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Attention

Before a step is judged, or an element is grounded for it, the runtime asks one thing first: what on this screen needs attention, the step itself, or something in the way of it? This runs at the top of every do turn, and once before a choose, enter, pick, read, extract, or stop_before step. It lives in attention/.

Why this exists

A cookie banner, a promo toast, a newsletter prompt, or an app-install card left in place does two things at once: it takes up a share of Jev's attention when it is asked to judge the screen, and it can physically sit on top of the element the step actually needs, turning a click meant for a result card into a click on the toast that covers it. Live on Emirates, a promo toast ("Unlimited date changes...", with a Close button) covered the lower results while the flow kept pressing the fare card sitting above it, one turn after another, never touching what it was actually clicking on because it never noticed the toast was in the way. Attention exists to catch this class of problem before it wastes a turn.

Finding candidates without asking anyone

Distractions are found deterministically, with no Jev call, before the attention question is even built. A container counts as a distraction candidate when any of these hold:

  • it holds a plain dismiss control: an X, "Close," "Not now," "No thanks," "Got it," "Reject all," "Accept essential only," and similar;
  • it is reported as being in front (the digest's own notion of an overlay);
  • its labels mark it as a cookie, consent, privacy, newsletter, subscribe, offer, promo, app, or survey card.

A container is deliberately not offered as a distraction when:

  • it is bigger than 12 elements (MAX_DISTRACTION_SIZE), or holds more than one text field, because that shape is the page itself, or a real form, not a distraction. Live on Emirates, the booking form's own clear-field close icons sat directly under the page's main region, and without this size cutoff they would have been offered as things to dismiss.
  • an "Accept" or "Reject" control sits in ordinary page content rather than in one of the shapes above: that is the step's own business, not a distraction to clear out of its way.
  • the step itself already names the exact distraction ("dismiss the cookie banner"), since that is not a distraction from the step, it is the step.
  • the control looks irreversible, or was already pressed once this step.

Separately, when the surface marks elements as covered and one of them is something the step actually names, whatever is sitting on top of it (a calendar or list an earlier step left open, with no dismiss control of its own) is offered too, and it is cleared with Escape, once per step. Live on Emirates, a date calendar that stayed open over the booking form covered the Class button the very next step needed to press.

Asking, and only when there is something to ask about

A clean screen with no candidates costs nothing: no attention question is asked at all. When there is at least one candidate, one Choice is asked, "the step" against each distraction, describing what each one shows and what would clear it.

Clearing, on clear evidence only

A distraction is cleared only when the evidence behind the answer is strong (the same evidence-gate reasoning covered in Deliberation, with a floor of 0.5, ATTENTION_FLOOR). It is cleared with its least committal control: rejecting or essential-only first, closing plainly next, accepting outright last. At most 3 distractions are cleared per step (MAX_CLEARED), and the screen is looked at again after each one, since clearing one overlay can reveal another underneath it.

How this differs from the obstacle check in the do loop

The do loop's own blocked question (see The do loop) still exists, and still catches a dialog the step's own judge sees as blocking it. Attention runs earlier and catches a different case: a distraction that is in the screen's way without necessarily being in the judge's way, something the step's own judging question might never mention because it is not obviously "blocking" in the way a modal dialog is, just sitting where a click needs to land.

See docs/technical/decision-thresholds.md for MAX_DISTRACTIONS, MAX_CLEARED, MAX_DISTRACTION_SIZE, and ATTENTION_FLOOR, and docs/technical/specs/jev-deliberation.md for how attention fits into the wider deliberation design.