feat(rwt): real-world topics ride memory — profile taste, ledger footprint, no policy file [spec 13]

specs/STATUS.md

@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ _This file is a **card, not a ledger**: an entry that is done and no longer
 guides the work gets **deleted**, not archived. History lives in git and PR
 bodies; measured facts live in the spec they verify._
 
-_Last updated: 2026-09-03 (real-world topics built — spec 13)_
+_Last updated: 2026-09-04 (real-world topics ride memory: profile taste + ledger — spec 13 §3.4/§3.7)_
 
 ## Where we are
 

specs/spec13/13-real-world-topics.md

@@ -1,10 +1,15 @@
 # spec/13 · real-world-topics — an off-loop pool of things that actually happened
 
-> **Status**: **Built 2026-09-03** (this PR). Pool, roll, fetch task, prompt
-> rendering, the settings knob and the steer field all land; the unit suite is
-> green; a real `fetchTopics` was smoked through the SDK and a real `rwt.offer`
-> was read out of `.dev/dev.log` against the beat it produced. **§5's by-ear
-> criteria are open** — user-run, tracked as one issue.
+> **Status**: **Built 2026-09-03** (PR #203); **redesigned 2026-09-04**
+> (PR #209): the taste file is gone, the profile's *About the listener*
+> section steers the fetch, and a told topic is a ledger row the fetch
+> avoids. Pool, roll, fetch task, prompt rendering, the settings knob and the
+> steer field stand as built; the unit suite is green; a real `fetchTopics`
+> was smoked through the SDK with the profile block in the prompt and the
+> ledger titles in the avoid list, and a real `rwt.offer` was read out of
+> `.dev/dev.log` against the beat it produced. **§5's by-ear criteria are
+> open** — user-run, tracked as one issue
+> ([#202](https://github.com/wine-fall/murmur/issues/202)).
 > **Part**: Delivers the "say real things" line of
 > [`../../ROADMAP.md`](../../ROADMAP.md), which deletes a line once it lands —
 > so this spec, not that file, is the record. Gives the self-initiated talk
@@ -20,9 +25,13 @@
 > call** — the host's brain, the voice, the music pull, and now a bounded
 > WebSearch task. The "three network calls" wording in `DESIGN.md` is already
 > stale ([#104](https://github.com/wine-fall/murmur/issues/104)) and is not
-> edited here. Nothing about the listener leaves the machine except what the
-> task is told: a language name, a timezone name, and the titles already in
-> the pool.
+> edited here. What leaves the machine for the search task: a language name,
+> a timezone name, the titles already in the pool and the ledger's recent
+> real-world titles, and the profile's *About the listener* section — the
+> one section, never *Relationship & style* — under the code-owned line
+> "search for what they follow, never for them" (§3.4). The profile already
+> leaves for the talk brain on every batch; this is the same text on a
+> second, bounded task.
 > **Conventions**: English; written for a coding agent. Mechanism and
 > contracts, not final code. Prompt text centralized in `src/prompts.ts`; no
 > CJK in source (master §0).
@@ -50,9 +59,16 @@
 5. **The knob**: `rwtEnabled` in settings (default on), `--no-rwt`, and a
    `rwt` field on `change_settings` so "stop with the news" typed to the radio
    turns it off.
-6. **The taste file**: `$MURMUR_HOME/rwt-policy.md`, the music-policy shape
-   (spec 03-01 §2.3) — code owns the contract (shape, freshness, dedupe,
-   privacy), the listener owns what to look for.
+6. **The taste, from the profile**: the fetch reads the profile's *About the
+   listener* section at refresh time and leans the search toward what it
+   says the listener follows (§3.4). Code owns the contract (shape,
+   freshness, dedupe, privacy); the listener's half is what memory already
+   knows, and it grows, fades and forgets with the profile — no file, no
+   second store.
+7. **A ledger footprint**: a topic taken for a batch is `recordEvent('rwt',
+   title)`; the fetch is told the ledger's recent titles beside the pool's,
+   so a story that outlives the pool's 48 h is not fetched and told again
+   (§3.7).
 
 ### Out of scope (explicit non-goals)
 
@@ -68,7 +84,20 @@
 - **Fact-checking, citations, or source attribution on air.** The host may
   mention what it read; it does not read out URLs or outlets.
 - **Personal or private material.** The fetch prompt forbids it outright
-  (§3.3); nothing in the pool is about the listener.
+  (§3.3); nothing in the pool is about the listener, and the profile text
+  the fetch carries steers the search, never becomes its subject (§3.4).
+- **A listener-editable taste file.** The first build seeded
+  `$MURMUR_HOME/rwt-policy.md` in the music-policy shape. Removed before it
+  ever shipped in a version: a file nobody is told about is not a knob
+  (seeded with one debug line, named nowhere a listener reads), and its
+  once-only seed (`wx`) froze the policy at install time so a later default
+  never reached an installed copy — the sibling `music-policy.md`, same
+  shape, measured byte-identical to its template after nine days and 28
+  sessions. `music-policy.md` itself is left alone: it has shipped, and a
+  music taste is likelier to be edited than a topic taste.
+- **Reaction tracking** (did the listener type after a real-world beat) and
+  a negative-constraint steer ("no sports") — the signal is too dirty and the
+  machinery too heavy for what #202 has shown so far.
 - **The stub brain.** `StubBrain.fetchTopics` returns nothing; an empty pool
   never offers, so a stub run is exactly its pre-spec-13 self.
 
@@ -112,8 +141,8 @@ export type FetchTopicsRequest = {
   readonly language: string       // the gist's language, a name ("Japanese")
   readonly timezone: string       // IANA, from Intl — the only region signal
   readonly today: string          // YYYY-MM-DD, local
-  readonly avoid: readonly string[] // titles already in the pool
-  readonly policy: string         // the taste half (§2.5)
+  readonly avoid: readonly string[] // pool titles, then the ledger's recent rwt titles
+  readonly follows: string        // the profile's (About the listener) section; '' = none
 }
 
 interface Brain {
@@ -181,8 +210,8 @@ rwt?: {
   became "a friend wanted to watch a show") — the #44 attractor with a fig
   leaf. Absent → renders nothing.
 - `DEFAULT_RWT_POLICY` / `RWT_POLICY_HEADER` / `buildFetchTopicsPrompt(req)`
-  live in `src/prompts.ts`. The listener's `rwt-policy.md` replaces the policy
-  wholesale (HTML comments stripped, the music-policy discipline).
+  / `aboutSection(profile)` live in `src/prompts.ts`. The policy is built in;
+  the per-listener half of the taste is `req.follows` (§3.4).
 - `STEER_SETTINGS_RULE` names the new knob so the reply turn knows "stop with
   the news" is a settings ask.
 
@@ -232,22 +261,44 @@ it does not persist — a restart may offer on the first batch, which is fine.
 `buildFetchTopicsPrompt` states, in this order: the language the gists must
 be written in; the timezone with "weight what matters there, international as
 the fallback"; today's date and the freshness rule (**today or yesterday**
-only); the titles to avoid (already in the pool); the privacy line (nothing
-about private individuals, nothing that identifies a person who is not a
-public figure); the output contract (call `submit_topics` once, 3–8 items,
-each gist two to three spoken sentences a friend could say without reading
-from a screen, no URLs, no outlet names). Then `RWT_POLICY_HEADER` and the
-policy.
-
-### 3.4 The taste half (listener-owned)
-
-`DEFAULT_RWT_POLICY`: the categories — news, tech, entertainment, sports —
-and the weighting: mostly what is happening where the listener is, some of
-what the whole world is talking about, nothing that needs a screen to make
-sense of, nothing that is only a number, prefer the human-scale angle of a
-big story over the headline, and **keep the hard nouns** — a title, a name,
-a place, a date — because they are what make the thing real said aloud. Seeded to `rwt-policy.md` on first use so it is
-discoverable; read fresh on every fetch.
+only); the privacy line (nothing about private individuals, nothing that
+identifies a person who is not a public figure); the titles to avoid (the
+pool's, then the ledger's — §3.7); the output contract (call `submit_topics`
+once, 3–8 items, each gist two to three spoken sentences a friend could say
+without reading from a screen, no URLs, no outlet names); then, when the
+profile has one, the *What the listener follows* block (§3.4); then
+`RWT_POLICY_HEADER` and `DEFAULT_RWT_POLICY`.
+
+### 3.4 The taste half: the profile, not a file
+
+`DEFAULT_RWT_POLICY` is built in: the categories — news, tech,
+entertainment, sports — and the weighting: mostly what is happening where
+the listener is, some of what the whole world is talking about, nothing that
+needs a screen to make sense of, nothing that is only a number, prefer the
+human-scale angle of a big story over the headline, and **keep the hard
+nouns** — a title, a name, a place, a date — because they are what make the
+thing real said aloud.
+
+The per-listener half is the profile. Without it every install with the
+same language and timezone searched for the same things. `profile.md`
+already grows (compaction, spec 05 §3.6), fades (`[seen]` tags, spec 05-01
+§3.3) and forgets (`forget_memory`, spec 05-01 §3.5), so the taste rides
+along for free and keeps no state of its own:
+
+- `aboutSection(profile)` cuts out the *(About the listener)* section of the
+  two-section shape both profile writers produce (`PROFILE_SHAPE`, spec 06),
+  bookkeeping tags stripped. **Only that section.** *(Relationship &
+  style)* is an observation of tone, and tone is not a search term. A
+  profile without the labelled section yields `''` — the conservative
+  reading, since the text leaves for a search task.
+- `buildRwt` reads it at **fetch time** (`memory.profile()` inside the
+  `request` closure), so a compaction or a forget lands on the next refresh.
+- The prompt renders it as a *(What the listener follows)* block before the
+  policy, with the line the code owns and no listener text can loosen:
+  *"Lean the search toward these. Search for what they follow, never for
+  them, and never for anything that identifies them."*
+- Empty → the block is not rendered, and a new listener (or one who declined
+  the spec-06 slice-B bootstrap) gets exactly the pre-change fetch.
 
 ### 3.5 Language and region without a store
 
@@ -270,6 +321,36 @@ French gists about what matters in Japan, which is the intended reading of
 | no network at all | never offers; radio unchanged |
 | `rwtEnabled` false | no roll, no offer; the refresh still keeps the pool warm so turning it back on is instant |
 
+### 3.7 The ledger footprint
+
+rwt was the one content source with no ledger row: a song played is
+`recordEvent('song')` and the pick avoids the last 32 (`AVOID_DEPTH`, spec
+05 §3.5); a talk beat's topic key is `recordEvent('topic')` and feeds
+`coveredTopics`. A real-world item's anti-repeat lived only in
+`cache/rwt.json`'s `used` mark — on an entry that expires in 48 h, in a
+directory that is rebuildable by design. A story that runs longer than that
+(a series airing, a tournament, an argument still going) was fetched again
+as new and told again.
+
+- `LedgerKind` gains `'rwt'`; `MemoryStore` gains `recentRwt(n)` beside
+  `recentSongs` — the Director's tier, unlike the impl-level `recentEvents`.
+- The Director ledgers the **title** at **take** time, in `generateTalks`
+  right after `offer()` — the same moment the pool marks it `used` (§2.1),
+  so the two records agree on when a topic is spent. Not at air time: a
+  batch generated and discarded still burned its topic.
+- The fetch is told `pool.titles()` then the ledger's last
+  `RWT_AVOID_DEPTH` (32) rwt titles, deduplicated, in `avoid`; a title the
+  fetch was told to avoid and returned anyway is dropped before `merge`.
+  32 is the music list's settled depth — 8 brought a favourite back every
+  other session — and a topic is offered far less often than a song plays,
+  so 32 here spans weeks of sessions, long enough to outlast a running
+  story, at one prompt line each on a background task.
+- `forget_memory` does **not** touch the ledger, by design (spec 05-01
+  §3.5 removes history rows and profile lines). What was heard stays
+  avoided; what the listener stopped following leaves the profile and so
+  leaves `follows` (§3.4). "Don't bring that up again" is served by the two
+  together, not by erasing the record of having said it.
+
 ---
 
 ## 4. Dependencies
@@ -299,21 +380,36 @@ French gists about what matters in Japan, which is the intended reading of
    `change_settings({ rwt: false })` lands `rwtEnabled: false`.
 6. Director: a stub/fake `rwt` dep is offered once per non-anchor, non-coda
    batch and never on those two.
+7. Taste: `aboutSection` returns the About section alone, tags stripped,
+   and `''` for a profile without the labelled section; the fetch prompt
+   renders the *(What the listener follows)* block with the privacy line
+   before the policy, and nothing for an empty `follows`; `buildRwt` reads
+   the profile at fetch time and seeds no file under the home.
+8. Ledger: `recentRwt` on both stores, persisted across instances; an offer
+   ledgers the title once and a null offer none; the fetch's `avoid` is the
+   pool's titles then the ledger's, and a covered title returned is not
+   merged.
 
 ### Real seam (done once in this PR, evidence in the PR body)
 
-7. A real `fetchTopics` through the SDK writes ≥ 3 entries into
-   `cache/rwt.json`, gists in the requested language, dated today/yesterday.
-8. A `make dev` run shows `rwt.offer <id>` in `.dev/dev.log`, and the beat
-   generated from that batch is read against the entry's gist.
+9. A real `fetchTopics` through the SDK writes ≥ 3 entries into
+   `cache/rwt.json`, gists in the requested language, dated today/yesterday;
+   the prompt it ran carries the profile block and the ledger titles, and
+   its WebSearch queries are about what the listener follows, not the
+   listener.
+10. A `make dev` run shows `rwt.offer <id>` in `.dev/dev.log`, the beat
+    generated from that batch is read against the entry's gist, and the
+    title lands in `ledger.jsonl` as `kind: "rwt"`.
 
 ### By-ear (open — one issue)
 
-9. A mentioned topic is named — the title, who, where — and said the way a
-   host says it, not a newsreader: one item, no rundown, no list.
-10. The proportion feels right — present but not every stretch.
-11. The gist language matches the persona's spoken language.
-12. Turning it off by typing works and the host does not keep mentioning news.
+11. A mentioned topic is named — the title, who, where — and said the way a
+    host says it, not a newsreader: one item, no rundown, no list.
+12. The proportion feels right — present but not every stretch.
+13. The gist language matches the persona's spoken language.
+14. Turning it off by typing works and the host does not keep mentioning news.
+15. Over a week, the pool leans toward what the profile says the listener
+    follows, and a story already told is not told again as new.
 
 ---
 

src/app.ts

@@ -46,15 +46,15 @@ import { HostedListening } from './listening-data.ts'
 import { InProcessMemoryStore, PersistentMemoryStore } from './memory.ts'
 import { sentinelRoot } from './paths.ts'
 import { readMusicPolicy, seedMusicPolicy } from './music-policy.ts'
-import { readRwtPolicy, RealWorldTopics, RwtPool, RwtRoll, seedRwtPolicy } from './rwt.ts'
+import { RealWorldTopics, RWT_AVOID_DEPTH, RwtPool, RwtRoll } from './rwt.ts'
 import { MusicProgrammer } from './music-programmer.ts'
 import { startReport, type ReportDeps, type ReportSession } from './report.ts'
 import { SteerResponder } from './steer-responder.ts'
 import { YtDlpMusicProvider } from './music.ts'
 import { detectLanguage } from './locale.ts'
 import { loadPersona, personaLanguage, personaLine } from './persona.ts'
 import { lineReader, quitLatch, runSetup, setupComplete, type SetupTargets } from './guide.ts'
-import { buildFindMusicInstruction } from './prompts.ts'
+import { aboutSection, buildFindMusicInstruction } from './prompts.ts'
 import { LedgerScheduler } from './scheduler.ts'
 import { readSettingsFile, SETTINGS_FILE, SettingsStore } from './settings.ts'
 import {
@@ -300,16 +300,17 @@ export function rwtLanguage(override: string | undefined, persona: string): stri
 }
 
 // Real-world topics (spec 13): the pool under cache/, the roll from the env
-// knobs, the fetch on the cheap tier. `language` is read at fetch time from
-// where the host reads it, so an override lands on the next refresh; region
-// is the system timezone, in the prompt only, never stored.
+// knobs, the fetch on the cheap tier. `language` and the profile's About
+// section are read at fetch time, so an override or a compaction lands on
+// the next refresh; region is the system timezone, in the prompt only, never
+// stored.
 export function buildRwt(
   config: Config,
   brain: Pick<Brain, 'fetchTopics'>,
   language: () => string,
   host: Host,
+  memory: Pick<MemoryStore, 'profile' | 'recentRwt'>,
 ): RealWorldTopics {
-  if (seedRwtPolicy(config.rwtPolicyPath)) host.debug?.(`rwt.policy seeded ${config.rwtPolicyPath}`)
   return new RealWorldTopics({
     pool: new RwtPool({
       path: config.rwtPoolPath,
@@ -324,8 +325,9 @@ export function buildRwt(
       timezone: Intl.DateTimeFormat().resolvedOptions().timeZone,
       // en-CA is the one locale whose short date is ISO YYYY-MM-DD, local.
       today: new Date().toLocaleDateString('en-CA'),
-      policy: readRwtPolicy(config.rwtPolicyPath),
+      follows: aboutSection(memory.profile()),
     }),
+    covered: () => memory.recentRwt(RWT_AVOID_DEPTH),
     ...(host.debug !== undefined && { log: host.debug.bind(host) }),
   })
 }
@@ -846,6 +848,7 @@ export async function runApp(config: Config, maxSegments?: number): Promise<void
           new ClaudeBrain(config.rwtModel),
           () => rwtLanguage(settings.current().language, persona),
           host,
+          memory,
         )
 
   const director = new Director({

src/config.ts

@@ -18,7 +18,6 @@ import {
   dataRoot,
   homeRoot,
   musicPolicyPath,
-  rwtPolicyPath,
   rwtPoolPath,
   settingsPath,
   tuiSocketPath,
@@ -114,7 +113,6 @@ export const ConfigSchema = z.object({
   // numbers are env-only by-ear knobs. The fetch rides the cheap tier.
   rwtEnabled: z.boolean().default(true),
   rwtPoolPath: z.string().default(() => rwtPoolPath()),
-  rwtPolicyPath: z.string().default(() => rwtPolicyPath()),
   rwtModel: z.string().default('claude-haiku-4-5-20251001'),
   rwtP: z.coerce.number().min(0).max(1).default(0.35),
   rwtMinGap: z.coerce.number().int().nonnegative().default(1),
@@ -346,7 +344,6 @@ export function parseCli(argv: string[], env: NodeJS.ProcessEnv = process.env):
     memoryDir: join(dataRoot(env), 'memory'),
     musicPolicyPath: musicPolicyPath(env),
     rwtPoolPath: rwtPoolPath(env),
-    rwtPolicyPath: rwtPolicyPath(env),
     ...rwtFromEnv(env),
     listeningApiKey: env.MURMUR_LISTENING_API_KEY?.trim() ?? '',
     listeningUrl: env.MURMUR_LISTENING_URL?.trim() ?? '',