# Spec — Onboarding "wow" burst: better picks, stronger model

**Repo:** tapir · **Size:** medium · **Solo session** (not a swarm).

> **Status: built (v0.25.0, ADR-028).** This supersedes the original investigate-first brief
> (committed as the prior version of this file): Phase 1 was run against the live pilot DB and its
> findings are folded into "Why this exists" below; Phase 2 was built as described here. The one
> brief lever NOT built — the honest "the rest fill in over the coming days" framing copy — is
> listed under *Explicitly NOT in this slice*.

**Why this exists.** A new user's first session decides whether they return (the Stage-0 gate,
VISION.md). On connect, Tapir fires a capped burst (≤`TAPIR_ONBOARD_SUMMARIZE_COUNT`, default 3)
that summarizes the user's newest unsummarized videos so the feed isn't empty (the burst itself
works — wired in `cmd/tapir/discovery.go` → `cmd/tapir/main.go` `onboard`). A Phase-1
investigation of the live pilot DB found the burst *fires* but delivers a **weak first
impression** for two concrete reasons, and ruled out a third idea:

1. **Picks are junk.** Selection is pure newest-first (`videos.NewestUnsummarizedVideoIDs`,
   `ORDER BY published_at DESC`) with **zero quality signal**. Pilot user "Jonte"'s live burst-3
   were a stock-ticker **livestream** + two regional news clips — the newest, not the best.
2. **Weakest model on the first impression.** All of Jonte's summaries ran on
   `koala/phi4-mini` (the documented weak link — ADR-022 was born from its failures). The
   stronger, brain-validated `iguana/gemma4-26b` was never used for the burst.
3. **Cached-first is empty at pilot scale — REJECTED.** The idea (summarize already-cached
   transcripts instantly, zero fetch) dies on the numbers: only **11 videos** overlap between the
   two pilot users (~3% of each library), **0** cached-and-unsummarized, and a new user's
   newest-20 unsummarized are **20/20 NOT cached** — newest-first and cached-first are
   structurally incompatible (fresh uploads are exactly what nobody has fetched yet). Not built.

This is a **curation/latency problem for ~3 videos, NOT a throughput/429 problem** — fetching 3
captions is nowhere near the rate limit. Nothing here fetches harder or pressures the rate gate;
it picks the right few videos and runs a better model on them.

Read `CLAUDE.md`, `DECISIONS.md` (esp. ADR-014, ADR-018, ADR-020, ADR-021, ADR-022, ADR-023,
and the new **ADR-028**), and `VISION.md` (the Stage-0 gate) first. TBD — commit directly to
`main`, one logical change per commit, conventional commits, `task check` green before each
commit, `templ generate` if any view changes (none expected).

## Decisions already made (do not reopen)
- **Not a throughput change.** The caption rate gate (ADR-014) is untouched — same pacing, same
  priority lane (ADR-026). This slice changes *which* ≤3 videos the burst spends its fetches on
  and *which model* summarizes them, never how fast or how many.
- **Cached-first is dropped** (ADR-028, the 3% overlap). The engine's existing read-stored-first
  (ADR-021, `resolveTranscript`) stays — it already gives a free instant summary on the rare
  cache hit, transparently. We do not *select* for cache hits.
- **has-captions is not a pre-fetch signal.** It is only knowable after a gate fetch (or a cache
  hit, ~0 for new videos). Selection can only *avoid known-junk* (Shorts/live/over-long) — it
  cannot *guarantee* captions. The spec is honest about this: better odds, not a promise.
- **No credentialed caption fetch** (ADR-010/ADR-026 dead end). **No client extension.**

## 1. Persist `duration_s` at discovery (the enabling change)
The `videos.duration_s` column exists (migration 001) but is **never written** — ADR-023's
`filterLowValue` (`internal/adapters/youtube/youtube.go`) already fetches each candidate's
duration via the cheap quota `videos.list` call, uses it to drop Shorts/live, then **discards
it**. Stop discarding:
- Add `DurationSeconds int` to `domain.Video`.
- In `filterLowValue`, set `DurationSeconds` on each kept video from the `videos.list` `meta`.
- `UpsertVideo` writes `duration_s`, **COALESCE-preserving** a known value (never overwrite a
  real duration with 0/unknown), mirroring the `channel_title` backfill stance (migration 014).
- No new migration — the column is already there.

Consequence: a fresh user's connect-triggered discovery pass runs **before** the onboard burst
(`Enqueue`: `run()` then `onboard()`), so duration is populated for the burst's candidates at
connect. Existing rows backfill on their next discovery pass; until then their `duration_s` is
NULL and treated as "unknown" (§2).

## 2. Junk-avoiding burst selection
New store method, RLS-scoped via `withUser`:

```
OnboardBurstVideoIDs(ctx, userID string, limit, minSeconds, maxSeconds int) ([]string, error)
```

- Same base as the old `NewestUnsummarizedVideoIDs`: the user's videos with no summary yet,
  `ORDER BY published_at DESC NULLS LAST, seen_at DESC`, `LIMIT limit`.
- **Exclude known-junk**: a row is dropped only when `duration_s IS NOT NULL` **and**
  (`duration_s < minSeconds` OR `duration_s > maxSeconds`). A NULL duration is **unknown** — kept
  (degrade-open: never starve the burst because metadata is missing), but ordered *after* rows
  with a known-good duration so a freshly-enriched good pick wins when both exist.
- `minSeconds` reuses `TAPIR_MIN_VIDEO_SECONDS` (default 60 — the Shorts floor, ADR-023).
  `maxSeconds` is new: `TAPIR_ONBOARD_MAX_VIDEO_SECONDS` (default 14400 = 4h) — drops the
  multi-hour livestream VODs that pass the live filter once ended.
- `minSeconds<=0` and `maxSeconds<=0` each disable that bound (so `0/0` == the old
  newest-first behaviour, the reversibility lever).
- The burst switches to this method; `NewestUnsummarizedVideoIDs` is removed (fully superseded —
  `OnboardBurstVideoIDs(., 0, 0)` is identical pure-newest behaviour).

## 3. Stronger model for the burst
The burst summarizes only ≤3 videos, so a slower, stronger model is affordable exactly here.
- New config `TAPIR_ONBOARD_SUMMARIZER_MODEL` (default `iguana/gemma4-26b` — the brain-validated
  homelab general-purpose model, already the ADR-022 fallback).
- Build a **burst-specific summarizer chain** that puts the onboard model **first**, then the
  standard chain (primary → local fallback → cloud) as resilience, deduped. Wrap it in a
  burst-specific `engineProcessor` reusing the same store/transcript-cache/sink — a pure wiring
  choice, engine and ports unchanged (Clean Architecture, ADR-003).
- The `onboard` closure uses the burst processor instead of `app.Processor`.
- **Collapse cleanly**: when `OnboardSummarizerModel` is empty or equals `SummarizerModel`, the
  onboard path reuses `app.Processor` (no separate chain) — the reversibility lever.
- Local-first preserved: the onboard model is a local alias; the cloud endpoint stays last in the
  chain, so a client/NDA deployment with `TAPIR_CLOUD_FALLBACK_MODEL=""` keeps burst content
  local too.

## 4. Behaviour spec + docs
- Add scenarios to `docs/use-cases/connect_account.feature` (the connect → burst flow): burst
  skips a too-long/live video in favour of a reasonable-length one; burst summarizes with the
  stronger model first. Map them in `scenarioCoverage` so `TestScenarioCoverage` stays green.
- Update `docs/architecture/architecture.md` (the onboarding-burst section) to describe the
  junk-avoiding selection + the burst model override.
- ADR-028 in `DECISIONS.md` records the rationale (incl. the rejected cached-first lever).

## Success criteria
- `task check` green (fmt, vet, lint, `go test -p 1 ./...`).
- A unit test proves `OnboardBurstVideoIDs` drops a known too-long / sub-min video and keeps a
  good one, newest-first, RLS-scoped, unsummarized-only.
- A test proves discovery persists `duration_s` and does not clobber it on re-upsert.
- A test proves the burst chain leads with the onboard model (then the standard chain).
- Config defaults + bounds tested (`OnboardMaxVideoSeconds`, `OnboardSummarizerModel`).
- No change to the rate gate, fetch pacing, or burst cap. `0/0` + empty model == prior behaviour.

## Explicitly NOT in this slice
- Cached-first selection (rejected, ADR-028).
- Any caption-availability *guarantee* (impossible pre-fetch).
- **Honest "taster" framing copy** ("summaries of a few of your videos to get you started — the
  rest fill in over the coming days"). A good lever from the original brief, but it's a UI/copy
  change with no backend dependency; deferred to a UI pass, tracked as an issue.
- Backfilling `duration_s` for existing rows via a migration (it backfills lazily on discovery).
- Return-nudges / digests (ADR-020: poisons the unprompted-return signal).
- Raising fetch throughput, multi-IP, or Whisper (out of scope; the gate is deliberate).