Restore microphone input to Ask Pulse

Repository: coach-pulse-stores-ui
Severity: P1
Area: Stores PWA, Ask Pulse, Voice input

What we saw

Ask Pulse currently accepts typed input only. The microphone control that lets an associate ask by speaking is not present on the input surface. Speech input with language detection is recorded as live in the Platform Master Reference, so the current state is a regression against documented behavior rather than a new feature request, and it should be scoped and communicated as such.

Why it matters

Ask Pulse exists to be the single ask, answered in the moment. The moment is on the sales floor, with a customer present and both hands on product. Typing is the interaction that context supports least, so an associate who has to type will mostly not ask at all, and the question routes back to the fragmented sources Coach Pulse was built to consolidate.

The loss compounds outside English. Voice in carries language detection, so the missing control removes the lowest friction path in exactly the markets standing up ahead of Macau in October, where an associate is most likely to want to ask in their own language rather than compose it in a second one.

Recommended action

Restore the microphone control to the Ask Pulse input with speech capture, language detection on the captured utterance, and the identical downstream answer path used for typed input: query rewrite, hybrid retrieval, rerank, grounded answer in brand voice with citation. The answer pipeline must not diverge by input mode.

Acceptance criteria

1. Microphone control is present in the Ask Pulse input for every role tier and every supported language.
2. The permission prompt is requested once and handled. A denied state shows a clear message and leaves typed input working, rather than leaving a dead control on screen.
3. Detected language matches the spoken language, and the answer returns in that language.
4. The same question asked by voice and by text returns the same answer and the same citations.
5. Thumbs up and thumbs down feedback is captured against the retrieval context for spoken questions exactly as for typed ones.
6. Verified on the store device and browser configuration, not on desktop alone.

Test coverage

• English plus two baseline languages and one expansion language.
• Arabic specifically, to confirm the control sits correctly under right to left layout.
• The permission denied path.
• A partial or truncated utterance.
• Background floor noise.
• An interruption mid utterance.
• One session confirming the exchange is logged for the quality review loop.

Open question

Whether the control alone was removed or the speech capture path was also disabled. That answer decides whether this is a same week QA item or a scoped build item, and it should be settled before Monday's slate is locked.