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ADR-v2-118 — WordFind (offline reverse dictionary)

Status: Accepted (2026-07-03) · Wave N Context links: recall (spoken recall), snippets, personalize (vocab), [[adr-011]]

Context

Wave N research (#4) — tip-of-the-tongue moments break dictation flow: you know the meaning but not the word. For anomia (word-finding difficulty after stroke/aphasia) this is the primary barrier, and AAC research treats reverse lookup as core assistive tech. Nothing in the set maps a description to a word. Anchor: WordNet reverse-dictionary work; TREC 2025 Tip-of-the-Tongue track; anomia/AAC literature.

Decision

Add an opt-in WordFind: [wordfind] enabled=false, max_candidates=5. Pure core in wordfind/rank.py: rank_candidates(query, lexicon, limit) — content-word overlap (stopword- filtered) between the spoken description and each definition, normalized by query size, deterministic alphabetical tie-break. A small built-in demo lexicon ships in-tree; the user's own entries merge over it, and WordNet-scale lexicons / embedding rerankers stay optional extras. OFF by default.

Consequences

  • "The word for when water turns to gas" → ranked shortlist, spoken or displayed — flow preserved.
  • Pure ranker → fully testable, deterministic, dependency-free.
  • Distinct from Recall (your own past notes) — WordFind searches a lexicon of meanings.
  • Privacy (ADR-011): local text only.
  • Caveat: built-in lexicon is a demo tier; real coverage comes from the optional WordNet extra; off by default.