diff --git a/vibe-v2-spec.md b/vibe-v2-spec.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f46a4b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/vibe-v2-spec.md
@@ -0,0 +1,926 @@
+# Vibe v2 — Session Director Specification
+
+## Status and purpose
+
+This is the target specification for Vibe v2. It turns Vibe from a
+recommendation queue into a session director: an autonomous system that
+continuously composes the listener's next hour of music.
+
+The unit of optimisation is not the next track. It is a listening experience
+that remains coherent, fresh, and rewarding over hours and continues to feel
+new tomorrow.
+
+This document supplements docs/architecture/09-recommendation-and-identity-v2.md.
+Where the two documents conflict, this document controls the Session Director
+and Vibe playback contract.
+
+## Product contract
+
+Vibe must feel like a thoughtful radio DJ:
+
+- It plays familiar music, adjacent music, and worthwhile discoveries in a
+  deliberate balance.
+- It responds to a skip, full listen, or explicit action quickly enough that
+  the listener can perceive the change.
+- It does not collapse into a few favourite artists, genres, languages,
+  decades, labels, producers, or audio-feature bands.
+- It has a direction: energy, novelty, and intensity can evolve, but should
+  not jump without a reason.
+- It returns to ideas introduced earlier (callbacks) and makes room for
+  surprises.
+- It remembers prior sessions sufficiently to avoid replaying yesterday's
+  shape, not merely yesterday's tracks.
+
+    durable history + live feedback + context
+                     |
+                     v
+               listener state
+                     |
+                     v
+       candidate retrieval and expansion
+                     |
+                     v
+       sequence planner / constraint engine
+                     |
+                     v
+         revisable next 20–50 tracks
+                     |
+                     v
+                  playback
+                     |
+                     +------------ feedback and replan ------------+
+
+Vibe is not a saved playlist. A client may display a small, revisable preview
+of the future, but the server owns the authoritative plan and may rewrite every
+unplayed item at any time.
+
+## Goals and non-goals
+
+### Goals
+
+1. Maximise expected session reward, not click-through rate or immediate
+   predicted enjoyment alone.
+2. Make recommendations conditional on current state, listening context, and
+   the already-played portion of the session.
+3. Balance comfort, discovery, diversity, coherence, freshness, and long-term
+   learning while penalising fatigue, repetition, and predictability.
+4. Support a self-hosted local library first. Probation tracks are candidates
+   only when their audio is available locally and acquisition policy permits it.
+5. Remain useful with sparse metadata. Missing attributes reduce confidence;
+   they must never silently become a hard negative.
+6. Be explainable: every selected item has provenance, a reason for its slot,
+   and the constraints that affected it.
+
+### Non-goals
+
+- Do not acquire copyrighted audio or bypass existing acquisition gates.
+- Do not infer sensitive personal attributes. Context is opt-in and coarse
+  (for example home, work, walking), never precise location.
+- Do not treat a permanently fixed exploration ratio, genre quota, or score
+  weight as the final design. Defaults are bootstraps, not truth.
+- Do not expose internal goals in a way that makes the experience feel
+  manipulative. Explanations remain human-scale.
+
+---
+
+## 1. System model
+
+### 1.1 Inputs
+
+| Input | Examples | Role |
+|---|---|---|
+| Permanent taste | favourite artists, genre affinity, negative feedback | Establishes the comfort zone |
+| Multi-horizon memory | 30 minutes, 7 days, 3 months, lifetime | Separates current obsession from durable taste |
+| Current session | played/queued tracks, skips, callbacks, budget spend | Determines what fits now |
+| Context | hour, weekday, device, activity, coarse location, optional weather | Changes interpretation of taste |
+| Music knowledge | graph claims, metadata, audio features, embeddings, quality | Retrieves and describes candidates |
+
+### 1.2 Optimisation objective
+
+For sequence q = [t1, …, tn], optimise discounted sequence reward rather than
+independently sorting tracks:
+
+    J(q | state) = sum over i of gamma^i × (
+        enjoyment(ti)
+      + discovery_value(ti)
+      + transition_quality(ti-1, ti)
+      + freshness(ti)
+      + diversity_gain(q through i)
+      + goal_progress(ti)
+      - fatigue(ti)
+      - repetition(ti, q through i)
+      - predictability(q through i)
+      - disruption(ti-1, ti)
+    )
+
+Hard safety and availability constraints apply before optimisation. Gamma
+discounts distant slots so the director is decisive about the next few tracks
+without pretending it knows the exact state 40 tracks later.
+
+Initial weights may be hand-tuned, but must be versioned policy configuration.
+They become learnable only after sufficient reliable events exist.
+
+### 1.3 Planning horizon
+
+- Keep an internal horizon of 20–50 tracks, chosen from track duration and
+  session conditions.
+- Publish only 3–8 tracks to the client as a mutable preview.
+- Treat only the immediate next track as committed.
+- Replan after every material event and before the preview falls below three
+  playable tracks.
+- Do not send duplicate tracks in one Vibe session unless repeat-one was
+  explicitly requested.
+
+---
+
+## 2. Durable session model
+
+### 2.1 Session identity
+
+Every Vibe request, playback event, plan version, and feedback event MUST be
+keyed by session_id and user_id. play_history.batch_id is not a session ID and
+must not be used as one.
+
+Sessions end explicitly, after configurable inactivity, or when a new Vibe
+session replaces the current one. A session can resume in a short grace period
+without losing state or goals.
+
+### 2.2 Session context
+
+Context is optional, versioned, and privacy-preserving.
+
+    interface VibeContext {
+      timeZone?: string;
+      localHour?: number;  // normally server-derived
+      weekday?: number;    // normally server-derived
+      dayKind?: 'weekday' | 'weekend' | 'holiday';
+      device?: 'desktop' | 'phone' | 'speaker' | 'car' | 'headphones';
+      activity?: 'focus' | 'relax' | 'walking' | 'workout' | 'social' | 'unknown';
+      locationCategory?: 'home' | 'work' | 'gym' | 'travel' | 'unknown';
+      weather?: 'clear' | 'rain' | 'snow' | 'hot' | 'cold' | 'unknown';
+      source?: 'current_track' | 'artist' | 'genre' | 'surprise' | 'resume';
+    }
+
+The frontend must provide an unobtrusive activity/context selector, beginning
+with activity and device. Browser context is a hint and is never required.
+
+### 2.3 Event ledger
+
+Store immutable events before updating derived state. This makes feedback
+auditable, supports offline evaluation, and prevents listener state being the
+only record of why a plan changed.
+
+    CREATE TABLE vibe_sessions (
+      id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
+      user_id UUID NOT NULL,
+      status TEXT NOT NULL CHECK (status IN
+        ('active','paused','ended','expired','replaced')),
+      seed_track_id UUID REFERENCES tracks(id) ON DELETE SET NULL,
+      context JSONB NOT NULL DEFAULT '{}'::jsonb,
+      policy_version TEXT NOT NULL,
+      started_at TIMESTAMPTZ NOT NULL DEFAULT NOW(),
+      last_event_at TIMESTAMPTZ NOT NULL DEFAULT NOW(),
+      ended_at TIMESTAMPTZ
+    );
+
+    CREATE TABLE vibe_events (
+      id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
+      client_event_id UUID,
+      session_id UUID NOT NULL REFERENCES vibe_sessions(id) ON DELETE CASCADE,
+      user_id UUID NOT NULL,
+      track_id UUID REFERENCES tracks(id) ON DELETE SET NULL,
+      type TEXT NOT NULL,
+      occurred_at TIMESTAMPTZ NOT NULL DEFAULT NOW(),
+      position_ms INTEGER,
+      duration_ms INTEGER,
+      payload JSONB NOT NULL DEFAULT '{}'::jsonb,
+      UNIQUE (session_id, client_event_id)
+    );
+
+    CREATE TABLE vibe_plan_versions (
+      id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
+      session_id UUID NOT NULL REFERENCES vibe_sessions(id) ON DELETE CASCADE,
+      version INTEGER NOT NULL,
+      reason TEXT NOT NULL,
+      state_snapshot JSONB NOT NULL,
+      objective_snapshot JSONB NOT NULL,
+      created_at TIMESTAMPTZ NOT NULL DEFAULT NOW(),
+      UNIQUE (session_id, version)
+    );
+
+    CREATE TABLE vibe_plan_items (
+      plan_version_id UUID NOT NULL REFERENCES vibe_plan_versions(id) ON DELETE CASCADE,
+      ordinal INTEGER NOT NULL,
+      track_id UUID NOT NULL REFERENCES tracks(id) ON DELETE CASCADE,
+      slot_role TEXT,
+      candidate_source TEXT NOT NULL,
+      score REAL NOT NULL,
+      score_breakdown JSONB NOT NULL,
+      explanation JSONB NOT NULL,
+      committed BOOLEAN NOT NULL DEFAULT false,
+      PRIMARY KEY (plan_version_id, ordinal),
+      UNIQUE (plan_version_id, track_id)
+    );
+
+Create indexes on vibe_sessions(user_id, last_event_at DESC),
+vibe_events(session_id, occurred_at), and vibe_events(user_id, occurred_at DESC).
+
+Initial event types:
+
+    session_started, session_resumed, session_ended, context_changed,
+    plan_published, track_served, playback_started, progress,
+    completed, skipped, disliked, kept, favourite_added, queue_removed,
+    manual_search, album_opened, artist_opened, playlist_added,
+    track_replayed, volume_changed, playback_error
+
+Event writes must be idempotent. The client supplies client_event_id for any
+action that might be retried after a network failure.
+
+### 2.4 Derived listener state
+
+session_state is a cache derived from events and recent history, not the sole
+source of truth. It must be rebuildable.
+
+    interface ListenerSessionState {
+      sessionId: string;
+      updatedAt: string;
+      ageMin: number;
+
+      energy: number;
+      valence: number | null;
+      focus: number | null;
+      attention: number | null;
+      cognitiveLoad: number | null;
+      emotionalIntensity: number | null;
+      noveltyHunger: number;
+      noveltyTolerance: number;
+      danceabilityTarget: number | null;
+      acousticnessTarget: number | null;
+      instrumentalnessTarget: number | null;
+      vocalPreference: 'vocal' | 'instrumental' | 'mixed';
+      tempoTarget: number | null;
+      moodTags: Array<{ tag: string; weight: number }>;
+
+      explorationCoefficient: number;
+      discoveryRadius: number;
+      entropyTarget: number;
+      currentArc: ArcInstance;
+      activeGoals: SessionGoal[];
+      callbackLedger: CallbackToken[];
+      fatigue: FatigueSnapshot;
+      budgetSpend: BudgetSpendSnapshot;
+      recent: RecentSessionSummary;
+    }
+
+Every inferred value carries confidence and source. Low confidence causes
+broader, safer choices; it never means the value is zero.
+
+### 2.5 State update rules
+
+- Completion shifts continuous state modestly toward reliable track features,
+  weighted by listen ratio and feature confidence.
+- A quick skip is negative evidence for the track and recommendation route; it
+  is not automatically a dislike of every artist/genre/feature on the track.
+- A saved discovery or intentional replay is strong evidence for exploration at
+  that distance and source.
+- Repeated unfamiliar skips shrink exploration temporarily; repeated unfamiliar
+  completions expand it gradually.
+- Context changes may reset desired trajectory while retaining fatigue and
+  long-term memory.
+- Updates MUST be ordered per session. Concurrent feedback must be serialized
+  or use a session-version compare-and-swap.
+
+---
+
+## 3. Memory horizons and listener model
+
+The listener has independent memories, each with its own decay and purpose.
+
+| Horizon | Window | Captures | Primary effect |
+|---|---:|---|---|
+| Immediate | 30 minutes | current direction, skips, active fatigue | transitions and next slots |
+| Session | session lifetime | arc, budgets, callbacks, served tracks | sequence planning |
+| Daily | 24 hours | today’s exposure and shape | fatigue and fresh starts |
+| Weekly | 7 days | recent obsessions and routines | variety across days |
+| Medium | 3 months | stable recent taste | affinity and discovery neighbourhood |
+| Lifetime | slow decay | durable favourites and familiar anchors | comfort candidates |
+
+Existing long-term, obsession, discovery, negative, forgotten, and contextual
+belief profiles remain useful. Vibe adds a session layer; it does not flatten
+all profiles into one taste score.
+
+### 3.1 Session similarity memory
+
+After each session, generate a compact fingerprint:
+
+    interface SessionFingerprint {
+      artistDistribution: Record<string, number>;
+      genreDistribution: Record<string, number>;
+      languageDistribution: Record<string, number>;
+      decadeDistribution: Record<string, number>;
+      audioTrajectory: Array<{ energy: number; tempo?: number; valence?: number }>;
+      discoveryRate: number;
+      generatorDistribution: Record<string, number>;
+      acceptedDiscoveries: string[];
+      durationMin: number;
+    }
+
+At the next session start, softly penalise similarity to recent fingerprints,
+especially one or two days ago. An explicit artist/album/genre seed may
+intentionally override this penalty.
+
+---
+
+## 4. Music representation and candidate retrieval
+
+### 4.1 Feature completeness
+
+Each playable track should expose, when available:
+
+- main/featured artists, album, label, producers, composers, scenes;
+- genres and tags with confidence;
+- release year/decade, language, vocal/instrumental classification;
+- BPM, key, energy, valence, danceability, acousticness, instrumentalness,
+  liveness, loudness, duration;
+- live version, cover, remix, soundtrack, and side-project relationships;
+- quality, availability, and feature-completeness indicators.
+
+Missing audio analysis is unknown, never low energy or instrumental.
+
+### 4.2 Embeddings and discovery radius
+
+The long-term target is a shared semantic space for tracks, artists, albums,
+genres, sessions, and listener/context representation. It may begin with
+feature-derived vectors and later use learned embeddings. Recommended
+dimensions are 768 or 1024. Musical, lyrical, collaborative, and contextual
+vectors can be blended at retrieval time.
+
+| Distance | Interpretation |
+|---:|---|
+| 0.00 | already familiar/favourite |
+| 0.15 | same artist or tightly associated artist |
+| 0.30 | strongly similar artist/sound |
+| 0.45 | different artist in a known style |
+| 0.65 | adjacent genre or scene |
+| 0.90 | surprising but explainable |
+
+discoveryRadius is a range, not a switch. Sequences normally move through
+adjacent distances and return to an anchor. Large jumps need a surprise slot or
+listener reinforcement.
+
+### 4.3 Candidate pools
+
+Generate independently, retain all provenance, deduplicate by track and
+canonical identity, then rank.
+
+| Pool | Default share | Purpose |
+|---|---:|---|
+| Familiar/favourites | 30% | comfort and callbacks |
+| Similar tracks/artists | 20% | continuity |
+| User-niche recent/trending | 15% | timely relevant discovery |
+| Long-tail discovery | 10% | avoid popularity collapse |
+| Contextual candidates | 10% | fit activity/time |
+| Artist/graph traversal | 10% | explainable adjacency |
+| Controlled serendipity | 5% | bounded surprise |
+
+These are retrieval targets, not mandatory final-plan shares. Allocation adapts
+to exploration, candidate availability, fatigue, and the active arc.
+
+Required generator classes:
+
+1. Comfort: favourites and trusted artists with fatigue suppression.
+2. Adjacent: graph/ANN neighbours of recent successes/current trajectory.
+3. Discovery: unfamiliar artists at a safe distance with credible graph path.
+4. Revival: forgotten favourites, old obsessions, accepted tracks after rest.
+5. Deep dive: album/obsession exploration limited by album/artist budgets.
+6. Contextual: candidates with comparable activity, hour, or device evidence.
+7. Freshness: new releases/niche trends fitting the listener graph.
+8. Serendipity: deliberately bounded unexplored route, never random catalogue.
+
+Candidate provenance retains every nominating path, not just the winning source.
+It is required for explanations and source-level learning.
+
+---
+
+## 5. Fatigue, repetition, and diversity
+
+### 5.1 Fatigue principle
+
+Everything can fatigue; everything recovers. Fatigue is decayed exposure, not
+a permanent ban.
+
+    fatigue(dimension, entity, now) =
+      min(1, sum of exposure_weight(event) × exp(-event_age / tau_dimension))
+
+Exposure weight is higher for completion, lower for a short sample, and zero
+for playback failure. Tau is configurable per dimension and may be adapted from
+observed tolerance.
+
+Track fatigue must blend multiple windows: today, yesterday, week, and month.
+It must not be a single recent-history query.
+
+### 5.2 Required fatigue dimensions
+
+| Dimension | Example | Planner action |
+|---|---|---|
+| Track | heard today/replayed yesterday | strong suppression unless requested |
+| Artist/canonical identity | 12 tracks by one artist | widen artist pool |
+| Album | half an album played | spread across hours/days |
+| Genre/scene | 18 metal tracks | move to adjacent style |
+| Language | 35 Japanese tracks | mix another language/instrumental |
+| Vocal/instrumentation | all vocal, same vocal type | alternate texture |
+| Tempo/energy/valence | narrow BPM/mood band | controlled transition |
+| Producer/label | repeated creative lineage | force new route |
+| Decade | all recent releases | reintroduce another era |
+| Recommendation route | same graph edge repeatedly | diversify path |
+
+Unknown metadata may not claim to satisfy a specific quota.
+
+### 5.3 Repetition rules
+
+Hard rules, unless explicitly overridden:
+
+- A served track never reappears in one Vibe session.
+- A track in its configured recent window is ineligible.
+- No more than two tracks by a canonical artist in 20 tracks.
+- No more than three tracks from an album in 40 tracks.
+- Skipped/disliked tracks are ineligible for the rest of the session.
+
+Soft, adaptive minimum distances apply to artist, album, genre, language,
+producer, and energy band. If the pool is too small, relax the least important
+soft constraint, record it, and never silently relax hard track exclusion.
+
+### 5.4 Diversity budgets
+
+Budgets are planner resources, not passive analytics. Initial defaults:
+
+| Dimension | Target | Horizon |
+|---|---:|---:|
+| Any artist | at most 20% | 30 min |
+| Any genre | at most 40% | 30 min |
+| Any language | at most 60% | 30 min |
+| Instrumental | at least 10% if inventory permits | 30 min |
+| New artists | about 15% | 60 min |
+| Familiar favourites | about 25% | 60 min |
+
+Budgets may be upper bounds, lower bounds, or target ranges. The planner
+projects spend across the proposed sequence, not only completed history.
+
+Explicit user intent may temporarily override soft targets. Starting an album
+or repeatedly selecting an artist narrows the session intentionally; diversity
+prevents accidental loops, not explicit choice.
+
+### 5.5 Anti-loop detector
+
+Run after every state update and every plan proposal. Detect concentration across
+artist/canonical identity, album, genre, scene, label, producer, language,
+decade, BPM, energy, valence, vocal type, candidate source, and graph path.
+
+Use HHI and Shannon entropy accurately; HHI must not be called entropy.
+Correct the detected dimension directly:
+
+| Loop | Required correction |
+|---|---|
+| Artist/album | retrieve other artists; reserve only later callback |
+| Genre/scene | retrieve adjacent genres at compatible energy |
+| Language/vocal | reserve next eligible alternate slot |
+| Tempo/energy | alter next arc target gradually |
+| Producer/label/route | exclude repeated relationship from retrieval |
+| Low route diversity | require another generator/path |
+
+Do not merely boost an already available experimental candidate if it does not
+fix the detected loop.
+
+---
+
+## 6. Arcs, callbacks, surprise, and long-term rhythm
+
+### 6.1 Arc templates
+
+An arc is desired trajectory plus slot roles and transition tolerance, not just
+a generator list.
+
+| Arc | Example trajectory |
+|---|---|
+| Comfort | known → known → adjacent → favourite |
+| Discovery | favourite → similar → new → familiar callback |
+| Energetic | medium → high → peak → cooldown |
+| Late-night | soft → ambient → acoustic → slow electronic |
+| Focus | instrumental/low-vocal → steady complexity → gentle reset |
+| Album exploration | familiar anchor → album chapter → relief → callback |
+
+Slots define target ranges/deltas for energy, tempo, valence, acousticness,
+instrumentality, novelty distance, and familiarity. Missing features reduce
+confidence rather than reject a candidate.
+
+Arc selection depends on state, context, age, explicit intent, and weekly
+schedule. It changes only when feedback/context makes the current arc
+implausible.
+
+### 6.2 Transition model
+
+For every pair, compute transition quality from:
+
+- tempo delta and beat compatibility where reliable;
+- harmonic/key compatibility where available;
+- energy, valence, acousticness, danceability, instrumentality deltas;
+- genre/scene continuity or an explainable bridge;
+- artist/album separation;
+- language and vocal contrast when fatigue calls for it;
+- novelty-distance progression; and
+- current arc fit.
+
+A good transition is not always similarity. A cooldown after a peak or a
+surprise after an anchor is good if it fits the arc.
+
+### 6.3 Callbacks
+
+A callback token is created when an artist, genre, energy peak, theme, or
+favourite is worth revisiting. It has minimum/maximum separation and cannot
+violate fatigue/repetition rules.
+
+    favourite → new artist → adjacent artist → callback to favourite
+    heavy → soft bridge → different heavy track
+    forgotten favourite → side project → return to old era
+
+Callbacks are optional and must never become repetition.
+
+### 6.4 Surprise budget
+
+Every sustained session needs bounded surprise. Attempt at least one eligible,
+explainable surprise per hour when inventory permits. Types include forgotten
+favourite, live/acoustic/cover/remix, producer/side project, old obsession,
+soundtrack connection, and novel graph route.
+
+A surprise is paired with a recovery anchor. A quick skip lowers propensity for
+that surprise type, not the listener’s whole taste profile.
+
+### 6.5 Invisible goals
+
+Goals are durable, bounded, and never override hard constraints or explicit
+direction. Examples:
+
+- complete an album over several days without a block;
+- introduce a promising artist gradually;
+- revisit a favourite monthly after recovery;
+- balance languages/decades over a week;
+- rotate producer/scene routes;
+- evaluate a probation discovery;
+- preserve a surprise opportunity per hour.
+
+    CREATE TABLE vibe_goals (
+      id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
+      user_id UUID NOT NULL,
+      type TEXT NOT NULL,
+      entity_type TEXT,
+      entity_id UUID,
+      state JSONB NOT NULL DEFAULT '{}'::jsonb,
+      priority REAL NOT NULL DEFAULT 0.5,
+      status TEXT NOT NULL CHECK (status IN ('active','paused','complete','expired')),
+      created_at TIMESTAMPTZ NOT NULL DEFAULT NOW(),
+      due_at TIMESTAMPTZ,
+      completed_at TIMESTAMPTZ
+    );
+
+### 6.6 Weekly rhythm
+
+Vibe may use an opt-in weak weekly prior: Monday discoveries, Tuesday album
+exploration, Wednesday comfort, Thursday forgotten favourites, Friday high
+energy, weekend broad/context-led mix. It must never override explicit intent
+or current context.
+
+---
+
+## 7. Candidate ranking and sequence planning
+
+### 7.1 Candidate proposal score
+
+    candidate_score =
+        w_affinity × personal_affinity
+      + w_session × session_state_fit
+      + w_transition × transition_fit_from_previous
+      + w_discovery × discovery_value
+      + w_freshness × freshness
+      + w_quality × track_quality
+      + w_goal × goal_progress
+      - w_fatigue × fatigue_penalty
+      - w_repeat × repetition_penalty
+      - w_saturation × dimension_saturation
+      - w_risk × unsupported_metadata_or_route_risk
+
+This is a proposal score, not final selection. Persist normalised,
+policy-versioned score breakdown with every selected plan item.
+
+### 7.2 Constraint engine
+
+Apply constraints during sequence construction:
+
+1. Exclude unavailable, hidden, retired, served, and blocked tracks.
+2. Enforce hard repetition/safety constraints.
+3. Satisfy arc slot requirements.
+4. Project budgets across the horizon.
+5. Penalise session similarity and path concentration.
+6. Reserve callback, discovery, and surprise opportunities.
+7. Select the highest-value feasible sequence.
+
+If no feasible sequence exists, return a degraded plan with structured
+constraint_relaxations. Relax soft diversity targets, then arc precision, then
+freshness. Never reintroduce an explicitly disliked or served track simply to
+fill the plan.
+
+### 7.3 Planner algorithm
+
+Initial implementation is constrained beam search:
+
+- retrieve about 500–2,000 deduplicated candidates;
+- keep beam width 20–50 with incremental objective and projected state;
+- expand only compatible candidates per slot;
+- plan 20–50 slots; commit first; publish preview only;
+- replan from current state after feedback while preserving committed track and
+  still-valid callback/goal tokens.
+
+Later options include MCTS, transformer decoding, or model-predictive control.
+The planner interface must stay algorithm-agnostic.
+
+### 7.4 Controlled unpredictability
+
+Measure predictability over recent and proposed sequence using artist, genre,
+source/path, novelty distance, and feature distributions.
+
+- Too predictable: allocate adjacent/surprise candidate and protect a later
+  comfort callback.
+- Too chaotic: shrink discovery radius and inject a familiar anchor.
+
+The target is intentional surprise, neither randomness nor maximum familiarity.
+
+---
+
+## 8. Feedback and learning
+
+### 8.1 Feedback interpretation
+
+| Signal | Interpretation | Immediate action |
+|---|---|---|
+| Skip under 5 sec | strong mismatch | remove route/track, reduce local risk, replan |
+| Skip under 20 sec | mismatch | penalise candidate/path, replan |
+| Late skip | weak negative/transition issue | modest penalty |
+| Completion | weak positive | update state/affinity modestly |
+| Replay | strong positive | reinforce affinity and comfort |
+| Keep/favourite | strong positive | reinforce entities and route |
+| Playlist add/share | very strong positive | reinforce strongly |
+| Mute/hide artist/genre | strong negative | exclude or suppress |
+| Manual search/open album | intent evidence | bias session appropriately |
+| Volume change | weak/noisy evidence | aggregate with other signals |
+| Session abandonment | delayed negative reward | evaluate preceding sequence |
+
+Completion uses actual position and duration. Long intros must not be treated
+exactly like short tracks.
+
+### 8.2 Dynamic exploration
+
+Maintain exploration coefficient E in range 0–1 and discovery radius.
+
+    quick skip of unfamiliar track       E -= 0.05
+    completion of unfamiliar track       E += 0.03
+    save/favourite unknown artist        E += 0.12
+    repeated known completion            E -= 0.01 only if comfort over budget
+    explicit more-discovery control      bounded immediate increase
+
+Clamp and smooth updates so one event does not whiplash a session. Persist the
+evidence. play_of_never_seen or equivalent MUST be emitted by production
+playback; a read-only schema capability is not a feature.
+
+### 8.3 Learning rollout
+
+1. Ship deterministic rules with complete event and plan logging.
+2. Replay historical sessions for offline evaluation.
+3. Use contextual bandits for calibrated immediate/short-horizon weights and
+   generator routing under safety limits.
+4. Consider offline RL/model-based sequence policy only after reliable
+   off-policy evaluation exists.
+
+Retain deterministic fallback and a kill switch for learned policy.
+
+---
+
+## 9. API and frontend contract
+
+### 9.1 Start/resume
+
+    POST /api/v2/vibe/sessions
+
+    {
+      "seedTrackId": "uuid or optional",
+      "context": { "activity": "focus", "device": "headphones" },
+      "intent": "optional mode",
+      "resumeSessionId": "uuid or optional"
+    }
+
+Response includes sessionId, planVersion, now, revisable preview, and concise
+state summary. User identity comes from authenticated/trusted request context,
+not a silent shared default UUID.
+
+### 9.2 Playback event
+
+    POST /api/v2/vibe/sessions/:sessionId/events
+
+    {
+      "eventId": "client UUID",
+      "type": "progress | completed | skipped | kept | disliked | ...",
+      "trackId": "uuid",
+      "positionMs": 12500,
+      "durationMs": 203000,
+      "payload": {}
+    }
+
+Response includes canonical planVersion, replacement preview, state summary,
+and replan reason.
+
+The client MUST reconcile its unplayed Vibe buffer whenever replacement preview
+is returned. It must not keep playing stale prefetched items only because they
+were fetched before feedback. The currently loaded track is not interrupted
+unless the listener explicitly skips it.
+
+### 9.3 Serve next
+
+    POST /api/v2/vibe/sessions/:sessionId/next
+    { "expectedPlanVersion": 4 }
+
+The response is idempotent for request/plan version and marks the item served.
+If a newer plan exists, return that preview instead of a stale track.
+
+### 9.4 UI requirements
+
+- Present Vibe as an evolving session, not static playlist.
+- Show concise direction such as gentle discovery or late-night cooldown.
+- Preview only revisable next tracks and label them adaptive.
+- Offer Keep, Dislike, Skip, End, plus implicit progress tracking.
+- Offer lightweight context and more-familiar/more-discovery controls.
+- Explain a track on demand with provenance and human-readable reason.
+- Do not let ordinary library actions accidentally write Vibe feedback.
+- Preserve session identity through navigation and recover after transient
+  network failure.
+
+---
+
+## 10. Operational requirements
+
+### 10.1 Consistency and concurrency
+
+- Serialize plan mutation per session.
+- Use monotonic planVersion and client optimistic concurrency.
+- Redis may cache active plans; Postgres event/plan records are authoritative.
+  Redis expiry must never erase only session history.
+- Stale-session reaper ends inactive sessions and creates final fingerprint; it
+  never deletes listener history.
+- Revalidate track state and availability immediately before serving.
+
+### 10.2 Performance
+
+- Candidate retrieval p95 under 250 ms for warm local catalogue.
+- Replan p95 under 750 ms for a 20-track baseline horizon.
+- Serve-next p95 under 150 ms when valid plan exists.
+- If ANN, external metadata, or context is unavailable, fall back to local
+  graph/metadata/favourites and record degraded source state.
+
+### 10.3 Observability
+
+Log/measure per policy version and session:
+
+- candidate counts/rejection reasons per generator;
+- metadata coverage;
+- constraint violations and relaxations;
+- replan latency/reason;
+- client stale-preview replacement success;
+- fatigue/budget/entropy trajectories;
+- discovery source/distance acceptance;
+- session outcome metrics.
+
+Never log raw precise location or unnecessary personal context.
+
+---
+
+## 11. Success metrics
+
+Primary metrics:
+
+- average uninterrupted listening duration;
+- completed-session duration and return probability;
+- discovery acceptance by distance/source;
+- new artists saved/favourited;
+- playlist additions and intentional replays;
+- perceived freshness;
+- artist/genre/language/path diversity and repetition rate;
+- sessions with a successful surprise and healthy comfort anchor.
+
+Secondary diagnostics:
+
+- quick/medium skips, hides, abandonments;
+- plan replacement latency;
+- no-eligible-candidate rate;
+- metadata coverage/fallback frequency;
+- hard-constraint satisfaction;
+- similarity to recent sessions.
+
+CTR is diagnostic only. It must not become the objective that causes
+favourite-artist loops.
+
+---
+
+## 12. Delivery phases and acceptance criteria
+
+### Phase 0 — Correct session contract
+
+Deliver durable sessions/events/versioned plans, session IDs on all playback
+events, and client replacement of unplayed preview after replan.
+
+Acceptance:
+
+- A quick skip changes unplayed preview within one successful event round trip.
+- Completion/skip cannot be attributed to another session.
+- Backend restart does not lose event history or plan audit.
+
+### Phase 1 — Enforced fatigue and diversity
+
+Wire every budget/fatigue dimension used by policy into construction. Add album,
+language, vocal/instrumental, and route controls.
+
+Acceptance:
+
+- Fixtures prove artist, album, genre, language, and track constraints.
+- Changing a budget changes the plan, not only debug output.
+- Anti-loop response corrects the detected dimension.
+
+### Phase 2 — Musical arcs and sequence planner
+
+Add feature access, transition scoring, callbacks, surprise tokens, constrained
+beam search.
+
+Acceptance:
+
+- Energetic arc rises then cools within tolerance when features exist.
+- Discovery arc anchors a discovery between familiar items.
+- Chosen plans beat greedy order on offline fixture objective.
+
+### Phase 3 — Context, long-term goals, session memory
+
+Add context capture, fingerprints, weekly priors, and scheduling.
+
+Acceptance:
+
+- Context affects ranking only with comparable evidence; otherwise fallback is safe.
+- Consecutive unseeded sessions are less similar than baseline without reducing
+  completion rate.
+- Album/artist goals spread exposure across sessions.
+
+### Phase 4 — Dynamic exploration and learning
+
+Emit complete feedback, calibrate radius, add offline evaluation, then guarded
+online learning.
+
+Acceptance:
+
+- Unknown-track completion/skip changes exploration in expected bounded direction.
+- Learned decisions have policy version, feature log, and fallback.
+- No rollout proceeds without offline and guardrail metrics.
+
+### Phase 5 — Embeddings and world model
+
+Introduce ANN retrieval and, only when data quality warrants it, learn:
+
+    listener_state(t) + selected_track -> listener_state(t + 1)
+
+The controller can then select tracks partly for the state they create, not
+only immediate affinity. This phase is optional and never blocks the
+deterministic director.
+
+---
+
+## 13. Test matrix
+
+| Scenario | Required assertion |
+|---|---|
+| Fast skip of unknown | preview replaced; radius shrinks; track excluded |
+| Accepted discovery | radius grows; source receives positive attribution |
+| Artist loop | cap respected; compatible bridge used |
+| Language fatigue | alternate language/instrumental appears if available |
+| Album deep dive | tracks spread; no accidental completion block |
+| Low entropy | explainable diversity plus familiar anchor |
+| High entropy | comfort inserted without favourite collapse |
+| Context change | new preview without losing fatigue history |
+| Redis loss | durable event/plan restores coherent preview |
+| Sparse metadata | safe plan and reduced-confidence record |
+| Explicit artist intent | soft diversity may yield; served tracks never repeat |
+| Long session | no served duplicate; callbacks/surprise/budgets bounded |
+
+Use deterministic catalogue fixtures with known artists, albums, languages,
+audio features, and graph routes. Test resulting sequences, not merely whether
+a candidate list was sorted.
+
+## Final product definition
+
+Vibe succeeds when a listener can spend six hours with it and feel it
+understood both their taste and their moment: it mixed comfort with meaningful
+discovery, maintained a coherent evolving arc, avoided fatigue and obvious
+loops, made memorable returns, and still left tomorrow feeling fresh.
+