Full and Light Are Context Shapes

Full carries relationship and continuity

Complex curation may require identity, recent decisions, tensions among memories, and conversation with Dad. The full lane provides that continuity through a Sidekick bound to the canonical conversation.

The cost is repeated large context at tool steps and broader contamination risk. Full is appropriate for consultation and direction, not an unbounded mechanical edit loop.

Light narrows the operand

The light lane carries exact fragments, instruction, permission facts, and base hash while skipping whole-vault prepend. It reduces stale snapshots, two-writer risk, and cost.

Light does not mean a generic model without identity. Pippa's identity and safety contract remain while irrelevant memory context stays out. Context minimization is not persona removal.

Mode does not select provider

Hard-coding full to one vendor and light to another makes rate limits into mode outages. Mode chooses context shape; the brain registry chooses a currently available provider and fallback.

Across provider switches, actor, task, context mode, and source-hash provenance remain. Model name is execution detail, not product identity.

Escalation becomes a new task

When light lacks judgment, it stops with needs_full_context instead of silently reading more vault. Dad opens consultation or a soul-pinned session.

When full begins repeated mechanical changes, it materializes bounded operands into the queue. Handoff records prevent one mode from quietly expanding into the other.

Full and light differ in context and responsibility, not intelligence. Mode chooses context, registry chooses provider, and the permission matrix chooses exposure.

Code

Separate mode from provider choice·python

modes = {
    "full": {"include_conversation": True, "include_vault": True},
    "light": {"include_conversation": False, "include_vault": False},
}
providers = ["primary", "fallback"]

def route(mode, available):
    context = modes[mode]
    provider = next(p for p in providers if p in available)
    return context, provider

context, provider = route("light", {"fallback"})
assert not context["include_vault"] and provider == "fallback"

Full carries relationship and continuity

Light narrows the operand

Mode does not select provider

Escalation becomes a new task

Code

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