fix(retrieve): expand authenticated owners within available budgets

[mohanagy]

Retrieval could return separated query-matching lines from a function larger than the small-owner limit even when enough snippet and total retrieval budget remained. Allocate complete authenticated owner source after the existing selected snippets fit, so a larger function includes intervening control flow without displacing selected evidence.

Keep the established small-owner limits and source authentication. If complete source does not fit, preserve a bounded partial excerpt without a completeness claim. Preserve allocation-only owner state through compact output and null snippets, while retaining existing small-owner restoration behavior. Align the existing mutation-test anchor with the changed block; mutation payloads and assertions remain unchanged.

Validation:

• 44 owning tests, typecheck, build, production-independence positive/negative controls, and diff hygiene pass on final bytes.
• Independent exact-final review returned GO on 5f91c188f36c21f74b90f8e103651b26a3ef792e. The earlier CRLF/source/budget probes are supplemented by null-state restoration regressions and a valid authentication positive/negative control.
• Failing-first evidence is retained for the original large-owner null TypeError and the small-owner restoration regression caught during correction. The earlier CI anchor failure is also retained.
• A replay on the final runtime expands one selected owner from 2 separated rows to 90 source-exact rows. All 10 selected nodes, order, relationships and other snippets remain unchanged; reported usage is 1,381/9,000 total tokens and 1,244/6,500 snippet tokens.

Related to #740. This establishes a retrieval improvement; broader answer quality, complete workflow speed and usage remain unproven. #740 remains open.

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Changes

The change adds unrestricted authenticated owner evidence and preserves bounded evidence behavior. Retrieval now applies complete-owner, snippet, and matched-node token budgets while preserving allocation-only fallback representations. Tests cover promotion, truncation, projections, and fallback cases.

Adaptive owner retrieval

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Owner evidence contracts src/runtime/query-evidence-dependencies.ts	The shared authenticated evidence helper accepts optional limits. The existing bounded function keeps its limits, and a new function supports unrestricted exact-owner evidence.
Budgeted retrieval representation src/runtime/retrieve.ts	Retrieval tracks representation state and applies complete-owner, snippet, and matched-node token budgets. Allocation-only completion retains fallback snippets when promotion exceeds a limit.
Representation preservation and validation scripts/lib/semantic-independence-selftest.mjs, tests/unit/retrieve-small-owner-representation.test.ts	Allocation-only nodes retain their payloads. Tests validate source promotion, budget constraints, projections, truncation metadata, and fallback behavior.

Priority: ⬇️ Low

Estimated code review effort: 4 (Complex) | ~45 minutes

Merge Risk: 🟡 Moderate · up to 2bac5

Adaptive owner expansion can fail while shaping context-pack snippets, and its authentication fallback coverage currently does not exercise the intended path. The null-snippet handling and test ranges should be corrected before merge.

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant Retrieval as retrieve.ts
  participant Evidence as query-evidence-dependencies.ts
  participant Budget as Task budget
  Retrieval->>Evidence: request bounded or unrestricted owner evidence
  Evidence-->>Retrieval: return complete or fallback evidence
  Retrieval->>Budget: evaluate snippet and matched-node token budgets
  Budget-->>Retrieval: permit or reject allocation-only promotion
  Retrieval-->>Retrieval: preserve representation metadata and build output

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🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage	⚠️ Warning	Docstring coverage is 30.77% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 13 functions across 4 files.	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely describes the main change: expanding authenticated owners within available retrieval budgets.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description explains the retrieval behavior, constraints, fallback handling, related state preservation, testing, validation results, scope limits, and related issue. It does not reproduce the tem…

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Inline comments:
In `@src/runtime/retrieve.ts`:
- Line 590: Update the early-return guard around completeOwner in the retrieval
flow to also handle allocation-only owners when snippet is null, preventing
truncateSnippetToTokenBudget from calling trim on null. Preserve the existing
behavior for non-allocation-only owners and valid snippets.

In `@tests/unit/retrieve-small-owner-representation.test.ts`:
- Line 539: Update both source-location values in the owner-path authentication
test to use the L-prefixed range L1-L26 instead of 1-26, ensuring
explicitOwnerRange produces a valid ownerRange and the externalCall and
authenticatedOwner assertions execute.

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📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 8a40986 and 2bac5f8.

📒 Files selected for processing (4)

• scripts/lib/semantic-independence-selftest.mjs
• src/runtime/query-evidence-dependencies.ts
• src/runtime/retrieve.ts
• tests/unit/retrieve-small-owner-representation.test.ts

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