The Co-Pilot search box read state and role from the dropdowns (#sst, #srl)
but appended them to the message string as ' in '+st. The server's NL
parser then matched the literal preposition "in" against the case-insensitive
regex /\b(IL|IN|...)\b/i and assigned state IN (Indiana) to every search.
Result: typing "forklift in IL" returned Indiana workers. Same for WI, TX,
any state — all silently became Indiana. That was the "cached/generic
response" the legacy staffing client was seeing.
Two prongs:
1. search.html doSearch() now passes structured fields:
{message, state, role}
instead of munging into the message text. Dropdown selections bypass
NL parsing entirely.
2. /intelligence/chat smart_search route accepts those structured fields
and prefers them over regex archaeology. Falls back to NL parsing only
when fields aren't provided. Fixed the regex too: the prepositional
form (?:in|from)\s+(STATE) wins, the standalone form requires uppercase
(drops /i flag) so the lowercase preposition "in" can no longer match.
Verified live:
- POST /intelligence/chat {"message":"forklift","state":"IL"}
→ 167 IL forklift operators (Galesburg, Joliet, ...)
- POST /intelligence/chat {"message":"forklift","state":"WI","role":"Forklift Operator"}
→ 16 WI Forklift Operators (Milwaukee, Madison, ...)
- POST /intelligence/chat {"message":"forklift in IL"} (NL fallback)
→ 167 IL workers (regex now correctly distinguishes preposition from state code)
Playwright drove the live UI through devop.live/lakehouse and confirmed the
front-end posts the structured body and the result panel renders the right
state. Restart sequence: kill old bun :3700, bun run mcp-server/index.ts.
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