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ADR-v2-078 — Verbatim ⇄ Autoformat Live Toggle

Status: Accepted (2026-07-02) · Wave J Context links: [[adr-v2-048-entity-itn]] (what gets toggled off), [[adr-v2-047-field-aware-dictation]], [[adr-011]]

Context

Wave J research (#3) — two reserved phrases flip a per-burst flag (like the existing _command_mode): "dictate verbatim" freezes all ITN / voice-punctuation / reflow and injects the literal lexical form ("one hundred dollars"); "resume formatting" restores the pipeline — mid-burst, no stop. Essential for code identifiers, quotes, spoken-aloud passwords, legal capture. No existing feature exposes a runtime ITN on/off switch. Anchors: Azure Speech "Display text formatting" (production lexical-vs-ITN toggle), arXiv 2505.24229 (context-gated separable ITN, 2025).

Decision

Add an opt-in Verbatim⇄Autoformat Toggle: [verbatim] enabled=false. Pure cores: detect_mode_command(text) recognizes the reserved phrases → "verbatim" / "auto" (else None), and VerbatimGate holds the mode: handle_command(text) consumes a mode phrase, is_verbatim() tells the pipeline whether to bypass all formatting for the current burst. Dependency-free; the daemon consults is_verbatim() to skip ITN/punctuation/reflow. OFF by default.

Consequences

  • Runtime control over how much the pipeline transforms — verbatim mode is strictly less transformation.
  • Pure state machine over the existing pipeline; no model.
  • Distinct — the only runtime ITN on/off switch.
  • Privacy (ADR-011): pure local routing.
  • Caveat: mode is per-session state the daemon must thread into the dictate path; the pure gate is off by default until wired.