Brain-Pillar Consumer-Friction Feedback Channel (Visibility-Only V1)

Context

The swarm graduated the Review-Cost Circuit Breaker (#11441) to defend swarm context budgets from bloated PRs. This ticket introduces the symmetric Brain-Pillar Consumer-Friction Feedback Channel, giving local-model substrate consumers (e.g. Gemma 4-31b) a formalized way to signal back when the substrate is the wrong shape (e.g., context-overflow). The primitive prevents silent loss of substrate friction signals.

The Problem

Currently, if a local model in the Dream Pipeline or Memory Core encounters a payload that exceeds its context window or causes a parse failure, the failure is ephemeral (logger.warn) or silently dropped. The sandman_handoff.md surface captures structural capability gaps but lacks a channel for consumer-active friction.

The Architectural Reality

• Brain pillar LLM invocations occur across ai/daemons/services/ (e.g., SemanticGraphExtractor) and ai/services/memory-core/ (e.g., SessionService.mjs).
• GoldenPathSynthesizer aggregates handoff data.
• AgentOrchestrator schedules based on Golden Path sections.

The Fix

Implement Visibility-Only V1 of the Consumer-Friction channel. No AgentOrchestrator.parseGoldenPath() changes in V1.

1. Define ConsumerFriction schema with token-based durable metrics and enum-backed suggestionKind.
2. Implement bidirectional defense (Angle 1: downstream try/catch, Angle 2: upstream invokeWithGuardrail() pre-check skip).
3. Integrate invokeWithGuardrail() into two canonical emitters:
   • SemanticGraphExtractor (Dream Pipeline)
   • SessionService.summarizeSession() (Memory Core)
   • Optional: TopologyInferenceEngine if scope permits.
4. Add debounce logic: deterministic symptoms (size-precheck-skip, context-overflow) emit on first occurrence; probabilistic symptoms (parse-failure, timeout) aggregate by (assetRef, consumer, symptom).
5. Extend GoldenPathSynthesizer.synthesizeHandoff() with a new ### 🧠 Substrate-Consumer Friction section for human/swarm reading only.

Discussion Criteria Mapping

Graduating from Discussion #11444:

• [RESOLVED_TO_AC] Route Contract -> Visibility-Only V1 implemented (AC 5).
• [RESOLVED_TO_AC] Schema -> Structured ConsumerFriction schema implemented (AC 1).
• [RESOLVED_TO_AC] Emission Helpers -> Bidirectional defense helper implemented (AC 2).
• [RESOLVED_TO_AC] Target Emitters -> Integrated in SemanticGraphExtractor and SessionService (AC 3).

Acceptance Criteria

• ConsumerFriction schema is defined in a shared utility.
• invokeWithGuardrail() helper is implemented with debounce logic.
• SemanticGraphExtractor is updated to use the helper.
• SessionService.summarizeSession() is updated to use the helper.
• GoldenPathSynthesizer.synthesizeHandoff() includes the new section.
• Explicitly excluded in V1: MemorySessionIngestor, SummarizationCoordinatorService, ConceptIngestor.

Out of Scope

• Auto-mutation or scoring of PRs based on Brain friction (Brain friction = evidence, not auto-mutation in V1).
• AgentOrchestrator task routing changes.
• Integration into non-LLM invocation boundaries.

Related

• Discussion #11444
• Issue #11441

Origin Session ID: 188acb85-b41e-435c-94ee-0cc9944d4c97