Add QuestionThinking and clean up codebase

[johnjosephhorton]

Summary

• Introduces a new QuestionThinking question type for chain-of-thought reasoning
• Removes dead code from ScenarioList, Agent modules, and other areas
• Removes unused modules (widgets, comparisons, evaluations, vibes, assistants, etc.)
• Replaces heavy dependencies (SQLAlchemy, pandas) with stdlib alternatives (sqlite3, csv)
• Makes several dependencies optional (openai, black, tabulate, setuptools)
• Adds mermaid-based survey flow rendering with ASCII fallback
• Fixes doctests and CI test failures across the board
• Regenerates poetry.lock to fix CI

Test plan

• Verify QuestionThinking works end-to-end with a model
• Run full test suite (pytest tests/)
• Confirm CI passes on this branch

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[johnjosephhorton]

This is how it works:

"""Example: QuestionThinking in a pipeline with agent, summarizer, and verification."""

from edsl import QuestionThinking
from edsl import QuestionFreeText, QuestionYesNo, Agent, Survey, Model

# A verbose agent who gives detailed answers
agent = Agent(
    traits={
        "persona": "You are a history professor who gives detailed, "
        "thorough answers with lots of context and examples."
    }
)
model = Model("gpt-4o-mini")

# Step 1: Ask the agent a question (uses agent persona + survey model)
q1 = QuestionFreeText(
    question_name="history",
    question_text="Explain the causes and consequences of the French Revolution.",
)

# Step 2: Summarize with QuestionThinking (bypasses agent persona, uses its own model/system_prompt)
q2 = QuestionThinking(
    question_name="summary",
    question_text="Summarize the following text in 2 sentences: {{ history.answer }}",
    model="gpt-4o-mini",
    system_prompt="You are a concise summarizer. Output only the summary, nothing else.",
)

# Step 3: Ask the agent to verify the summary (uses agent persona again)
q3 = QuestionYesNo(
    question_name="accurate",
    question_text=(
        "Original text: {{ history.answer }}\n\n"
        "Summary: {{ summary.answer }}\n\n"
        "Is this an accurate summary of the original text?"
    ),
)

# Build the survey with memory/piping dependencies
survey = Survey(questions=[q1, q2, q3])
results = survey.by(agent).by(model).run(disable_remote_inference=True)
print(results.select("answer.*").table())%                              

Producing output:

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ answer.accurate ┃ answer.history                                                                     ┃ answer.summary                                                                      ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Yes             │ The French Revolution, which began in 1789 and lasted until 1799, was a pivotal    │ The French Revolution (1789-1799) marked the decline of absolute monarchy and the   │
│                 │ event in world history that marked the decline of absolute monarchy and the rise   │ rise of republicanism due to social inequality, economic hardship, political        │
│                 │ of republicanism and democratic ideals. The causes and consequences of the French  │ discontent, weak leadership, and immediate triggers like the Estates-General and    │
│                 │ Revolution are complex and interwoven, involving a mix of social, economic,        │ the storming of the Bastille. Its consequences included the overthrow of the        │
│                 │ political, and intellectual factors.                                               │ monarchy, the rise of radicalism and the Reign of Terror, significant social and    │
│                 │                                                                                    │ political reforms, the emergence of Napoleon Bonaparte, and inspiration for future  │
│                 │ ### Causes of the French Revolution                                                │ revolutionary movements worldwide.                                                  │
│                 │                                                                                    │                                                                                     │
│                 │ 1. **Social Inequality**: French society was divided into three estates. The First │                                                                                     │
│                 │ Estate consisted of the clergy, the Second Estate comprised the nobility, and the  │                                                                                     │
│                 │ Third Estate included the common people, which made up about 98% of the            │                                                                                     │
│                 │ population. The Third Estate bore the brunt of taxation while having little        │                                                                                     │
│                 │ political power or representation, leading to widespread discontent.               │                                                                                     │
│                 │                                                                                    │                                                                                     │
│                 │ 2. **Economic Hardship**: By the late 18th century, France faced a severe          │                                                                                     │
│                 │ financial crisis. The government was deeply in debt, partly due to its involvement │                                                                                     │
│                 │ in the American Revolution and extravagant spending by King Louis XVI and his      │                                                                                     │
│                 │ court. Poor harvests in the late 1780s led to food shortages and rising bread      │                                                                                     │
│                 │ prices, exacerbating the plight of the common people and stirring unrest.          │                                                                                     │
│                 │                                                                                    │                                                                                     │
│                 │ 3. **Political Discontent**: The absolute monarchy, characterized by the rule of   │                                                                                     │
│                 │ King Louis XVI, faced growing criticism. Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire,     │                                                                                     │
│                 │ Rousseau, and Montesquieu challenged traditional authority and advocated for       │                                                                                     │
│                 │ liberty, equality, and fraternity. Their ideas inspired the educated bourgeoisie   │                                                                                     │
│                 │ (the middle class) to seek more political power and reform.                        │                                                                                     │
│                 │                                                                                    │                                                                                     │
│                 │ 4. **Weak Leadership**: King Louis XVI was seen as indecisive and ineffective. His │                                                                                     │
│                 │ inability to address the financial crisis and respond to the demands of the        │                                                                                     │
│                 │ populace led to a loss of confidence in the monarchy. The calling of the           │                                                                                     │
│                 │ Estates-General in 1789, the first such assembly since 1614, was an attempt to     │                                                                                     │
│                 │ address the crisis but ultimately led to the Third Estate asserting its power.     │                                                                                     │
│                 │                                                                                    │                                                                                     │
│                 │ 5. **Immediate Triggers**: The immediate catalyst for the revolution was the       │                                                                                     │
│                 │ convening of the Estates-General in May 1789, followed by the formation of the     │                                                                                     │
│                 │ National Assembly by the Third Estate in June. The Tennis Court Oath, where        │                                                                                     │
│                 │ members vowed not to disband until a new constitution was established, marked a    │                                                                                     │
│                 │ significant turning point. The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789,          │                                                                                     │
│                 │ symbolized the uprising against tyranny and is often regarded as the revolution's  │                                                                                     │
│                 │ start.                                                                             │                                                                                     │
│                 │                                                                                    │                                                                                     │
│                 │ ### Consequences of the French Revolution                                          │                                                                                     │
│                 │                                                                                    │                                                                                     │
│                 │ 1. **End of Monarchical Rule**: The revolution led to the overthrow of King Louis  │                                                                                     │
│                 │ XVI and the establishment of a republic. In 1793, Louis XVI was executed by        │                                                                                     │
│                 │ guillotine, marking a definitive end to centuries of absolute monarchy in France.  │                                                                                     │
│                 │                                                                                    │                                                                                     │
│                 │ 2. **Rise of Radicalism and the Reign of Terror**: The revolution gave rise to     │                                                                                     │
│                 │ radical factions, most notably the Jacobins, who implemented the Reign of Terror   │                                                                                     │
│                 │ (1793-1794) under leaders like Maximilien Robespierre. Thousands were executed,    │                                                                                     │
│                 │ including many perceived enemies of the revolution, leading to a climate of fear   │                                                                                     │
│                 │ and repression.                                                                    │                                                                                     │
│                 │                                                                                    │                                                                                     │
│                 │ 3. **Social and Political Reforms**: The revolution brought about significant      │                                                                                     │
│                 │ social changes, including the abolition of feudal privileges, the establishment of │                                                                                     │
│                 │ secularism, and the promotion of civil rights. The Declaration of the Rights of    │                                                                                     │
│                 │ Man and of the Citizen (1789) laid the groundwork for modern human rights.         │                                                                                     │
│                 │                                                                                    │                                                                                     │
│                 │ 4. **Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte**: The instability following the revolution        │                                                                                     │
│                 │ eventually led to the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, who established himself as       │                                                                                     │
│                 │ Emperor of the French in 1804. His rule spread revolutionary ideals across Europe, │                                                                                     │
│                 │ but also led to authoritarian governance.                                          │                                                                                     │
│                 │                                                                                    │                                                                                     │
│                 │ 5. **Inspiration for Future Revolutions**: The French Revolution had a profound    │                                                                                     │
│                 │ impact beyond France, inspiring revolutionary movements around the world,          │                                                                                     │
│                 │ including in Latin America, Haiti, and later in Europe during the 19th century. It │                                                                                     │
│                 │ demonstrated the power of popular movements and the potential for change,          │                                                                                     │
│                 │ influencing the development of modern democratic and nationalistic movements.      │                                                                                     │
└─────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

[johnjosephhorton]

@onmyraedar we will eventually have to add this to humanize - the QuestionThinking isn't displayed to the user but is instead a computation step between presentation.

[johnjosephhorton]

Closing this because I cherry-picked the QuestionThinking into a different branch