Six independent fixes addressing the Anti-Communist Formations of LIS
real-draft test findings (chunk 2c). Four are bug fixes for issues
that destroyed user data or wasted API calls; two are polish quality
improvements revisited from the deferred list.
src/cmos/note_formatter.py — empty input guard (fix#1)
Empty / whitespace-only input now short-circuits the API entirely
and returns the input verbatim. Surfaced by note [66] in the
Anti-Communist draft, where GPT-5 broke character on empty input
and returned a conversational meta-reply ("Please paste the
citation entry...") that then got substituted into the document.
Whitespace preserved so cli.reformat_notes is byte-exact on empty
notes. v2 only.
src/cmos/note_formatter.py — deprecated Latin guard (fix#2)
New Python guard catches the full CMOS-18-deprecated Latin
citation set (ibid, idem, id., op. cit., loc. cit.) and returns
input verbatim before the API call. Rule 10 in the prompt also
rewritten: explicitly says "return verbatim" instead of the old
"return cleanest possible full-form note", which the model
interpreted as "return empty when there's no information",
silently destroying the marker. Surfaced by note [61] = "Ibid.".
v2 only.
src/cmos/runtime_validator.py — shortened-form carve-out (fix#3)
The "must contain italics" check is now skipped when the
candidate looks like a CMOS shortened-form note (author last
name, optional page, no italic content). Surfaced by ~30 of 107
notes in the Anti-Communist draft that were correctly returned
as shortened forms ("Rosen, 7.", "Mitchell, 197.") but rejected
by the validator's strict italic check, firing the full retry
budget on valid output (~60 wasted API calls per run). The
carve-out is conservative: name-token regex + terminal period;
doesn't match unstructured prose. Shared infrastructure — affects
v1 and v2, no-op in v1's normal workflow because v1 outputs
always have italics.
src/cmos/note_formatter.py — substantive prose pass-through (fix#4)
Long discursive prose with no citation skeleton markers now
short-circuits the API and returns the input verbatim. Surfaced
by notes [8] (689 chars), [9] (893 chars), [75] (163 chars) in
the Anti-Communist draft — substantive notes that the formatter
was extracting a single citation from and silently discarding
the surrounding commentary. CMOS 14.39 explicitly allows
substantive notes; preserving them is the user's explicit policy
("preserve all free text as long as that does not break other
formatting"). Detection: length > 150 chars AND no citation
skeleton markers (parenthesized year, URL, vol./no./pp., DOI,
terminal page or terminal year). Conservative — does not
false-positive on legitimate first-occurrence notes. v2 only.
src/cmos/formatter.py + note_formatter.py — month/season preservation
(polish #5)
Both v1 rule 10 (journal article format) and v2 rule 5 (journal
article note form) now explicitly instruct the model to preserve
(Month YEAR) and (Season YEAR) parentheticals when the source
provides them. Surfaced by entries in both Reading_Disrepair and
Anti-Communist where (Spring, 1993) and August 1952 were silently
collapsed to (1993) and 1952. Both forms are valid CMOS but
month/season is more informative when the source has it. Affects
v1 and v2 in mirror.
src/cmos/note_formatter.py — government documents rule 19 (polish #7)
v2 now has an explicit rule mirroring v1's rule 27: government
bodies, institutional reports, and similar standalone documents
get italicized titles and book-form treatment, NOT quoted-article
treatment. Includes the Anti-Communist Senate of California
Tenth Report and a hypothetical GAO example. Implicit handling
worked in chunk 2c, but explicit rule provides regression
protection. v2 only.
Tests: +14 net new (across test_note_formatter.py, test_formatter.py,
test_runtime_validator.py). Total suite 150/150 (was 136 before this
chunk). All v1 tests still passing.
Path B status: formatter.py and runtime_validator.py edits cross
the v1/v2 boundary, but only by user-explicit approval per the
relevant fix discussions. The shared validator was always shared;
the v1 formatter rule 10 mirror is a small additive edit that
doesn't affect the v1 prompt's existing behavior on its existing
inputs.
Mark Eaton
553240c153