Findings / UX-055
"Ask the article" has never run against a real on-device model
OpenLowGapNewsroom Design Lab
What we saw
The ask view uses Chrome's built-in model when present and a labelled extractive fallback otherwise. Only the fallback and a stub were tested; the model is absent in headless Chrome and likely in the vault frame.
Why it matters
The feature is shown to readers on a path nobody has seen work.
The fix
Test in a real Chrome with the model, or use sg.llm with an llm.chat grant; until then say "fallback" in the UI, as it does.
The record
| Status | Open |
| Severity | Low |
| Kind | Gap: something the reader needs is not there |
| Product | Newsroom Design Lab, prototype |
| Where | newsroom-proto-article |
| Problems | Untested path |
| Visibility | Silent: no symptom on screen: found only by measuring, or by its consequences |
| Recommendation | Test where readers are: run it on the device, browser and host readers actually use before showing it |
| Area | Article page |
| Breaks | What a page says about the present is true now |
| Observed | 2026-10-11, v0.1.1 |
| Last checked | 2026-10-11, v0.1.1 |
| Source | Design lab: what building it measured |
| Prototype | Article & reader primitives, route ask, in three directions |
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