Files
interactive-story/backend/app/context/builder.py
T
JesseMarkowitzandClaude Opus 5 480414efe0 M7: a first-class imported knowledge library
A campaign can import local .txt and .md files as Canon, Reference or
Inspiration, and the class is load-bearing rather than a label: it decides the
words a passage is framed with in the prompt, the weight it carries when
passages are ranked, and which budget it competes in when the context is tight.

This is a separate subsystem, which is the Phase 0B decision
(IMPORTED-KNOWLEDGE-DESIGN.md §73). Story Cards do not carry classification,
provenance, content identity, chunking, an index or a lifecycle, and they were
not promoted into something that does. Nothing here reads or writes one.

The subsystem, in backend/app/knowledge/:

  classes      the three classes, their weights, and the prompt framing
  chunking     deterministic, heading-aware, 60-800 tokens, no overlap
  fts          SQLite FTS5 with porter stemming; scoped and bounded in SQL
  importer     validate, hash, store, chunk, index — in one transaction
  embeddings   local Ollama vectors through the shared provider
  retrieval    query construction, hybrid merge, rerank
  inject       the budgeted cut and the rendered prompt sections

Relevance admission is a separate stage from ranking, and that separation is
the milestone's most expensive lesson. An independent review found the first
implementation deciding relevance with a floor expressed as a share of the best
candidate — which the best clears by construction — so a passage was admitted on
every turn regardless of the scene. A query about tide tables and container
tonnage retrieved all five sources of a fantasy campaign, narrator-only hidden
Canon among them.

So the pipeline is now:

  candidate generation -> admission -> ranking -> class weighting -> budget

Admission reads raw, candidate-set-independent signals: the cosine the model
returned, and how many distinct meaningful query terms a passage contains.
Ranking reads normalized ones, because bm25 has no fixed range and cosine's zero
is not zero. Normalization decides order among things that matched; it can never
decide whether anything matched. Authority is applied after admission, so a
class orders what matched and never rescues what did not.

Retrieval may therefore return nothing, and on a scene unrelated to the library
it does.

The other decisions that each replaced an obvious wrong one:

- The class multiplies relevance rather than adding to it. An additive bonus
  satisfies "Canon outranks Reference" and makes "do not include irrelevant
  Canon" impossible, because a large enough constant wins on its own.
- The semantic floor is measured, not guessed: 113 production-path pairs against
  nomic-embed-text put targeted matches at 0.55-0.85 and off-topic pairs at
  0.36-0.56, and 0.58 sits between them. Because it is a property of that model
  and not of cosine similarity, it is keyed to the model rather than applied to
  whatever is configured: an embedding model with no measured calibration in
  this build does not borrow the number. Semantic admission is skipped, the
  campaign retrieves lexically, and the reason is stated in the knowledge status
  and in the turn's provenance. Degrading to lexical keeps the library usable;
  lending the threshold to an unmeasured model is how the admitted-everything
  defect would return.
- One lexical term is not evidence. Two distinct meaningful terms, or one that
  is neither a standing campaign entity nor a negligible share of the query.
  The stop list grew from 42 words to 261, all function words — no subject
  matter, because a stop list that removes subject matter stops finding "The
  Silver Key".
- Lexical retrieval is a production path, not a fallback. It finds the proper
  nouns and invented terms a setting bible is made of, and the library is fully
  usable with no embedding model configured.

Safety is structural rather than filtered. Imported text reaches the prompt
whole, inside a section that says what it is, under a rule stating the authority
order in words and refusing every instruction inside it. No endpoint accepts a
filesystem path, so H08 has no mechanism to escape from. Nothing renders
imported content as HTML, so a script tag is five visible characters and a
remote image is never fetched. Import, chunking, indexing, retrieval and a turn
open no socket at all; only embeddings do, through the endpoint allowlist the
memory bank already uses.

Provenance is the rendered text, not a foreign key: deleting a source cannot
turn a historical turn's evidence into dangling ids.

Schema: knowledge_sources, knowledge_chunks, knowledge_embeddings, and an FTS5
virtual table attached to knowledge_chunks as a DDL hook so it is created and
dropped with the table it indexes. Migration 92. A pre-M7 database opens
unchanged and needs no sources to play.

Bundle: the source content and the reader's judgements about it travel; the
passages, index rows and vectors are rebuilt on import, so a restored campaign
is searchable immediately without a reindex step.

One runtime dependency: python-multipart, Starlette's multipart parser. It is
what makes the upload surface possible, and the upload surface is why no
pathname is ever accepted.

The test doubles were the reason the defect shipped, so they were corrected too.
The retrieval stub scored unrelated text at 0.06-0.20 where the real model
scores it at 0.43-0.44, and its docstring said it had deliberately removed the
constant component that "would put a similarity floor under every pair" — which
is exactly the property real models have. The stub now has that floor, one test
fails if it is ever removed, and another reproduces the superseded rule and
asserts it is still fooled by the same fixture. Run against the pre-corrective
implementation, the new suite fails 13 of 18.

Tests: 939 passed, 14 skipped (836/7 at M6). 110 new across seven files, one of
which mocks nothing between itself and Ollama and re-measures the similarity
separation on every run. 43/43 checks in a real Firefox, reproduced.
Docker build clean.

Four other defects found by review or by the browser run were fixed here rather
than carried: an unreachable relevance constant that appeared to enforce
something and did not; acceptance tests using the wrong fixture files, so G07's
trap was never exercised; a bidirectional override surviving into displayed
filenames; and, from the implementation pass, the Insights panel showing M5's
two state sections as raw keys and the source inspector refetching on every
keystroke.

M7 was independently reviewed, which returned PASS WITH CORRECTIVE WORK
REQUIRED. Both blocking findings are closed, and closeout resolved the
embedding-model calibration boundary the corrective pass had left as debt.
planning/reports/M7-IMPLEMENTATION-REPORT.md carries the review, the corrective
closeout and the closeout verification in sequence, none overwriting another.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_017HdaXiFbscatQaLS7dJk6b
2026-09-06 15:40:13 -04:00

671 lines
33 KiB
Python

"""Context assembly per AI Dungeon's memory system
(help.aidungeon.com/faq/the-memory-system):
[AI Instructions] always included
[Player Character] always included when the adventure has a persona
[Plot Essentials] always included (classic "Memory")
[Story Summary] always included (manual in Phase 3, auto in Phase 6)
[Used Memories] top-K memory-bank retrievals (Phase 6, when enabled)
[Triggered Story Cards] "World Lore: <entry>", conditional; first dropped when over budget
[Story history] newest actions that fit the remaining token budget
[Author's Note] injected AUTHORS_NOTE_DEPTH actions before the end of history
[Latest player action] (+ script frontMemory right after it, Phase 4)
The list above comes from AI Dungeon's design. The order does not. This module
emits every fixed section first and every changing section after the history,
because prompt caching bills on a shared prefix. A section that changes near the
top of the prompt re-prices everything below it. See the comments on the static
block and the live sections in `build_context`.
"""
from dataclasses import dataclass
import tiktoken
from sqlalchemy.orm import object_session
from .. import derived, models, narrative, summaries, worldstate
from ..knowledge import inject as knowledge_inject
from ..knowledge import records as knowledge_records
from . import encoding, history
AUTHORS_NOTE_DEPTH = 3 # actions from the end of history
CARD_BUDGET_SHARE = 0.4 # max share of non-reserved budget that story cards may take
NPC_WINDOW = 6 # actions of story searched for NPC trigger words ("in scene")
SEPARATOR = "\n\n"
# Output-length guidance. The endpoint enforces `max_output_tokens` as a hard
# limit, and it truncates the reply mid-sentence when the model reaches it. The
# state block is emitted last, so truncation removes it. Asking the model to
# finish inside the limit prevents the truncation.
LENGTH_HEADROOM = 50 # Tokens reserved from the cap for the state block.
# Models cannot count their own tokens, but they do follow a word budget, so the
# hint states a number of words. English prose averages 0.75 words per token.
WORDS_PER_TOKEN = 0.75
# Models regularly exceed a word budget, and the cap it protects is a hard
# limit. Aiming 10% below the real ceiling leaves room for that overshoot, so it
# does not consume the state block.
LENGTH_BUFFER = 0.90
MIN_LENGTH_HINT_WORDS = 40 # Below this, the hint adds nothing useful.
# A ceiling on its own gives one-sided guidance, and models respond to it
# differently. A verbose model treats it as a limit. A terse model has only the
# instruction to write as much as the moment needs, and it produces two
# paragraphs. Adding a floor turns the guidance into a range, so the same prompt
# produces a similar length from either model. The floor is a share of the
# ceiling so that it can never approach the ceiling.
LENGTH_FLOOR_SHARE = 0.35
# Below this word count, a floor means nothing, because a short turn is the
# correct turn at a tight cap. The wording used at a tight cap is also the
# wording that was measured to preserve the state block, so it is unchanged.
MIN_LENGTH_FLOOR_WORDS = 60
# The floor prevents a collapse to two paragraphs. It does not ask for an essay.
# At a 2400-token cap, the share alone would request a minimum of 555 words. A
# reader who wants longer turns can ask for them in the author's note.
MAX_LENGTH_FLOOR_WORDS = 300
# Built from the table vendored in `encoding.py`, not fetched: the upstream
# `tiktoken.get_encoding("cl100k_base")` downloads it on first use, and this
# is called on every turn.
# M6: added to the configured reply budget when reserving output space. It
# absorbs the section separators added after budgeting and the drift between
# this tokenizer and the serving model's. Fixed rather than proportional: what
# it covers does not grow with the size of the budget.
OUTPUT_SAFETY_MARGIN = 64
class ContextOverflow(RuntimeError):
"""Raised when protected context alone cannot fit in the token budget.
Protected means the narrator rules, the campaign canon, the authoritative
narrative state, the reader's own input, and the reserve for the reply
(`CONTEXT-AND-MEMORY.md` §30). None of those may be dropped to make room for
old prose, so when they do not fit there is no prompt to build and saying so
is the only honest answer.
"""
def _encoding() -> tiktoken.Encoding:
return encoding.get_encoding()
def count_tokens(text: str) -> int:
return len(_encoding().encode(text))
def truncate_to_last_tokens(text: str, budget: int) -> str:
tokens = _encoding().encode(text)
if len(tokens) <= budget:
return text
return _encoding().decode(tokens[-budget:])
@dataclass
class Section:
label: str
text: str
@property
def tokens(self) -> int:
return count_tokens(self.text)
def length_hint(max_output_tokens: int) -> str:
"""Ask for a turn that fits inside the output cap, stated as a word budget.
Returns an empty string when the cap is too small to state usefully. The
model can exceed the hint, so the hint earns its tokens only when there is
enough room for that overshoot to stay inside the cap.
"""
words = int((max_output_tokens - LENGTH_HEADROOM) * WORDS_PER_TOKEN * LENGTH_BUFFER)
if words < MIN_LENGTH_HINT_WORDS:
return ""
tail = " Finish the narration and append the state block well inside the limit."
# State the number as a ceiling, never as a budget. In measurements, the
# wording "keep this turn under about N words" read to the model as a target
# to fill. It raised the average from 174 words to 246 across five runs, and
# every hinted run was longer than every unhinted run. The hint therefore
# pushed turns toward the limit it exists to avoid. Naming the number as a
# limit, and adding that a typical turn is much shorter, held the average at
# 170 while still preserving the state block at tight caps.
floor = min(int(words * LENGTH_FLOOR_SHARE), MAX_LENGTH_FLOOR_WORDS)
if floor < MIN_LENGTH_FLOOR_WORDS:
return (
f"[Hard limit: this turn must not exceed {words} words. Write only as "
f"much as the moment needs — a typical turn is much shorter.{tail}]"
)
# Both numbers are bounds, and the wording is deliberately asymmetric. The
# ceiling uses "must not exceed", because the endpoint enforces it. The floor
# uses "should not stop short of". Neither reads as a target, which the
# measurement above shows is what matters. The clause that asks the model to
# prefer the lower end does the job the earlier wording did, which was to
# keep a verbose model away from the ceiling. It now has a number beneath it,
# so a terse model reading the same clause stops at the floor rather than at
# forty words.
return (
f"[Hard limit: this turn must not exceed {words} words, and it should not "
f"stop short of about {floor}. Prefer the lower end of that range unless "
f"the scene genuinely needs more.{tail}]"
)
def render_persona(adventure: models.Adventure) -> str:
"""Returns the Player Character section, or "" when there is no persona.
The three fields are independent. A name alone is enough, a description
alone is enough, and the wording holds together for either. Pronouns are
stated because the summarizer in `memorybank` writes about the protagonist
in the third person, and a model that has to infer a pronoun from a name
will sometimes infer wrongly and then repeat that error in every memory it
writes.
"""
name = adventure.persona_name.strip()
pronouns = adventure.persona_pronouns.strip()
desc = adventure.persona_desc.strip()
if not (name or desc):
return ""
head = f"You are {name}" if name else ""
if head and pronouns:
head += f" ({pronouns})"
# Joined with a space, not `SEPARATOR`: this is one short paragraph about
# one character, and a blank line inside it reads as two unrelated notes.
body = " ".join(part for part in (f"{head}." if head else "", desc) if part)
return f"Player character:\n{body}"
def _script_memory(adventure: models.Adventure) -> dict:
"""Script-provided memory overrides (populated by Phase 4 scripting)."""
state = adventure.script_state if isinstance(adventure.script_state, dict) else {}
memory = state.get("memory")
return memory if isinstance(memory, dict) else {}
def _history_text(action: models.Action) -> str:
"""Returns an AI turn as the model should see it in replayed history.
Replayed history is **prose only**. The protocol block is not reconstructed
into it, and the M5 corrective pass is why (review Finding 4).
Replaying the block was meant to teach the model the output format by
example. What it actually did was put a second, older account of the world
into the same prompt as the authoritative one, with nothing marking which
governed. A fact the reader had explicitly withdrawn through a manual
correction was dropped from the state section and then handed straight back
in the history section, as an accepted event, phrased exactly as the model
had first asserted it. C04 requires a correction to reach the narrator's
context; a correction the next prompt contradicts has not reached it.
Two other things were wrong with it. The blocks are implementation
metadata, not story, and every other consumer of stored text — memory,
summaries, export, the transcript — treats an action's text as prose. And a
turn's accepted events are a record of what was true *then*, which is
precisely what a later correction, retcon or invalidation revises.
The format instruction survives without the examples: `EMIT_RULE` carries a
worked example in the system block and `EMIT_REMINDER` repeats the demand
last, where recency is strongest.
"""
return action.text
def _memory_line(memory: dict) -> str:
"""One retrieved memory, marked with its authority (M6)."""
mark = " [inferred]" if memory.get("authority") == "heuristic" else ""
return f"-{mark} {memory['text']}"
def _canon_section(adventure: models.Adventure) -> str:
"""The campaign's own rules, rendered for the system block.
Canon is configuration (C01, J03): the campaign writes what is true and what
is forbidden, and both the prompt and the validator read the same field.
Putting it in the system block is what makes C01 a narration-time constraint
as well as a validation-time one — the model is told the rule rather than
only refused after breaking it.
"""
canon = adventure.campaign_canon
if not isinstance(canon, dict):
return ""
lines: list[str] = []
rules = canon.get("rules")
if isinstance(rules, list):
lines += [f"- {rule}" for rule in rules if isinstance(rule, str) and rule.strip()]
forbidden = canon.get("forbidden_status_changes")
if isinstance(forbidden, list):
for rule in forbidden:
if isinstance(rule, dict) and rule.get("from") and rule.get("to"):
lines.append(
f"- Nothing that is {rule['from']} can become {rule['to']}."
)
if not lines:
return ""
body = "\n".join(lines)
return f"Campaign canon (these are true and may not be contradicted):\n{body}"
def _visible_npcs(actions: list[models.Action], stat_schema: dict) -> dict[str, str]:
"""Returns the NPCs whose trigger words appear in the recent story.
These are the NPCs in scene, and the prompt includes stats for them only.
The result maps an NPC id to its display name.
`actions` holds only the most recent actions. See `NPC_WINDOW`.
"""
recent = SEPARATOR.join(a.text for a in actions).lower()
visible: dict[str, str] = {}
for npc_key, ndef in (stat_schema.get("npcs") or {}).items():
if not isinstance(ndef, dict):
continue
if any(trigger in recent for trigger in worldstate.npc_triggers(ndef, npc_key)):
visible[npc_key] = worldstate.npc_name(ndef, npc_key)
return visible
def match_cards(cards: list[models.StoryCard], window_text: str) -> list[dict]:
"""Returns one record per matched story card, naming the keyword that matched.
Matching follows AI Dungeon's rules. It ignores case, respects spaces, and
matches partial words, so "boat" matches "boats".
Public since Phase 18b: `memorybank.cast_brief` runs the same rule over the
block it is about to summarize, so that the summarizer is told who the
characters in that stretch of story are. One rule, one implementation.
"""
haystack = window_text.lower()
matched = []
for card in cards:
for key in (k.strip().lower() for k in card.keys.split(",")):
if key and key in haystack:
matched.append(
{"id": card.id, "name": card.name, "keyword": key, "entry": card.entry}
)
break
return matched
def build_context(
adventure: models.Adventure,
settings: models.Settings,
memory_bank: dict | None = None,
exclude_action_id: int | None = None,
knowledge: knowledge_records.Result | None = None,
) -> tuple[str, str, dict]:
"""Returns (system_text, story_text, context_report). `memory_bank` is the
result of memorybank.retrieve_memories (None when the bank is off);
`exclude_action_id` omits one action from the story (see history.py).
M7: `knowledge` is the result of `knowledge.retrieval.retrieve` — the ranked
imported passages, before any budget has been applied. It arrives already
retrieved for the same reason `memory_bank` does: retrieval may need an
embedding call, this function is synchronous, and a prompt builder that can
make network requests is a prompt builder that can fail halfway through a
prompt. None means the campaign has no library, or the caller did not ask.
"""
script_mem = _script_memory(adventure)
# M7: priced before anything else, because the answer changes what is left.
# `plan` prices only the protected half — the untrusted-data rule and any
# always-in-force Canon — and both are counted with the system block below.
knowledge_plan = knowledge_inject.plan(
knowledge if knowledge is not None else knowledge_records.Result(),
count_tokens,
settings.context_token_budget,
)
# ----- The static block, which is identical on every turn -----
# This ordering exists to reduce cost. Prompt caching matches a prefix. The
# endpoint reuses the prompt up to the first byte that differs from the
# previous request, and no further. A section that changes near the top
# therefore re-prices everything below it, and what sits below it is the
# story history, which is most of the prompt. Sections that change from turn
# to turn go after the history, among the live sections. Placing them there
# also gives them the most recency, which is why `EMIT_REMINDER` goes last.
system_sections: list[Section] = [Section("narrator", settings.narrator_prompt.strip())]
# RPG world state (Phase 12): the instructions for reporting changes. The
# live values go into a live section below. The guide derived from the
# schema and the emit rule do not change while the scenario is unchanged.
stat_schema = adventure.scenario.stat_schema if adventure.scenario else None
has_ws = worldstate.has_schema(stat_schema)
persona_name = adventure.persona_name.strip()
# M5: the typed-event protocol replaces the delta rule for every campaign,
# with or without an inherited stat schema. State is no longer an opt-in
# RPG layer — a story has entities, places and possessions whatever genre it
# is, so the rule is unconditional.
system_sections.append(Section("state_rule", narrative.extract.EMIT_RULE))
canon_text = _canon_section(adventure)
if canon_text:
system_sections.append(Section("campaign_canon", canon_text))
# M7: the imported-knowledge framing rule, and any Canon the campaign has
# marked as always in force. Both go here, directly *below* the campaign's
# own canon, which is the authority order stated in words in
# `knowledge.classes.KNOWLEDGE_RULE` and reinforced by the position.
#
# In the system block rather than among the live sections, for two reasons.
# They change only when the reader edits their library, so they belong in
# the cached prefix; and being counted with the protected sections is what
# makes an over-large always-include a `ContextOverflow` with an explanation
# rather than a prompt that silently loses its history.
for protected_section in knowledge_plan.protected:
system_sections.append(
Section(protected_section.label, protected_section.text)
)
if isinstance(script_mem.get("context"), str) and script_mem["context"].strip():
system_sections.append(Section("script_context", script_mem["context"].strip()))
if adventure.ai_instructions.strip():
system_sections.append(Section("ai_instructions", adventure.ai_instructions.strip()))
# Phase 18. This sits in the static block because only the user can edit it,
# so it never changes mid-story and stays inside the cached prefix. It is
# emitted whether or not the adventure has an RPG layer: an adventure with
# no stats still has a protagonist, and that is the case the persona was
# added for.
persona_text = render_persona(adventure)
if persona_text:
system_sections.append(Section("persona", persona_text))
if adventure.memory.strip():
system_sections.append(
Section("plot_essentials", f"Plot essentials:\n{adventure.memory.strip()}")
)
# ----- Live sections, which hold everything that changes -----
# This code builds them here and places them after the history further down.
# They are ordered from least to most volatile, so a turn that changes only
# the fastest-moving section leaves the others cached. The summary is
# rewritten every few turns. Lore changes with the scene. The retrieved
# memories change on most turns, and the stat values change on nearly every
# turn. `world_lore` is added below, because the history window determines
# which cards trigger and that window is not known yet.
# M6: the summary the *current lineage* is entitled to, not whatever was
# written last. A summary is derived data anchored to the story it covers,
# so an Undo or a divergence makes an old one ineligible rather than
# leaking it into a story it does not describe (E03, `app/summaries.py`).
db = object_session(adventure)
summary_row = summaries.current(db, adventure) if db is not None else None
summary_text = summary_row.text.strip() if summary_row is not None else ""
summary_section = (
Section("story_summary", f"Story summary:\n{summary_text}")
if summary_text
else None
)
memories_section = None
if memory_bank and memory_bank.get("used"):
# M6: an inference must not read as a record. A heuristic memory is
# marked in the prompt itself, because the narrator decides what to
# treat as established from what it is shown, and an unlabelled guess
# sitting beside accepted history is how a guess becomes canon
# (`CONTEXT-AND-MEMORY.md` §14). Authoritative state changes still come
# only from the M5 event path, whatever a memory says.
lines_text = "\n".join(_memory_line(m) for m in memory_bank["used"])
memories_section = Section(
"used_memories",
"Memories from earlier in the story. Lines marked [inferred] are "
"interpretation, not established fact — do not treat them as "
f"settled truth:\n{lines_text}",
)
world_state_section = None
refusal_note = ""
# M5: the authoritative narrative state, as the model is shown it. Read from
# the campaign's live document, which head movement keeps pointed at the
# position being read — so an undone story is described by the state it had
# then, not by the state it reached later.
state_block = narrative.render.for_prompt(adventure.narrative_state)
if state_block:
world_state_section = Section("narrative_state", state_block)
# Corrections for the previous AI turn only. A refusal the model has
# already had one chance to fix is stale, and repeating it every turn
# would price a correction into the whole rest of the adventure.
recent = history.tail(adventure, NPC_WINDOW, exclude_action_id)
last_ai = next((a for a in reversed(recent) if a.type == "ai"), None)
if last_ai is not None:
refusal_note = narrative.extract.render_rejections(last_ai.state_rejections)
authors_note_text = adventure.authors_note.strip()
if isinstance(script_mem.get("authorsNote"), str) and script_mem["authorsNote"].strip():
authors_note_text = script_mem["authorsNote"].strip()
authors_note = f"[Author's note: {authors_note_text}]" if authors_note_text else ""
front_memory = ""
if isinstance(script_mem.get("frontMemory"), str):
front_memory = script_mem["frontMemory"].strip()
length_note = length_hint(settings.max_output_tokens)
# The live sections sit below the history, but they are still part of the
# prompt, so they still count against the budget. `world_lore` is the
# exception, because the code below budgets it out of `available`.
reserved = (
sum(s.tokens for s in system_sections)
+ sum(
s.tokens
for s in (summary_section, memories_section, world_state_section)
if s is not None
)
+ count_tokens(authors_note)
+ count_tokens(front_memory)
+ count_tokens(length_note)
+ count_tokens(narrative.extract.EMIT_REMINDER)
+ count_tokens(refusal_note)
)
# ----- M6: the output reserve, and what happens when it does not fit -----
#
# `context_token_budget` is the whole window the model is given, so the
# narrator's reply has to be subtracted from it before any history is
# chosen. Until M6 it was not: the builder spent the entire budget on input
# and left the reply to fit in whatever the endpoint had left, which is a
# truncated turn on a model whose window is the budget
# (`CONTEXT-AND-MEMORY.md` §32, acceptance test F04).
#
# The margin covers what is added after this arithmetic — the separators
# between sections, and the difference between our tokenizer's count and the
# serving model's. It is small and fixed rather than proportional, because
# what it absorbs does not scale with the budget.
output_reserve = max(0, settings.max_output_tokens) + OUTPUT_SAFETY_MARGIN
protected = reserved + output_reserve
if protected >= settings.context_token_budget:
# Failing here is the point. The alternative — carrying on with a token
# or two of history — builds a prompt that is known to overflow, and
# the reader gets a truncated reply with no explanation. §32: "fail
# gracefully if protected context alone is too large."
raise ContextOverflow(
f"The protected context needs {protected} tokens "
f"({reserved} of prompt plus {output_reserve} reserved for the "
f"reply) but the context budget is {settings.context_token_budget}. "
"Raise the context budget, lower the maximum reply length, or "
"shorten the campaign's canon, instructions and persona."
)
available = settings.context_token_budget - protected
# ----- M7: retrieved imported knowledge, out of a share of `available` -----
#
# Chosen here, before the history window is sized, because what knowledge
# spends is what the history does not get: a window fetched against the
# whole of `available` would read turns there was never room for.
#
# Bounded rather than trimmed afterwards. The passages that fit are selected
# against a share of the budget and the rest is recorded as dropped, so the
# section stops growing when the budget is exhausted however large the
# library becomes. Always-included Canon is not spent from this — it was
# priced into `reserved` above — so Reference and Inspiration cannot crowd
# out a standing campaign rule, and none of them can reach the current
# state, the reader's input or the reply reserve, which are all above.
knowledge_sections = [
Section(section.label, section.text)
for section in knowledge_inject.select(knowledge_plan, available)
]
knowledge_spent = sum(
section.tokens + count_tokens(SEPARATOR) for section in knowledge_sections
)
available_after_knowledge = max(0, available - knowledge_spent)
# Only the newest actions can reach the prompt, because the code below
# either truncates the text to `available` tokens or stops at the budget.
# Fetch a window that is provably larger than that and no larger. Otherwise
# a long adventure reads its whole history on every turn and uses only the
# end of it.
actions = history.window_covering(
adventure, available_after_knowledge, count_tokens, exclude_action_id
)
# ----- Story cards: triggered by recent story text (the window history could fill) -----
trigger_window = truncate_to_last_tokens(
SEPARATOR.join(a.text for a in actions), available_after_knowledge
)
triggered = match_cards(adventure.story_cards, trigger_window)
card_budget = int(available_after_knowledge * CARD_BUDGET_SHARE)
card_records = []
lore_lines: list[str] = []
used = 0
for match in triggered:
line = f"World Lore: {match['entry'].strip()}"
tokens = count_tokens(line)
included = used + tokens <= card_budget
if included:
lore_lines.append(line)
used += tokens
card_records.append(
{"id": match["id"], "name": match["name"], "keyword": match["keyword"],
"included": included}
)
lore_section = (
Section("world_lore", "\n".join(lore_lines)) if lore_lines else None
)
# ----- Story history: newest first until the remaining budget is spent -----
history_budget = available_after_knowledge - used
included_actions: list[models.Action] = []
spent = 0
oldest_truncated = False
for action in reversed(actions):
# Budget against the text as it appears in the prompt, which includes
# the state block when this adventure tracks world state.
rendered = _history_text(action)
tokens = count_tokens(rendered) + count_tokens(SEPARATOR)
if spent + tokens > history_budget:
if not included_actions:
# Even the newest action alone is over budget: hard-truncate it.
included_actions.append(
models.Action(
adventure_id=action.adventure_id,
type=action.type,
text=truncate_to_last_tokens(action.text, history_budget),
)
)
oldest_truncated = True
break
included_actions.append(action)
spent += tokens
included_actions.reverse()
# ----- Assemble the story text, with the author's note near the end -----
# Append each AI turn's state block again. The app strips it before storage,
# and the recent history has to show the model the pattern to follow.
texts = [_history_text(a) for a in included_actions]
note_sections: list[Section] = []
if authors_note:
pos = max(0, len(texts) - AUTHORS_NOTE_DEPTH)
before, after = texts[:pos], texts[pos:]
if before:
note_sections.append(Section("history", SEPARATOR.join(before)))
note_sections.append(Section("authors_note", authors_note))
note_sections.append(Section("recent_history", SEPARATOR.join(after)))
else:
note_sections.append(Section("history", SEPARATOR.join(texts)))
# The live sections, ordered from least to most volatile. See the comment
# where they are built. They go below the history so that the history stays
# cached, and above the final sections so that those stay last.
#
# M7 inserts the retrieved knowledge between the lore and the memories, in
# ascending authority: Inspiration, then Reference, then imported Canon,
# then the story's own memories, and the current authoritative state last of
# all. A model weights what it read most recently, so the section it reads
# last is the one that settles a conflict — which is the ordering
# `knowledge.classes.KNOWLEDGE_RULE` states in words. Both are needed. C05
# is not satisfied by section order alone, and a stated order the layout
# contradicts is worse than either.
for live in (
summary_section,
lore_section,
*reversed(knowledge_sections),
memories_section,
world_state_section,
):
if live is not None:
note_sections.append(live)
if front_memory:
note_sections.append(Section("front_memory", front_memory))
# Place the length hint just above the emit reminder, which keeps the last
# position. The length budget applies to the narration, and the reminder
# applies to the block that follows it, so this is also the order in which
# the model acts.
note_sections.append(Section("length_hint", length_note))
# A correction for the previous turn sits directly above the reminder to
# emit a block, which is the instruction it modifies.
if refusal_note:
note_sections.append(Section("state_refusals", refusal_note))
# The emit rule sits in the system block, far from where the model
# generates text, so repeat it last where it has the most effect.
note_sections.append(Section("state_reminder", narrative.extract.EMIT_REMINDER))
story_sections = [s for s in note_sections if s.text]
system_text = SEPARATOR.join(s.text for s in system_sections if s.text)
story_text = SEPARATOR.join(s.text for s in story_sections)
all_sections = [s for s in system_sections if s.text] + story_sections
report = {
"sections": [
{"label": s.label, "text": s.text, "tokens": s.tokens} for s in all_sections
],
"prompt": {"system": system_text, "story": story_text},
# M6: the numbers the reader needs to answer "how much did each part
# cost, and what was left for the reply?" (F04, F05). `available` is
# what the history was actually allowed to spend after everything
# protected was subtracted.
"tokens": {
"total": count_tokens(system_text) + count_tokens(story_text),
"budget": settings.context_token_budget,
"output_reserve": output_reserve,
"protected": reserved,
"available_for_history": available,
"history_spent": spent,
},
"cards": card_records,
"memories": memory_bank,
# M6: which summary was used, and which stretch of story it covers, so
# "what history did that summary cover?" is answerable from the record
# rather than by guessing (F05, F06).
"summary": summaries.provenance(summary_row),
# M6: whether background derived work is currently failing for this
# campaign. A dead memory bank is visible here rather than only in a log
# nobody reads (F08).
"derived": derived.report(db, adventure.id) if db is not None else [],
# M7: every imported passage this turn was given — which source, which
# file, which class, which visibility, which passage, how it was found,
# what each path scored it, and what it cost — plus what was considered,
# what was set aside as redundant, and what there was no budget for.
#
# The rendered text travels in this record, not a reference to the chunk
# row it came from. That is what makes a historical turn's evidence
# survive the source being deleted
# (`IMPORTED-KNOWLEDGE-DESIGN.md` §49-50): the snapshot says what the
# narrator was actually shown, and it goes on saying it.
"knowledge": knowledge_inject.report(knowledge_plan),
"history": {
"included": len(included_actions),
# The count covers the whole story rather than the window fetched
# above. Insights reports how many of the total actions it
# included, so this number must be the real total.
"total": history.count(adventure, exclude_action_id),
"oldest_truncated": oldest_truncated,
},
"settings": {
"model": settings.model,
"api_mode": settings.api_mode,
"temperature": settings.temperature,
"max_output_tokens": settings.max_output_tokens,
},
}
return system_text, story_text, report