Should `docir context` be able to return nothing?

Gap: issue-93152f7b9213 Blocking: no · Rank: 9 · Answered: 2026-07-28 Authority: repo maintainer (directed the work; the question was never answered separately, so the recorded assumption below was preserved rather than overturned)

Question¶

Should docir context be able to return nothing? There is no similarity floor, and the RRF score is rank-derived so it is ~identical for a perfect and a nonsense match.

What the system does today¶

OBSERVED: against a store containing only "Postgres connection pooling", context "how do I bake sourdough bread" --limit 3 returns it with score 0.0328. Evidence: scoring.py:36-73, document_service.py:257.

Proposed answer¶

Emit raw cosine alongside the fused score and support --min-score, so an empty result is expressible.

Why it matters¶

Compounds issue-8bcb6b7f8308 — the response is unbounded in size and unfiltered in quality.

Answer¶

Both, and they do not conflict. The raw cosine is now emitted as similarity on every ranked hit, and context --min-score F filters on it — so an empty result is expressible. It is not automatic: with no --min-score, context still always returns something, which keeps the recorded assumption intact for anyone relying on it. The floor is on similarity, not on the fused score, because score is rank-derived and cannot carry relevance — that was the finding. Graph neighbours and hits without a current vector are exempt; see issue-93152f7b9213 resolution for why each would otherwise break.

Assumption if unanswered¶

WAS: always-return-something is deliberate. Still true by default — the fix adds an opt-in floor rather than changing what context does when you do not ask for one.

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Migrated from the discovery question queue (Q-009); the queue itself now lives in this store.