feat: let jev answer the crawler's classification, and keep its confidence

The crawler asked gpt-4.1-mini one three-way question per undecided page, and
then threw away the confidence it asked for in the same prompt. Jev answers that
question as a typed choice for $0.042 per million in and nothing out, with a
confidence that falls out of the distribution rather than the model's opinion of
itself.

It cannot write learnedSignals though -- rule_value is free text -- so the
expensive model is still what teaches a new site. Once a site has banked enough
rules and jev is sure, we stop paying for it. A dead signal call now falls back
to the jev answer instead of losing the page.

confidence is stored on crawler_page_classifications, additively, in both
dialects. Pattern, rule and signal-model rows keep a null rather than borrowing
a number that belonged to a different answer.

The openrouter slug is unverified -- jev is beta there and absent from
/api/v1/models -- so both the slug and the endpoint are env overridable, and a
bad slug degrades to the old path instead of breaking the crawl.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01EZ6bEoR6m6vrksSYRiXwVD

src/db/index.js

@@ -132,6 +132,7 @@ db.exec(`
     url TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
     site_name TEXT NOT NULL,
     classification TEXT NOT NULL,
+    confidence REAL,
     pattern TEXT,
     classified_at TEXT NOT NULL DEFAULT (datetime('now'))
   );
@@ -173,4 +174,21 @@ db.exec(`
   );
 `);
 
+// CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS does nothing to a database that already has the table,
+// so anything added to one above also needs an alter here. sqlite has no
+// ADD COLUMN IF NOT EXISTS, hence swallowing the duplicate and shouting about
+// everything else. Additive only -- nothing in here may drop or rewrite a column.
+for (const statement of [
+  'ALTER TABLE crawler_page_classifications ADD COLUMN confidence REAL',
+]) {
+  try {
+    db.exec(statement);
+  } catch (error) {
+    const message = String(error && error.message || '').toLowerCase();
+    if (!message.includes('duplicate column') && !message.includes('already exists')) {
+      console.error(`[db] migration failed: ${statement}`, error.message, error.stack);
+    }
+  }
+}
+
 module.exports = db;

src/db/postgres.js

@@ -182,6 +182,7 @@ exec(`
     url TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
     site_name TEXT NOT NULL,
     classification TEXT NOT NULL,
+    confidence DOUBLE PRECISION,
     pattern TEXT,
     classified_at TIMESTAMPTZ NOT NULL DEFAULT NOW()
   )
@@ -223,4 +224,12 @@ exec(`
   )
 `);
 
+// same story as the sqlite side: the creates above skip a database that already
+// has the table, so additions land here too. postgres does have the IF NOT EXISTS
+// form so this one stays boring. Additive only.
+exec(`
+  ALTER TABLE crawler_page_classifications
+  ADD COLUMN IF NOT EXISTS confidence DOUBLE PRECISION
+`);
+
 module.exports = pgDb;

src/sources/crawlerClassifier.js

@@ -1,6 +1,24 @@
 const db = require('../db');
 const config = require('../config');
 
+// Jev only answers the one question the crawler actually cares about, and it answers
+// it for basically nothing -- $0.042 per million tokens in, output billed at zero.
+// It cannot write the learnedSignals though, those are free text, so gpt-4.1-mini is
+// still the model that teaches a new site what its own markup looks like.
+
+// openrouter carries jev on its own endpoint rather than chat/completions, and it
+// is still beta there -- the model does not show up in /api/v1/models yet, so if the
+// slug moves point CRAWLER_JEV_MODEL at it, or CRAWLER_JEV_URL straight at typesafe.
+const JEV_URL = process.env.CRAWLER_JEV_URL || "https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/systemone";
+const JEV_MODEL = process.env.CRAWLER_JEV_MODEL || "jev-latest";
+const SIGNAL_MODEL = process.env.CRAWLER_SIGNAL_MODEL || "openai/gpt-4.1-mini";
+
+// below this we dont trust jev to write a cached classification on its own
+const JEV_MIN_CONFIDENCE = Number(process.env.CRAWLER_JEV_MIN_CONFIDENCE) || 0.75;
+
+// how many rules a site needs banked before we stop paying for signal extraction
+const SITE_RULE_TARGET = Number(process.env.CRAWLER_SITE_RULE_TARGET) || 12;
+
 const POSITIVE_RULE_TYPES = new Set([
   'meta_og_type',
   'meta_has_publish_time',
@@ -37,11 +55,12 @@ const selectCachedClassification = db.prepare(`
   WHERE url = ?
 `);
 const upsertCachedClassification = db.prepare(`
-  INSERT INTO crawler_page_classifications (url, site_name, classification, pattern)
-  VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?)
+  INSERT INTO crawler_page_classifications (url, site_name, classification, confidence, pattern)
+  VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?)
   ON CONFLICT(url) DO UPDATE SET
     site_name = excluded.site_name,
     classification = excluded.classification,
+    confidence = excluded.confidence,
     pattern = excluded.pattern,
     classified_at = datetime('now')
 `);
@@ -81,6 +100,11 @@ const upsertRule = db.prepare(`
     END,
     updated_at = datetime('now')
 `);
+const countRulesForSite = db.prepare(`
+  SELECT COUNT(*) AS n
+  FROM crawler_site_rules
+  WHERE site_name = ?
+`);
 
 function normalizePathSegment(segment) {
   if (/^\d{4}$/.test(segment)) {
@@ -657,6 +681,55 @@ function sanitizeForLlm(url, html, meta, jsonLdArticle, links, heuristic, signal
   return parts.filter(Boolean).join('\n').slice(0, 4200);
 }
 
+async function requestJevClassification(sanitizedHtml) {
+  const response = await fetch(JEV_URL, {
+    method: "POST",
+    headers: {
+      Authorization: `Bearer ${String(config.openRouter.apiKey || "").trim()}`,
+      "Content-Type": "application/json",
+    },
+    body: JSON.stringify({
+      model: JEV_MODEL,
+      state: sanitizedHtml,
+      questions: {
+        page_kind: {
+          type: "choice",
+          instructions: "Classify this page for a news crawler. The URL, title, meta tags, a sample of links and the first few paragraphs are all in the state.",
+          criteria: {
+            article: "A single news story page.",
+            listing: "Homepage, topic page, category page, archive, feature hub, or any page that is mostly links to other stories.",
+            other: "Anything else -- about and contact pages, video hubs, tag clouds, login walls, utility pages.",
+          },
+        },
+      },
+    }),
+  });
+
+  if (!response.ok) {
+    const body = await response.text().catch(() => "");
+    const requestError = new Error(`jev classification failed with ${response.status}: ${body.slice(0, 200)}`);
+    requestError.status = response.status;
+    throw requestError;
+  }
+
+  const payload = await response.json();
+  const answer = payload && payload.answers && payload.answers.page_kind;
+  const choice = String((answer && answer.choice) || "").trim().toLowerCase();
+
+  // the criteria keys are the only three things it can possibly come back with,
+  // but a beta endpoint changing its answer shape shouldnt silently become "other"
+  if (choice !== "article" && choice !== "listing" && choice !== "other") {
+    throw new Error(`jev returned an unusable answer: ${JSON.stringify(answer).slice(0, 200)}`);
+  }
+
+  // this confidence falls out of the shape of the probability distribution rather
+  // than the model telling us how sure it feels, which is why gating on it works
+  // at all. the old prompt asked gpt for a confidence and then never read it.
+  const confidence = Number(answer.confidence);
+
+  return { classification: choice, confidence: Number.isFinite(confidence) ? confidence : 0 };
+}
+
 async function requestLlmClassification(url, sanitizedHtml, heuristic) {
   const response = await fetch('https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions', {
     method: 'POST',
@@ -665,7 +738,7 @@ async function requestLlmClassification(url, sanitizedHtml, heuristic) {
       'Content-Type': 'application/json',
     },
     body: JSON.stringify({
-      model: 'openai/gpt-4.1-mini',
+      model: SIGNAL_MODEL,
       messages: [
         {
           role: 'system',
@@ -757,7 +830,7 @@ async function classifyPageWithLlm({ siteName, url, html, meta, jsonLdArticle, h
       .find((entry) => patternToRegex(entry.pattern).test(pathname));
 
     if (matchedPattern) {
-      upsertCachedClassification.run(url, siteName, matchedPattern.classification, matchedPattern.pattern);
+      upsertCachedClassification.run(url, siteName, matchedPattern.classification, null, matchedPattern.pattern);
       return { classification: matchedPattern.classification, source: 'pattern', learnedSignals: [], negativeSignals: [] };
     }
   }
@@ -765,7 +838,7 @@ async function classifyPageWithLlm({ siteName, url, html, meta, jsonLdArticle, h
   const ruleSignals = buildRuleSignals(url, meta, html, jsonLdArticle, links, heuristic);
   const matchedRule = selectRulesForSite.all(siteName, minPatternHits).find((rule) => matchRule(rule, ruleSignals));
   if (matchedRule) {
-    upsertCachedClassification.run(url, siteName, matchedRule.classification, pattern);
+    upsertCachedClassification.run(url, siteName, matchedRule.classification, null, pattern);
     return { classification: matchedRule.classification, source: 'rule', learnedSignals: [], negativeSignals: [] };
   }
 
@@ -773,13 +846,52 @@ async function classifyPageWithLlm({ siteName, url, html, meta, jsonLdArticle, h
     return { classification: null, source: 'disabled', learnedSignals: [], negativeSignals: [] };
   }
 
-  const result = await requestLlmClassification(
-    url,
-    sanitizeForLlm(url, html, meta, jsonLdArticle, links, heuristic, ruleSignals),
-    heuristic,
-  );
+  const sanitized = sanitizeForLlm(url, html, meta, jsonLdArticle, links, heuristic, ruleSignals);
 
-  upsertCachedClassification.run(url, siteName, result.classification, pattern);
+  let jev = null;
+  try {
+    jev = await requestJevClassification(sanitized);
+  } catch (error) {
+    // not fatal on its own, the expensive path below can still answer
+    console.error(`[crawler-jev] ${siteName} ${url} failed:`, error.message, error.stack);
+  }
+
+  const bankedRules = Number(countRulesForSite.get(siteName).n) || 0;
+  const stillLearning = bankedRules < SITE_RULE_TARGET;
+  const unsure = !jev || jev.confidence < JEV_MIN_CONFIDENCE;
+
+  // steady state. the site has already taught us enough rules and jev is sure, so
+  // there is nothing left for the expensive model to add here.
+  if (!stillLearning && !unsure) {
+    upsertCachedClassification.run(url, siteName, jev.classification, jev.confidence, pattern);
+
+    if (pattern) {
+      upsertPattern.run(siteName, pattern, jev.classification);
+    }
+
+    console.log(`[crawler-jev] ${siteName} ${jev.classification.toUpperCase()} conf=${jev.confidence.toFixed(2)} ${url}`);
+    return { classification: jev.classification, source: 'jev', learnedSignals: [], negativeSignals: [] };
+  }
+
+  let result;
+  try {
+    result = await requestLlmClassification(url, sanitized, heuristic);
+  } catch (error) {
+    console.error(`[crawler-llm] ${siteName} ${url} failed:`, error.message, error.stack);
+
+    // we already paid for jev, so a dead signal call shouldnt also cost us the
+    // page. nothing is cached or learned off the back of it though.
+    if (!jev) {
+      throw error;
+    }
+
+    console.warn(`[crawler-llm] falling back to jev for ${url} (conf=${jev.confidence.toFixed(2)})`);
+    return { classification: jev.classification, source: 'jev-fallback', learnedSignals: [], negativeSignals: [] };
+  }
+
+  // null, not jev's number -- the row holds the signal model's classification and
+  // jev's confidence was in its own answer, which may not even be the same one.
+  upsertCachedClassification.run(url, siteName, result.classification, null, pattern);
 
   if (pattern) {
     upsertPattern.run(siteName, pattern, result.classification);
@@ -789,6 +901,12 @@ async function classifyPageWithLlm({ siteName, url, html, meta, jsonLdArticle, h
     upsertRule.run(siteName, signal.ruleType, signal.ruleValue, result.classification);
   }
 
+  if (jev && jev.classification !== result.classification) {
+    // if this stays noisy for one site the rules it is banking are probably junk,
+    // or the sanitized state is cutting off the part that decides it.
+    console.warn(`[crawler-jev] disagreed on ${url}: jev=${jev.classification} conf=${jev.confidence.toFixed(2)} llm=${result.classification}`);
+  }
+
   console.log(`[crawler-llm] ${siteName} ${result.classification.toUpperCase()} ${url}`);
   return {
     classification: result.classification,