written, and whether briefings are landing in site/briefings/ as expected.