Fetch full content clobbers the operator’s metadata

Why Care?

Surfaced live 2026-08-02. The operator fills in a source’s metadata (title, publisher, date), clicks Fetch full content, and the title resets to an approximation of the URL — the hand-entered value is gone. Worse, a URL-shaped title is the failure signal: it means Jina couldn’t read the page, so the content probably wasn’t fetched either. Two bugs stacked, and the clobber hid the failure. Violates the standing rule that additive enrichment never overrides accepted fields ([[feedback_additive_enrichment_never_overrides_accepted]]).

Root cause — three layers

1. fetchSourceContent (content-ingest/corpus.ts): const title = jr.ok ? jr.title || args.url : args.url — never consulted the operator’s saved title; Jina’s guess (or the URL on failure) always won. Bib fields likewise merged “Jina wins, fall back to file.”
2. applyBibToRegistry (resolver): wrote that Jina/URL title straight onto the canonical sources row.
3. Client fetchSource (curation.svelte.ts): merged the fetch result over the form ({ ...source, ...r.source }), so the clobbered title landed back in the field.

Desired behavior (operator’s spec, 2026-08-02)

Keep all form metadata as-is → fetch full content → write to SurrealDB with workspace access (humain-vc) → return the sources uuid → write local markdown if local-write is enabled.

Of these: DB write + client scoping (source_usages.client_slug) and the returned source_uuid already exist. This issue covers the metadata preservation half. The local-write toggle is tracked separately (spec addendum to [[Corpora-Curator-Entry-Point-for-Augment-It]]).

Fix

• fetchSourceContent reads the operator’s saved title (and bib) from the source file and treats them as authoritative; Jina’s values are demoted to fallbacks that fill only empty fields. The existing source_slug is preserved so a re-fetch never renames the file.
• Client fetchSource keeps the operator’s title/authors/publisher/date and takes only content + status from the fetch; and now surfaces “fetch failed — could not read the URL” instead of silently resetting.

Resolution

Fixed 2026-08-02. Verified: rsbuild build (corpora-curator) + tsc --noEmit (content-ingest) both green. Reaches augment.didi.sh on the next redeploy.

See also

• [[feedback_additive_enrichment_never_overrides_accepted]]
• [[feedback_human_in_drivers_seat]] — web-research output isn’t trusted to overwrite operator input.