feat(ranking): phase 1 -- tier-0 taint requests are no longer asked

A pair with no sink of its family in reach cannot yield a flow, in any
language under any dataflow model, so its taint request is never issued. The
count is recorded as requests_pruned -- exact, so not a degradation -- and a
test asserts that every other pair's request still goes out.

    637-file plugin, 500-region budget
    tier_counts   {0: 2161, 1: 60, 2: 20, 3: 211, 4: 48}
    pruned        2,161 of 2,500 = 86%        evidence pass 94.5s
    taint         339 requests -> 2,400s TIMEOUT

Gate met and exceeded; the scan still does not finish, and the reason corrects
phase 0. "1,148 ms per request" was an average over a 250-request set that was
88% tier 0 and answered instantly; the ~30 real requests in it cost ~9.5s each.
Pruning removes exactly the cheap questions and keeps the expensive ones, so it
cannot make them faster. The honest cost of a taint question that CAN have an
answer is 7-10s at callDepth=3, and that is what phase 2 and 5.13 design
against -- not 1.1s, and not 6.6s either. Both specs corrected.

869 tests pass.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <[email protected]>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T7XD7x5KonMdmGRkp63EQG

.kiro/specs/contributor-scan/tasks.md

@@ -826,8 +826,10 @@
     independent of the region's family, both repeated 2,500 times. Memoised across the batch (found while
     building flow-aware-ranking's evidence mode, which asks no dataflow and still took an hour), the same
     250 requests with both joins on: **2,026.3 s → 287.0 s, 8,105 → 1,148 ms per request, identical 5,779
-    rows.** A 7× speedup with nothing about the analysis changed. The base cost of a taint request is about
+    rows.** A 7× speedup with nothing about the analysis changed -- but "1.1 s" is an average over a set
-    1.1 s, and the levers above still apply to it.
+    that was 88% tier-0 pairs answering instantly. With those pruned (flow-aware-ranking phase 1), the 339
+    requests that CAN have an answer still exceed 2,400 s: **7–10 s per real request at `callDepth = 3`**.
+    The memoisation was real and stays; the per-request figure to design against is that one.
   - **The estimate this replaces was wrong and worth recording as wrong.** ">0.94s per request" came from
     assuming taint COMPLETED within its 2,400s ceiling. It timed out, so that was a floor presented as a
     figure. The measured cost is seven times higher.

.kiro/specs/flow-aware-ranking/brief.md

@@ -93,6 +93,17 @@ A phase that cannot show that is not an improvement, it is a story.
 - **Phase 1 — tier 0 only, no model.** Exact pruning. Gate: **53% fewer taint requests issued, measured** —
   and nothing more. 1,177 requests at 6.63 s is still 2.2 hours, so this phase does NOT make the scan finish;
   it halves the problem. Claiming completion here would send someone looking for a bug where there is none.
+
+  **Done 2026-09-10, gate exceeded, scan still does not finish — and the reason corrects phase 0's cost
+  figure.** On the 637-file plugin: `tier_counts = {0: 2161, 1: 60, 2: 20, 3: 211, 4: 48}`, **2,161 of 2,500
+  requests pruned (86%)**, evidence pass 94.5 s. The remaining **339 requests still hit the 2,400 s ceiling**
+  — more than 7 s each.
+
+  Phase 0 reported 1,148 ms per request after memoisation. That was an average over a 250-request set of
+  which 88% were tier 0 and returned instantly; the ~30 real requests in it cost about 9.5 s each. Pruning
+  removes exactly the cheap questions and keeps the expensive ones, so it cannot make those faster. The
+  honest per-request cost of a taint question that *can* have an answer is **7–10 s at `callDepth = 3`**,
+  and that is the number phase 2 and 5.13 must work against — not 1.1 s, and not 6.6 s either.
 - **Phase 2 — heuristic tiers, still no model.** The vector and tiers defined below, ordered within a tier
   by a published weighted sum. Gate: `budget_at_recall` — the smallest K holding every pinned CVE — **below
   50 on every pinned repository**, and `pmpro`'s taint query completing at that K. This is the phase that

src/openultrasast/model/scan.py

@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ from pathlib import Path
 from typing import Any
 
 from ..cpg.backend import CpgResult
-from .evidence import evidence_from_rows
+from .evidence import TIER_EXCLUDE, evidence_from_rows
 from .candidates import enumerate_candidates
 from .config_value import request_params as config_params
 from .dominance import request_params as dominance_params
@@ -70,6 +70,11 @@ class ScanBudget:
     # what is asked or in what order. One extra query invocation without dataflow -- a JVM load, then
     # milliseconds per pair.
     tiering: bool = True
+    # Phase 1 of flow-aware-ranking: do not ask a taint question whose answer is known in advance. A pair at
+    # tier 0 has no sink of its family in reach, and a family with no sink cannot produce a flow -- in any
+    # language, under any dataflow model. Skipping it cannot lose a finding. It is the only tier that
+    # excludes, which is why it is the only one allowed to act before the ranker is measured.
+    prune_tier0: bool = True
 
 
 @dataclass(frozen=True)
@@ -97,6 +102,9 @@ class ModelScanResult:
     # Recorded, not acted on: this is what "the ranker got better" will be measured against.
     tiers: tuple[tuple[str, str, str, int], ...] = ()
     tier_counts: Mapping[int, int] = field(default_factory=dict)
+    # Taint requests not issued because their pair was tier 0. Exact, so not a degradation: nothing that
+    # could have been found was skipped. Reported so the request count is legible.
+    requests_pruned: int = 0
 
     @property
     def arbitrate_seconds(self) -> float:
@@ -190,6 +198,7 @@ def scan_repository(
     # no `reachableByFlows`. Recorded on the result and NOT used to reorder or skip anything -- that is a
     # later phase, and it must be measured against this record before it is allowed to change behaviour.
     tiers: list[tuple[str, str, str, int]] = []
+    tier_by_rid: dict[str, int] = {}
     per_kind: dict[str, float] = {}
     if limits.tiering and callable(getattr(cpg, "run_batch", None)):
         grouped_taint = _grouped(work, hook_callbacks=hooks).get("taint", {})
@@ -219,6 +228,7 @@ def scan_repository(
                     )
                     if evidence is not None:
                         tiers.append((region.path, region.function or "", getattr(spec, "family", ""), evidence.tier))
+                        tier_by_rid[rid] = evidence.tier
 
     # Phase 2: ONE invocation per query kind. JVM startup dominates a repository scan -- a call per region
     # per family put a ten-line file at four minutes and a thousand regions at roughly fifty hours -- while
@@ -226,7 +236,17 @@ def scan_repository(
     rows_by_id: dict[str, list[object]] = {}
     census_reported = False
     query_started = time.monotonic()
+    pruned = 0
     for kind, requests in _grouped(work, hook_callbacks=hooks).items():
+        if kind == "taint" and limits.prune_tier0 and tier_by_rid:
+            # Tier 0 is exact: a family with no sink in reach cannot yield a flow. Measured on a 637-file
+            # plugin, that is 2,161 of 2,500 requests -- 86% of a query that timed out at forty minutes.
+            keep = {rid: params for rid, params in requests.items() if tier_by_rid.get(rid, TIER_EXCLUDE + 1) != TIER_EXCLUDE}
+            pruned = len(requests) - len(keep)
+            requests = keep
+            if not requests:
+                per_kind[kind] = 0.0
+                continue
         kind_started = time.monotonic()
         batch = getattr(cpg, "run_batch", None)
         if callable(batch):
@@ -338,6 +358,7 @@ def scan_repository(
         degradations=tuple(degradations),
         tiers=tuple(tiers),
         tier_counts={tier: sum(1 for t in tiers if t[3] == tier) for tier in sorted({t[3] for t in tiers})},
+        requests_pruned=pruned,
     )
 
 

tests/test_model_scan.py

@@ -419,3 +419,56 @@ def test_a_region_cap_that_hides_most_of_a_repository_is_reported() -> None:
     truncated = [d for d in result.degradations if d.get("reason") == "regions_truncated"]
     assert truncated, "the cap hid two thirds of the regions and said nothing"
     assert truncated[0]["examined"] == 10 and truncated[0]["total"] == 30
+
+
+def test_tier_zero_pairs_are_not_asked_and_nothing_else_is_skipped() -> None:
+    """Phase 1 of flow-aware-ranking. A pair with no sink of its family in reach cannot yield a flow, so its
+    taint request is never issued -- and every other pair's request still is."""
+    from openultrasast.model.regions import ScanRegion
+    from openultrasast.model.scan import ScanBudget, scan_repository
+
+    issued: list[dict[str, object]] = []
+
+    class _Backend:
+        def available(self) -> bool:
+            return True
+
+        def build(self, root, *, language=""):  # type: ignore[no-untyped-def]
+            from openultrasast.cpg.backend import CpgResult
+
+            def batch(kind, requests):  # type: ignore[no-untyped-def]
+                if any(p.get("evidenceOnly") == "true" for p in requests.values()):
+                    # Every family but the first has no sink in reach.
+                    return {
+                        rid: [{"kind": "summary", "sinks": 1 if i == 0 else 0, "sourceLocal": True, "familyInRepo": True}]
+                        + (
+                            [
+                                {
+                                    "kind": "sink",
+                                    "sink": "os.system(x)",
+                                    "sinkLine": "4",
+                                    "sinkMethod": "run",
+                                    "sinkArity": 1,
+                                    "sinkArg0Literal": False,
+                                    "cleansedOnCall": False,
+                                }
+                            ]
+                            if i == 0
+                            else []
+                        )
+                        for i, rid in enumerate(requests)
+                    }
+                issued.append({"kind": kind, "count": len(requests)})
+                return {rid: [] for rid in requests}
+
+            return CpgResult(cpg_path=Path("cpg.bin"), run=lambda q, p: [], run_batch=batch)
+
+    region = ScanRegion(
+        path="a.py", function="run", language="python", families=("injection", "path", "deserialization"), rank=0.9, source="entry_point"
+    )
+    result = scan_repository(Path("."), [region], backend=_Backend(), budget=ScanBudget(max_model_calls=0))
+
+    taint = next(i for i in issued if i["kind"] == "taint")
+    assert taint["count"] == 1, "only the pair with a sink in reach is asked"
+    assert result.requests_pruned == 2, "and the two tier-0 pairs are counted, not silently dropped"
+    assert not any(d.get("reason") == "query_failed" for d in result.degradations)