Turn 3 integration: clarification earns a decision, not automatic continuation

Decision and actual change

Retain bounded clarification as an entry route into inquiry; require a changed allocation reason before renewing it. Select next the question of what evidence must survive apparent inquiry progress so that later work can discover deterioration. Use the confidence argument as a concrete case, not as a compulsory destination or a library-repair commission.

This integrates A, B, and the critic under coordination. The turn-2 integration already permitted question generation from successful changes. It did not expressly require a finished rivalry before exploration. The amendment is therefore protection against an overly restrictive implementation, not correction of a demonstrated exclusion. The turn-1 integration already retained ordinary explanation-seeking as compression steering's strongest rival. That rival survives.

The actual advance is narrower than a new curiosity theory: the explorers identify two concrete ways to make an initially incomplete question assessable, and the critic supplies a consequential limit on renewal. Looking for unrecorded candidate stages can reveal an evidence-coverage problem; checking the transition between claims can reveal a missing premise. Neither result alone licenses more investigation.

These are documentary observations and proposed research judgments. I directly read the candidate-generation survey and confidence note. No new external-source claim is required; previous source analysis is not support. B's stipulated illustration demonstrates non-entailment within its premises, not model behavior. No experiment, comparative steering advantage, or task benefit was demonstrated.

What the examples actually establish

A's unfamiliar direction asks whether accepted changes conceal opportunities that were never noticed, never formulated, or never selected. The candidate-generation survey already distinguishes noticing, drafting, and subsequent incorporation. Naming these stages again is not explanatory progress. The remaining question is whether retained evidence permits a stage-specific judgment in an actual case.

The first trial's parked compression branch cannot answer all of that question. It was already formulated. Its absent comparative rationale limits reconstruction of selection, not discovery of never-noticed possibilities. A's proposed clarification pass remains defensible as a check of evidence coverage, with closure as a possible result. It does not yet establish a systematically distorted candidate pool.

B finds a sharper local issue. The confidence note distinguishes probability from soundness, permits task-validated triage, and leaves reliable internal probes open. Its description nevertheless requires a “separate check,” and its heading says high-assurance acceptance “needs another operation.” The possibility that earlier validation could justify a rule without a separate runtime checker is B's proposed alternative, not an equally explicit incumbent position.

The inferential question is which assurance premises justify that stronger acceptance requirement. Non-entailment alone does not settle the arrangement. B's illustration repeats the incumbent's deductive distinction; its useful contribution is locating the additional premise needed for a policy conclusion. Absence of that premise would expose an unsupported transition, not establish that confidence-only acceptance is safe. An adequate existing assurance argument could dissolve the question without changing the note's account.

Surviving positive steering and its limit

Three mechanisms survive as conjectures, not validated controllers.

First, generate questions from specific unresolved relations: differences among cases under one explanation, unexplained success, selection boundaries in available records, or transitions between claims. This extends beyond reacting to visible failure without rewarding unfamiliarity by itself. A complete rival and decisive test need not exist at entry.

Second, fund bounded clarification when contact with that relation could change what inquiry is possible. The initial warrant can be weaker than the warrant for answering a developed question. A short reading pass may discover a rival, an already-supplied answer, a decisive missing premise, or an acquisition obstacle. Those are distinct returns; none must predict an individual event or promise immediate service savings.

Third, compare the result with the prior allocation decision, not merely the prior prose. Which question dissolved? Which comparison became possible? Which missing premise now controls the answer? Preserve the passage responsible. A reading cap controls one expenditure but cannot prevent endless capped renewals. More interpretations or adjacent documents do not by themselves change the reason to continue.

Bounded clarification ends when it has located the decision-relevant distinction or established that it cannot. Continuation then needs additional evidence appropriate to that distinction: this can be an unread retained argument, not necessarily a new external observation. For B, it is an assurance requirement and its justification. Empirical claims about confidence require different evidence. For A, it is a pre-selection record with a recoverable reason, not another accepted outcome. If no bounded route exists, retain the useful clarification and park the answer-seeking branch.

Ordinary explanation-seeking with preliminary reconnaissance can implement all three mechanisms. Compression remains an optional prompt toward shared structure; no literal coding gain or additional selection power has been established. Learning value consists here in improved discrimination among questions and claims. Delivery benefit remains unknown.

Selected next question versus strongest alternative

Next question: when clarification improves the current account, what must be acquired, retained, and brought back into consideration to detect that the improvement has hidden an older distinction or excluded a valuable future question? The intended result is a bounded comparison of what different evidence selections let a later inquirer challenge, including an explicit limit where missing acquisition prevents judgment. This is not a request for a storage schema, implementation, deletion, or behavioral experiment.

Use B's case to keep the question consequential. An account centered on the missing assurance premise must still preserve the incumbent's non-entailment claim, validated-triage allowance, and probe caveat. Otherwise solving the apparent acceptance-policy problem could erase distinctions that made the old account useful. Compare the proposed clarification against those same passages, while identifying any newly introduced premise separately. Existing records may suffice to expose a loss; they cannot establish future usefulness generally.

The strongest immediate alternative is to resolve B's assurance-premise question alone. It offers the clearest local inferential target. Select the broader evidence-preservation question because the run now needs to connect inquiry progress with acquisition and forgetting, rather than spend another turn only refining an accessible argument. Keep the local premise check as an input where needed, not an indefinite prerequisite.

This narrowing serves learning through methodological development: it asks whether an apparent improvement remains open to challenge. It leaves autonomous ranking across unfamiliar fields, whole-KB coverage, demonstrated automation, and delivery economics untouched. It changes the route within the purpose, not the purpose itself.

Recoverability, forgetting, and unresolved choice

Retain the exact incumbent passages, the initial alternatives, the changed inference or allocation, and why the strongest alternative was parked. A later synopsis should not silently replace this comparison basis. Retention alone is insufficient: evidence can survive yet disappear from the account normally consulted. Conversely, a version locator offers reacquisition only if that version remains accessible; no reacquisition cost was measured here.

Distinguish information never acquired, acquired then discarded, and retained but unconsulted. The missing first-trial parking rationale cannot be reconstructed from today's preferred explanation. The same applies to the revision episode's unavailable interaction sequence. A later encounter can supply related evidence, not restore that history. No prose residual is claimed lossless, and no actual forgetting operation is authorized.

What remains unsolved is choosing unfamiliar directions before their promise is legible. Concrete anchors favor recorded work; bounded passes may reject topics requiring substantial vocabulary acquisition. A changed allocation reason makes renewal inspectable but can still be rationalized. Resolving that vulnerability would require comparative evidence about inquiries and effort, not a more elaborate admission vocabulary.

Park exclusive verification chronology because it leaves this selection problem untouched, not because its local value is disproved. Park retrospective causal attribution for missing evidence, candidate-loss claims for inadequate pre-selection records, numerical compression for lack of a defensible prose measure, and general memory architecture for scope and ownership. Broader connection discovery through cp-skill-connect remains a separately authorized possibility. No literature search is claimed. Costs remain unaggregated and unknown to this worker; coordination records no new operator intervention. This integration is complete as documentary synthesis, partial on steering performance and unfamiliar-direction selection.