Coaching Engine¶

Three layers, one arbiter. Phone-shipping state (2026-05-26):

Layer	What it is	Phone status
sonic_model + RuleCoach	Per-burst rule engine that consumes telemetry, emits `AudioCue` objects, and routes them through `cue_renderer.py`. Hot path, deterministic, no LLM.	Active.
LitertCoach	Gemma-4-E2B via HTTP to LocalLLM (OpenAI-compatible). Drives `brief()` / `debrief()`; `propose()` defers to `RuleCoach`. Sole transport per ADR-025.	Active (LocalLLM at `127.0.0.1:8099/v1`).
ADK multi-agent	23 specialist agents over Gemma-4 via `google-adk` (phase-2 expansion 2026-05-28 per ADR-026 — 17 V1 + 6 AiM-aware: tire / handling / engine health / traction / input quality / safety). Powers `/coach/ask`, `/coach/agents`, `/coach/traces`. `google-adk` + `litellm` are base deps per ADR-024 — the bridge fails to start without them.	Active once ADK wheels are installed in the bridge venv.

See adk-agent-architecture.md for the full ADK design.

Hot path — `sonic_model` + `RuleCoach`¶

sonic_model.compute_cues() consumes telemetry frames and emits AudioCue objects per burst. cue_renderer.cue_to_sentence() converts a cue list into one short coaching sentence; the same module also exposes a fallback rule engine when sonic_model is unavailable. bp_core.py:/analyze exposes this under engine = "sonic_model" (or "rules").

No LLM, no network, no per-burst inference. Latency is bounded by the rule table.

Warm path — `LitertCoach` over LocalLLM¶

apps/edge-daemon/pitwall/features/coaching/litert_coach.py is the LLM-driven brief/debrief class. Per ADR-025 it is LocalLLM-only — POSTs to /v1/chat/completions via stdlib urllib.request. Construction reads:

Env	Default	Meaning
`PITWALL_ADK_OPENAI_URL`	`http://localhost:8099/v1` (desktop) / `http://localhost:8080/v1` (phone, set by `70-start-bridge.sh`)	OpenAI-compatible HTTP base
`PITWALL_ADK_OPENAI_MODEL`	`gemma3n-e2b` (desktop) / `gemma-4-e2b` (phone)	model id served by LocalLLM
`PITWALL_ADK_OPENAI_API_KEY`	`lit-serve-not-required` / `local`	bearer; LocalLLM accepts anything when auth is off
`PITWALL_COMPACT_PROMPTS`	unset / `1` on phone	shrink system prompts so Gemma-4-E2B fits its context
`PITWALL_LLM_MAX_TOKENS`	512	output budget
`PITWALL_LITERT_HTTP_TIMEOUT_S`	30	request timeout

Legacy aliases PITWALL_LITERT_URL / PITWALL_LITERT_MODEL / PITWALL_LITERT_API_KEY are still honoured and emit a DeprecationWarning.

Three methods¶

Method	Purpose	LLM?
`propose(ctx)`	Per-burst — DEPRECATED for LLM use. Forwards to `RuleCoach.propose()`.	No
`brief(...)`	Pre-session paddock narrative (~150 words).	Yes
`debrief(bundle, ...)`	Post-session debrief (~300 words).	Yes

No-fake-fallbacks policy¶

_templated_pre_brief is no longer called from any synthesis path. When the LLM is offline, returns empty, or fails to parse, brief() / debrief() return ("", [], "neutral") and record one row in llm_friction with backend, role, error, and fell_back=False. The PWA renders an honest "brief unavailable" panel.

`/coach/brief` exposes the friction reason¶

bp_coaching.py:/coach/brief returns the standard JSON envelope plus an error: str | None field. When narrative_md == "", the endpoint queries the latest llm_friction row for role='brief' and surfaces its error column (truncated to 240 chars) so the PWA can show why:

{
  "driver_id": "taha",
  "narrative_md": "",
  "focus": [],
  "emotion": "neutral",
  "error": "engine_not_loaded"
}

When the LLM is healthy and parsed, error is null.

Paddock path — ADK¶

ADK is a base dependency of apps/edge-daemon (per ADR-024); the bridge fails to start without it. The ADK model client is a LiteLlm instance dialling LocalLLM at PITWALL_ADK_OPENAI_URL (default http://127.0.0.1:8099/v1). See adk-agent-architecture.md for the agent catalogue, intent classifier, pipelines, and the agent_traces schema.

/coach/traces?session_id=&limit=&since_ts= returns recent rows from the agent_traces DuckDB table for HUD visualisation. Always HTTP 200 even when DuckDB is absent — the available flag tells the caller.

Message Arbiter¶

All coaching from sonic_model + LitertCoach flows through arbiter.py:

P3 (safety): delivered immediately, interrupts queue.
P2 (technique): delivered on straights only (|gLat| < 0.3 G).
P1 (strategy): queued behind P2.
Conflict: higher priority wins; ties go to the hot path (freshest data).
Cooldown: ≥ 3 s between messages.
Stale expiry: drop after 5 s in queue.

What stays unchanged¶

RuleCoach + CoachArbiter semantics.
The [EMOTION:x] tag contract.
The conversations and llm_friction DuckDB tables.
The PWA's /coach/brief, /coach/debrief, /analyze contracts (the error field is additive).