Module bridge 

Bridge detection — find cross-domain hypotheses from multiple frontiers.

The core value proposition of Vela: compile findings from separate fields, link them by shared entities, and surface testable hypotheses at the intersection.

v0.46 — bridges as first-class kernel objects

v0.45 and earlier treated bridges as a derived report — a function from two Projects to a Vec<BridgeEntity> that ran on demand and was never persisted. v0.46 promotes bridges to first-class kernel objects: content-addressed vbr_<hash> records that live in .vela/bridges/<vbr_id>.json alongside findings, replications, datasets, and code artifacts.

The shape: a Bridge is a compositional hypothesis that two frontiers’ shared entity admits a cross-frontier claim. The kernel never asserts the hypothesis is true — that’s a reviewer call, recorded by transitioning the bridge’s status from Derived to Confirmed or Refuted. Bridges are written by vela bridges derive, read by vela bridges list / show, and updated by vela bridges confirm / refute.

Doctrine: bridges are derived, not invented. The derivation runs the same detect_bridges algorithm and records its output verbatim. Confirmation / refutation is a reviewer act, not an automated one.

Structs

Bridge

A first-class, content-addressed bridge object. Persisted in .vela/bridges/<vbr_id>.json next to findings.

BridgeEntity

A bridge entity — appears in findings from 2+ different source frontiers.

BridgeFinding

BridgeRef

Enums

BridgeStatus

Functions

check_novelty

Run a rough PubMed prior-art check for a cross-domain query. Retries up to 2 times with exponential backoff on transient failures.

derive_bridges

Top-level v0.46 entry point: derive bridges between two named frontiers and return content-addressed Bridge records ready to be written to .vela/bridges/.

detect_bridges

Detect bridges across multiple named frontiers.

format_report

Format the bridge report.

is_obvious

novelty_query

Build a specific PubMed query for a bridge entity. Uses the most distinctive co-occurring entity from each frontier, not just field names.