Noēsis: Deterministic-First Retrieval with Two-Tier Context Hydration for Factuality-Critical Queries on Small Local Models
A wrong number is worse than no answer. Across factuality-critical domains—audience metrics, scheduling and rights in media; dosages and lab values in healthcare; figures and citations in finance and legal—a confident but fabricated value is more damaging than an honest admission of uncertainty. Yet this is the dominan...