Ralph Loop 2026-03-16: Legacy Latest-State Hydration

Bounded PRD 003/004 operator fix: the status commands now repair a legacy research/latest_state.json when the file predates the newer handoff schema.

What changed

1. research/status.py now supports a hydration writeback path that fills in missing handoff fields from the current status snapshot: - candidate_review - deployable_trade - review_candidate - research_candidate - replay_input_profile - replay_source_profile - top_eventful_scan_rows - stored freshness timestamps
2. research/status.py and research/discord_status.py now invoke that hydration path when operators run the status commands.
3. research/README.md documents the behavior so operators know a status refresh can repair an old handoff file without waiting for a new loop cycle.

Why this was the next useful change

The repo’s current research/latest_state.json was still legacy-shaped. It had only:

• best_search_result
• confidence
• cycle
• replay_result
• status
• timestamp
• top_scan_tickers

That meant direct consumers of research/latest_state.json could not see candidate-review quality, freshness timestamps, or replay-profile diagnostics unless they ran the richer status code path themselves.

Validation

1. pytest -q tests/test_research_status.py - 8 passed
2. pytest -q tests/test_continuous_loop.py tests/test_candidate_review.py - 8 passed
3. python3 main.py research-status --json - rewrote research/latest_state.json so the file now includes:
   • candidate_review
   • deployable_trade
   • review_candidate
   • research_candidate
   • freshness
   • replay_input_profile
   • replay_source_profile
   • top_eventful_scan_rows

Result

Ralph can now recover a stale handoff schema with a bounded operator action instead of waiting for another full research loop. This improves candidate review and replay-quality visibility without changing any deployment gates or strategy behavior.