Record what Kiwix returns and why the gate is not one (V-668)

gofmt on cmd/mavwaked/silero.go came in with a99932b and blocked make test.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_013ptwopxyo3Z2kwFckHkLvN

CLAUDE.md

@@ -675,11 +675,25 @@ world questions, so she needs to read external sources. What replaces it:
   `wikipedia_ru_all_maxi_2026-02` verbatim** through `kiwix.book_ru`. The RU→EN rewriter
   is the workaround for an English book and is skipped there. Kiwix catalog names come
   from the filename, not the `<name>` field.
+  **That verbatim path sent the whole sentence to a keyword engine until 09-08-2026**
+  (V-668, `docs/evals/2026-08-09-kiwix-topic-retrieval.md`). Kiwix ranks by keyword
+  overlap, so the question words outrank the one word naming the article. "что такое TCP"
+  returned "Перехват TCP-соединения". "кто написал Войну и мир" returned an episode of
+  Doctor Who. `kiwix.Topic` drops the narrative request, the interrogative and a verb
+  behind one. `kiwix.TitlePath` tries the exact article first, since a ZIM is addressable
+  by title and a wrong title is a 404. Four of eight questions reach the right article
+  where they did not, two were already right, and nothing regressed. Both apply on the
+  verbatim path alone. The rewriter already reduces a question, and reducing twice takes
+  the topic off its input.
   `Response.Empty()` is the whole gate and there is no quality threshold in front of it:
   the three signals one could read were measured on 2026-08-05 and none of them separate a
   real question from an invented one. Token overlap would cost "столица Франции" its
   answer, because the answer is Париж and that word is not in the question. See
-  `docs/evals/2026-08-05-search-quality-signals.md` (V-539). **Which query source claimed
+  `docs/evals/2026-08-05-search-quality-signals.md` (V-539). **The embedder is not a
+  fourth signal**, measured 2026-08-09 (V-668). Query-to-passage cosine scores 0.79 to
+  0.91 on answerable questions and 0.75 to 0.84 on unanswerable ones, and the sets
+  overlap. The wrong TCP article scored 0.8653, above five of six unanswerable rows. It
+  measures topic and not whether the passage answers, so no threshold splits them. **Which query source claimed
   a turn is readable on `/chat`** as a badge beside the reply, carried on
   `ipc.ChatReply.Source` and noted by `noteQuerySource` in `cmd/mavend/querysource.go`. It
   rides the context, so `handleText` keeps the one string signature the mic, telegram and

cmd/mavwaked/silero.go

@@ -52,10 +52,10 @@ type sileroVAD struct {
 	mu      sync.Mutex
 	session *ort.DynamicAdvancedSession
 
-	pending []float32               // samples not yet part of a full window
-	context [sileroContext]float32  // tail of the previous window
-	state   []float32               // [2][1][128], carried between windows
-	last    float64                 // most recent probability, held between windows
+	pending []float32              // samples not yet part of a full window
+	context [sileroContext]float32 // tail of the previous window
+	state   []float32              // [2][1][128], carried between windows
+	last    float64                // most recent probability, held between windows
 	sr      []int64
 }
 

docs/evals/2026-08-09-kiwix-topic-retrieval.md

@@ -0,0 +1,103 @@
+# Kiwix answered the wrong question, and the fix was not a relevance gate
+
+Date: 2026-08-09. Task: V-668. Box: homesrv, workstation off.
+Book: `wikipedia_ru_all_maxi_2026-02` on `127.0.0.1:8034`.
+
+## What started it
+
+Two turns on 2026-08-09 came back wrong from the offline encyclopedia.
+"почему небо голубое" was answered off the song "Город золотой". "что такое
+TCP?" was answered off "Перехват TCP-соединения". Both were phrased
+confidently, because `queryKiwix` claims a turn whenever the search returns
+anything and `len(hits) == 0` is its only gate.
+
+The plan was a relevance gate. multilingual-e5-small is asymmetric and trained
+for exactly this, `query:` against `passage:`, and the query vector is already
+held on the turn. The 2026-08-05 measurement that killed a search-quality gate
+killed three lexical signals. It says in its own words that it never probed
+Kiwix.
+
+## The gate does not exist
+
+Fourteen Russian questions, eight the encyclopedia can answer and six it
+cannot. Each question was searched, the top article read, and the cosine of
+`EmbedQuery(question)` against `EmbedPassage(article)` recorded.
+
+| set | n | min | mean | max |
+|---|---|---|---|---|
+| answerable | 8 | 0.7934 | 0.8400 | 0.9087 |
+| not answerable | 6 | 0.7480 | 0.7852 | 0.8367 |
+
+Two of the six unanswerable score above the weakest answerable one. That alone
+would be a poor threshold. The log killed it outright: seven of the eight
+answerable questions got a **wrong** article back, and those wrong articles
+scored high. The TCP hijacking article scored 0.8653, above five of the six
+unanswerable rows.
+
+The finding is that this cosine measures topic and not answerhood. A page about
+hijacking TCP sessions is about TCP. No threshold separates it from a page that
+defines TCP, and one that tried would take the definition with it.
+
+## The defect is retrieval
+
+`internal/kiwix/client.go` has said it since it was written: ranking is keyword
+based, "why is the sky blue" finds a TV episode. `queryKiwix` sends the whole
+sentence. The English path has a rewriter that reduces a question to keywords
+with a model call. The Russian path reads the book verbatim (V-508) and had
+nothing. So the question words compete with the one word that names the article.
+
+Dropping the question words changes the answer:
+
+| sent | first hit |
+|---|---|
+| `кто написал Войну и мир` | Радуйся, мир (Доктор Кто) |
+| `Война и мир` | Война и мир |
+| `что такое TCP` | Перехват TCP-соединения |
+| `TCP` | TCP |
+
+A ZIM is also addressable by title, which nothing here used. `/A/Франция`,
+`/A/TCP` and `/A/Небо` are 200. `/A/Трюмбальная_нидроскопия` is 404. So an
+exact title is safe to try first: it either answers or costs one request that
+says nothing.
+
+## What shipped, measured
+
+`kiwix.Topic` drops the narrative request, the interrogative and a verb sitting
+behind one. It keeps everything else, because a word it cannot classify is more
+likely the topic than noise. `kiwix.TitlePath` tries the exact article before
+any ranking runs. Both apply on the verbatim path only, since reducing twice
+would take the topic off the rewriter's input.
+
+| question | before | after |
+|---|---|---|
+| что такое TCP? | Перехват TCP-соединения | **TCP** (by title) |
+| что такое фотосинтез | C4-фотосинтез | **Фотосинтез** |
+| кто такой Линус Торвальдс? | Tux | **Торвальдс, Линус** (by title) |
+| кто написал Войну и мир | Радуйся, мир (Доктор Кто) | **Война и мир** |
+| что такое чёрная дыра | Чёрная дыра | Чёрная дыра |
+| почему небо голубое | Город золотой | Под небом голубым… (фильм) |
+| почему трава зелёная | Сено | Зелень |
+| столица Франции | Список столиц Олимпийских игр | Список столиц Олимпийских игр |
+
+Four questions reach the right article where they did not. Two were already
+right and stay right. Nothing regressed.
+
+## What is still wrong
+
+Two of the eight are still not answered, and both are the same shape. The
+question names no article. "почему небо голубое" is answered by Rayleigh
+scattering and "столица Франции" by the lead of Франция. Neither title is in
+the question. Keyword retrieval cannot bridge that and neither can a
+threshold. The candidates are a semantic index over titles, or asking the
+resident model for the article title rather than for keywords.
+
+`Response.Empty()` is still the whole gate. A wrong article that the search
+does return is still spoken. What this change buys is that the article is
+usually right, not that a wrong one is caught.
+
+## Not measured here
+
+The English path, which still goes through the rewriter and was not touched.
+SearXNG, where the same question about answerhood is open and the 2026-08-05
+result stands. The cascade end to end, since the workstation is off and the
+phrasing arm is the resident model.