From 101d9c6be39197ce243c9a92bfbdf4692194fcb7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Tristan Simas <tristan.simas@mail.mcgill.ca>
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2026 18:03:34 -0400
Subject: [PATCH] Flag jargon instead of refusing; never judge identifiers as
 prose

The word gate refused a dozen orders today, including ones that only named
real methods and modules, and each refusal cost a rewrite and a resend.
It now prints a flag and lets the text through; snake_case and CamelCase
identifiers are cited code like paths and backticks.

Src-Budget: 10
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
---
 src/agent_comms/todos.py | 11 ++++++++++-
 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/src/agent_comms/todos.py b/src/agent_comms/todos.py
index 6a9d18f50a..281e53ab5d 100644
--- a/src/agent_comms/todos.py
+++ b/src/agent_comms/todos.py
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@
 import re
 import subprocess
 import sqlite3
+import sys
 import time
 import asyncio
 from abc import abstractmethod
@@ -758,7 +759,8 @@ class OrderWords(WireValue):
     # for long ordinary words with no slash or filename suffix.
     CITED: ClassVar[re.Pattern] = re.compile(
         r'(?m)^ {4}.*$|`[^`\n]*`|"[^"\n]*"|“[^”\n]*”|'
-        r'(?:(?<!\S)|(?<=[`"”]))(?:\S*/\S*|\S+\.(?:py|md|jsonl?|txt|png|toml|ts|log|patch)\b)')
+        r'(?:(?<!\S)|(?<=[`"”]))(?:\S*/\S*|\S+\.(?:py|md|jsonl?|txt|png|toml|ts|log|patch)\b)|'
+        r'\b\w+_\w+\b|\b[A-Z][a-z0-9]+[A-Z]\w*\b')  # identifiers are code, not prose
     REFUSED: ClassVar[re.Pattern]
     refusal: ClassVar[str]
     least_words: ClassVar[int] = 1
@@ -804,6 +806,13 @@ class PlainText(OrderWords):
     REFUSED = re.compile(r'\b(custody|admission|admit\w*|receipt\w*|checkpoint\w*|provenance|authority|authorities|witness\w*|lattice|surface|disposition\w*|invariant\w*|semantic\w*|ownership|lifecycle|acceptance|canonical|retained|borrow(?:ed|er|ers)?|bounded|certif\w*|recertif\w*|candidate|fence\w*|sidecar\w*|substrate|installed-path|source[- ]paired|exact[- ]head|integration owner|separately owned|follow-?up|remaining scope|not claimed|remains held|load[- ]bearing|cutover|carr(?:y|ies) across|declared dependency|qualifying)\b', re.I)
     refusal = "Jargon {1} hides what happened; say it plainly."
 
+    @staticmethod
+    def refuses(found: list[str]) -> bool:
+        """Flags, never blocks: a wording slip costs a note, not a resend."""
+        if found:
+            print(f"Flag: jargon {', '.join(found)} hides what happened; say it plainly.", file=sys.stderr)
+        return False
+
 
 class StrikeReason(PlainText):
     """What a unit did, plainly, in enough words to stand on the public record. A unit's