Reask Signal

Overview

reask detects when the current user turn semantically repeats the most recent user turns in the same conversation. It maps to config/signal/reask/ and is declared under routing.signals.reasks.

This family is learned: it uses the router's shared semantic embedding path to compare the current user turn against prior user turns.

Key Advantages

• Captures implicit dissatisfaction without requiring explicit phrases like "this is wrong".
• Distinguishes a one-turn repeat from a repeated multi-turn dissatisfaction streak.
• Lets decisions escalate based on recent conversation history instead of a single message.
• Reuses the existing semantic similarity stack instead of introducing a second model surface.

What Problem Does It Solve?

Users often restate the same question when the previous answer was not useful. A single-turn classifier can miss that pattern because the complaint is implicit rather than explicit.

reask solves that by comparing the latest user turn to the most recent user turns and surfacing configurable dissatisfaction signals when the streak stays semantically similar.

When to Use

Use reask when:

• repeated questions should escalate to a stronger model
• you want different handling for one repeated ask vs multiple repeated asks
• explicit feedback is sparse, but repeated user turns still matter
• routing decisions should depend on same-conversation user history

Configuration

Source fragment family: config/signal/reask/

routing:
  signals:
    reasks:
      - name: likely_dissatisfied
        description: Current user turn closely repeats the immediately previous user turn.
        threshold: 0.8
        lookback_turns: 1
      - name: persistently_dissatisfied
        description: Current user turn repeats the last two user turns in a row.
        threshold: 0.8
        lookback_turns: 2

Each rule compares the current user turn to the latest lookback_turns prior user turns. A rule matches only when every turn in that recent streak stays above the configured similarity threshold.