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Preregister keyboard and navigation feedback investigation

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Assistant: codex
Assistant-Model: gpt-6-astra
Assistant-Session: 01a0cffe-206f-7323-89d3-b20ca4cf4bf9
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# LEARN-0012 — Keyboard continuation and navigation feedback
Status: preregistered before implementation/execution. Codex author-model review.
2026-09-27 Europe/Berlin. Stream F; new comparison group F-navigation-focus-v1.
Affected CAND-0010 Progressive Enhancement and boundary of CAND-0016 Focus Return.
This differs from B-navigation-mechanism-v1; do not pool their learning rates.
## Question, belief and disconfirmation
Does a region-replacing enhanced route need an explicit continuation/feedback policy
beyond working native controls, especially if focus moves while a response is pending?
Prior: keyboard activation can work while replacement loses meaningful focus and
errors remain silent. Expected policy: direct navigation may focus a new heading;
failed requests retain current work and expose a status/recovery action. A delayed
response must not steal focus after the user moves to another surviving control.
Modal return-to-invoker is not automatically the right navigation policy.
Compare raw pinned htmx 2.0.11 against an authored optional policy with identical
HTML/transport. Raw outcomes are observations, not assumed failures. Disconfirm the
proposed policy if it loses native operation, steals focus from a newer task, fails
to report failure, or breaks history. Check real DOM activeElement, title, URL,
visible feedback and live-region markup; no screen-reader announcement or WCAG
conformance claim from DOM evidence. Standards inform interpretation, not scoring
an entire application. No new pattern or promotion merely from passing checks.
## Registered cases
Chromium and Firefox; isolated contexts; one execution per condition. Preserve all
outcomes and any harness correction. No arbitrary sleeps or readiness-dependent fix.
Use Tab/Enter for navigation actions, not programmatic focus or mouse clicks.
| ID | Condition | Obligation/observation |
| --- | --- | --- |
| K01 | JavaScript disabled; native keyboard link | Tab reaches link, Enter loads selected full document; inspect title |
| K02 | Raw versus managed enhanced keyboard link | URL/content agree; observe active element/title/status; managed policy focuses new heading and labels completion |
| K03 | Raw versus managed enhanced 503 | Old view/URL and invoker focus retained; managed status explains failure; keyboard native recovery works |
| K04 | Raw versus managed request held at server; user Tabs to persistent search | Release response only after focus moved; no focus theft; managed status reflects completion |
| K05 | Raw versus managed browser history return | Restore selection; managed policy supplies route title/heading continuation; no full reload required |
| K06 | Raw versus managed background region update while search has focus | Background update does not move focus or announce a route transition |
K01 two browser cases, K02–K06 two variants × two browsers: 22 cases total. Raw rows
record which managed obligations they meet rather than treating a predicted weakness
as an assertion failure. Managed obligations must pass or be reported as unresolved.
No accessible-name/focus-ring audit, AT speech test, user study, native history focus
universality, overlapping navigation-request ordering, production recurrence or
network interruption claim. Single delayed response only. A held response is not a
model of every asynchronous failure. Live inference, if later required, uses llm-connect.
## Effort and review boundary
45 active agent-research minutes plus 10 execution minutes before scope review.
Monotonic session clock began after local orientation; subtract measured blocking
experiment/check subprocess time. Include design/implementation/analysis/recording;
no overlapping work. Checkpoint inspection during execution belongs to execution.
Final receipt refresh/commit/snapshot/sync overhead after analysis cutoff is excluded.
Tokens/cost unknown. Retain clock receipt, inputs, package/browser hashes and request
traces. Commit registration before implementation/execution. Write outcome separately,
append ledger entry with this protocol_ref, update affected profiles/report and take
an immutable snapshot after committing candidate changes. WP-0003 T01/T02 and WP-0006
T03 retain residuals. One cycle in this new group cannot establish diminishing returns.