Closer to Home: gate "Near you" on high/medium confidence (both modes)

Codex polish before deploy: anything elevated as Near you / Close to home must have
geo_confidence in (high, medium) — the feature's promise is relevance. Country-only
mode now gates "near" too; since it has no "country" tier, the "world" scope is
widened to absorb low-confidence home-country stories so they surface there instead
of vanishing between tiers (the same edge-case class, fixed). State mode unchanged.

364 tests green.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>

goodnews/queries.py

@@ -171,13 +171,17 @@ def feed(
     # shaky location). Untagged articles have no places, so they land in 'world' — never
     # lost while the backfill is still running.
     if geo_scope == "near":
+        # Anything elevated as "Near you" / "Close to home" requires high/medium geo
+        # confidence — the feature's promise is relevance, so don't surface shaky locals.
         if home_state and home_country:
             clauses.append(
                 "g.confidence IN ('high','medium') AND EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM article_places p "
                 "WHERE p.article_id = a.id AND p.country_code = ? AND p.state_code = ?)")
             params.extend([home_country, home_state])
         elif home_country:
-            clauses.append("EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM article_places p WHERE p.article_id = a.id AND p.country_code = ?)")
+            clauses.append(
+                "g.confidence IN ('high','medium') AND EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM article_places p "
+                "WHERE p.article_id = a.id AND p.country_code = ?)")
             params.append(home_country)
     elif geo_scope == "country" and home_country:
         clauses.append("EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM article_places p WHERE p.article_id = a.id AND p.country_code = ?)")
@@ -191,8 +195,18 @@ def feed(
                 "WHERE p2.article_id = a.id AND p2.country_code = ? AND p2.state_code = ?))")
             params.extend([home_country, home_state])
     elif geo_scope == "world" and home_country:
-        clauses.append("NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM article_places p WHERE p.article_id = a.id AND p.country_code = ?)")
-        params.append(home_country)
+        if home_state:
+            # State mode: the "country" tier catches all home-country stories (incl.
+            # low-confidence ones), so world is simply everything outside your country.
+            clauses.append("NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM article_places p WHERE p.article_id = a.id AND p.country_code = ?)")
+            params.append(home_country)
+        else:
+            # Country-only mode has no "country" tier, so a LOW-confidence home-country
+            # story isn't "near" and must land here rather than vanish between tiers.
+            clauses.append(
+                "NOT (g.confidence IN ('high','medium') AND EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM article_places p "
+                "WHERE p.article_id = a.id AND p.country_code = ?))")
+            params.append(home_country)
 
     where = "WHERE " + " AND ".join(clauses)
     params.extend([limit, offset])

tests/test_geo_feed.py

@@ -67,13 +67,18 @@ def test_sparse_near_folds_into_country(app_db):
     assert "country" in _sections(r["items"])           # US stories still surface as your country
 
 
-def test_country_only_home_has_no_country_tier(app_db):
+def test_country_only_home_gates_near_on_confidence(app_db):
     r = TestClient(app_db).get("/api/feed?home=US&limit=50").json()
-    secs = set(_sections(r["items"]))
+    items = r["items"]
+    secs = set(_sections(items))
     assert "country" not in secs                        # no state -> near IS the whole country
     assert secs <= {"near", "world"}
-    near_ids = {it["id"] for it in r["items"] if it["section"] == "near"}
-    assert near_ids == {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8}         # all US (incl. the low-conf one, country match)
+    near_ids = {it["id"] for it in items if it["section"] == "near"}
+    # "Near you" requires high/medium confidence: high-conf US stories only, NOT the
+    # low-confidence US story (#5), which must still appear, in "world".
+    assert near_ids == {1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8}
+    a5 = next(it for it in items if it["id"] == 5)
+    assert a5["section"] == "world"                      # low-conf home-country -> world, not vanished
 
 
 def test_no_home_is_unchanged_and_unsectioned(app_db):