[KartikP]

Summary

Use lab-oriented configuration names: extractor, answer, policy, and intervention. Introduce BufferedSession and respond() while retaining existing parameter names, imports, and emit() implementations. Consolidate overlapping session helpers without changing trial resets or scoring behavior.

Compatibility tests cover inherited response methods, conflicting settings, four input modalities, policy/behavior output equivalence, and intervention cleanup.

Validation

• Coordinated CPU profile: core 809, vision 239, language 70, unified 1,310 passed; 43 allowed skips, no unexpected skips.
• Broader local suites: core 843 and unified 1,182 passed (overlapping counts).
• 15 offline notebooks executed in fresh kernels.
• Data-dependent full-suite attempts were limited by S3 access, model downloads, and environment requirements; scientific/GPU qualification was not rerun.

Companion unified PR updates integrations, guides, notebooks, and the core pin. Merge core first. No package publication or deployment.