Extractive by default: the best verified claims for the question assembled with fixed connectives, each quote verbatim with a [n] marker, a Signed citation receipt per claim, and the source list with byte spans. When this node runs a local 1.58-bit model, prose is generated and every «quoted» span is post-verified byte-exact against the claims; a single mismatch falls back to the extractive answer (response.mode says which). Free when no verified claim matches. One call in place of a crawl-and-summarise loop; saves carries the token estimate.