`sec ask --company/--form/--since/--accession` do not narrow retrieval — they are appended to the prompt; and `AskTask` has no test

[sroussey]

The four scope flags on sec ask are described to the user as filters:

$ ./dist/sec.js ask --help
  --company <cik|ticker|name>  Narrow to one issuer
  --form <form>                Narrow to one form type, e.g. 10-K
  --since <date>               Only filings on or after this date (YYYY-MM-DD)
  --accession <accession>      Narrow to one filing

They narrow nothing. AskTask.execute passes the whole knowledge base to AiChatWithKbTask with no filter and turns the scope into a sentence (src/task/kb/AskTask.ts:105-115, 149-165):

const scope = describeScope(input);
… prompt: scope === undefined ? input.question : `${input.question}\n\n(${scope})`,

function describeScope(input: TaskPorts<AskTaskInput>): string | undefined {
  …
  return parts.length === 0 ? undefined : `Restrict your answer to: ${parts.join(", ")}`;
}

The JSDoc above it is candid about this —

Retrieval here is over one knowledge base with no per-query filter, so the scope steers the model rather than the search. Said plainly instead of implied: a narrowing that only lives in a flag is a narrowing the answer can silently ignore.

— which is the right instinct written in the wrong place. The candour is in a comment nobody running the CLI reads; the help text still says "Narrow to one issuer", and the citations printed under the answer can be from any issuer in the index. --accession is the sharpest case: a user asking about one filing gets excerpts from whatever the embedder ranked highest across the whole corpus, presented as [1] 10-K · 2024-11-01 · 0000320193-24-000123.

This is the same class as #349 (grounding enforced in the prompt rather than in code), on a smaller blast radius.

Ask

Either honour the flags or stop calling them narrowings.

1. Preferred — filter at retrieval. IndexFilingSectionsTask already writes cik, accession, docFile, form and filingDate into each document's metadata (src/task/kb/IndexFilingSectionsTask.ts:109-117) precisely so a citation can name its filing; the same fields are what a metadata filter would key on. If AiChatWithKbTask cannot take one, retrieve through kb.similaritySearch directly and pass the excerpts as context.
2. Failing that — reword the help ("Steer the answer toward…", not "Narrow to"), and print a one-line note under an answer whose references fall outside the requested scope. A wrong-issuer citation the user can see is recoverable; one presented as scoped is not.

Second half: AskTask is untested

$ ls src/task/kb/
AskTask.ts  IndexFilingSectionsTask.test.ts  IndexFilingSectionsTask.ts

164 lines, the command the re-founding is named for, and no test file. Everything in it that is checkable without a model is: describeScope's output for each combination of flags, the one-shot human connector's decline response (:23-30), the reference mapping at :136-142, and the empty-references path from #349. A stub for AiChatWithKbTask covers all of them.

Verify

sec index --limit 5
sec --json ask "..." --accession <an-accession-not-in-those-5> | \
  node -e 'const d=JSON.parse(require("fs").readFileSync(0));console.log(d.references.map(r=>r.title))'
# today: titles from other filings

Found during the 2026-09-07 review. Snapshot: workglow-dev/prd → analysis/grades/2026-09-07/sec-detailed.md.