Re-running apply_scene_close_summary on the same scene previously caused
recursive bloat: _build_key_quotes_suffix sourced quote text from
memories.pov_summary, which after the first close already carried a
"Key quotes:" suffix. The next close would then quote the quotes,
nesting deeper each time.
Strip any existing suffix from candidate text before truncating to
200 chars in the suffix builder, and from the fresh classifier output
before composing the new value in _summarize_and_apply_for_witness so
the rewrite replaces rather than stacks.
Adds test_scene_close_re_run_does_not_double_suffix.
The kickoff parse-and-confirm route was 500-ing intermittently because
Hermes-3 + Featherless's response_format={"type":"json_object"} only
guarantees JSON output, NOT a particular schema. The model was inventing
its own field names (sceneTime, entities, settingDetails) instead of
the KickoffParse fields, causing Pydantic validation to fail on both
classify() retries.
Three changes:
1. Include the Pydantic JSON schema in the system prompt so the model
knows exactly which keys to produce. Affects every classify() call
(kickoff parse, turn parse, scene-close detect, significance,
state-update, scene summarize). Strip ```json fences if the model
wraps its output. Bump retries 2 → 3 (model is stochastic; one extra
attempt closes most of the remaining gap).
2. parse_kickoff() now passes a default empty KickoffParse so the
route degrades to a fillable form instead of 500 when the classifier
ultimately fails. The confirm form is the human-in-the-loop; an
empty form is strictly better UX than a stack trace.
3. Tests updated: bumped canned-failure arrays from 2 → 3 entries to
match the new attempt count; renamed kickoff test from
"raises_when_classifier_fails_twice" to
"falls_back_to_empty_when_classifier_fails" reflecting the new
degraded-but-usable behavior.
Verified live with all 3 sample bots (maya/eli/sam) — kickoff route
returns 200 across multiple attempts. Full suite: 168 passed.
Joseph Doherty