v2.3.0

Changed

• Breaking (experimental section-mode JSON only): already_best is now a warning, not a verdict (owner decision 2026-10-16, openspec update-fix-gaps-already-best-warning). When Jev scores your best section above every cited source, section mode still rewrites that section through the same fidelity rules, fidelity judge and re-check, and the page gets its real outcome status. diagnosis.warning is "own_text_already_competitive", diagnosis.status is "own_leads" (was "already_best"), and offpage still lists the cited sources (reason own_text_already_competitive). The page status already_best and its CLI line are gone. Page mode, the default, is unchanged.
• Breaking (experimental section-mode JSON only): section mode now scores each candidate with an independent Jev Noul question instead of one Choice question (owner decision D2, openspec update-jev-blind-validation). In fix-gaps.json the page diagnosis reports scorer: "noul" and scores in place of probabilities / confidence; verification reports score_before / score_after in place of p_before / p_after. own_leads (formerly already_best) and won require the best own section to score strictly above every source (ties count as losing). Page mode, the default, is unchanged.
• Jev now sees neutral candidate ids (c01, c02, …) in an order derived from the query and the texts, so it cannot tell your sections from the cited sources. Diagnosis and verification use the same ids.
• jev_validation reports the pre-registered v4 validation of the configuration section mode runs (protocol: "v4", scorer: "noul", ids: "blind", unit: "sections"): mean AUC 0.559 (95% CI 0.489–0.637, 30 queries, 2026-10-15), below the 0.65 gate, so status stays "experimental" and every Jev diagnosis and verification keeps "experimental": true. The 2.2.0 figures move to jev_validation.previous, labeled choice, leaky ids, page excerpts.
• eval/jev_selection scores with the product function on sections (own_source), adds --ids {blind,leaky}, --prereg-sha (required for live runs) and --repo-root, and drops --scorer.
• The offline mock answers Noul questions by query-word overlap instead of a constant 0.9.

Added

• eval/jev_selection/PREREG-v4.md (registered 2026-10-08, commit 56ef2db) and queries-v3.json: the v4 validation protocol, the query list and its hash, the gate and the consequences of passing and failing. The leak diagnostic and the v4 result are in eval/jev_selection/README.md.
• Loop-mode SERP collector: --engine serply (Google results via the Serply API, SERPLY_API_KEY), next to brave and serpbase, with an offline fixture for contract tests (collectors/fixtures/serp_serply_response.json).
• /geo:batch reports progress as it goes: Processing batch (N files)..., then one [i/N] <file> ✓ (or ✗ <reason>) line per file.
• docs/examples.md: three real before/after runs of egeo optimize, including where the rewriter removed dates, source links and data points that matter for citation.

Known limitations

• Jev diagnosis and verification in section mode failed their pre-registered validation (mean AUC 0.56 against a 0.65 gate). When Jev judged the own section best, Perplexity cited the page in 1 of 6 queries. The own_text_already_competitive warning is a weak signal; confirm with remeasure. Section mode stays experimental and opt-in; page mode, the default, does not use Jev.