PriorityScorer

The PriorityScorer assigns higher scores to items with higher numeric priority values, based on their relative rank among all scoreable items.

Overview

PriorityScorer is a relative scorer with the same rank-based algorithm as RecencyScorer, but applied to the priority field instead of timestamp. Higher numeric priority values produce higher scores.

Items without a priority receive a score of 0.0.

Fields Used

Field	Source	Purpose
`priority`	ContextItem	Numeric importance ranking key

Algorithm

For each item, count how many other prioritized items have a strictly lower priority value. This count (the item’s rank) is divided by the number of prioritized items minus one to produce a normalized score.

PRIORITY-SCORE(item, allItems):
    // Items without a priority always score 0.0
    if item.priority = null:
        return 0.0

    countWithPriority <- 0
    rank <- 0

    for i <- 0 to length(allItems) - 1:
        if allItems[i].priority = null:
            continue
        countWithPriority <- countWithPriority + 1
        if allItems[i].priority < item.priority:
            rank <- rank + 1

    // Single prioritized item scores 1.0
    if countWithPriority <= 1:
        return 1.0

    return rank / (countWithPriority - 1)

Score Distribution

Given N items with priorities, all with distinct priority values:

The highest-priority item has rank N - 1, scoring 1.0.
The lowest-priority item has rank 0, scoring 0.0.
Intermediate items score rank / (N - 1), producing evenly-spaced values.

Tied Priorities

When multiple items share the same priority value, they receive the same rank (the count of items with strictly lower priority). Tied items receive identical scores.

Edge Cases

Condition	Result
`item.priority` is null	0.0
All items have null priorities	All score 0.0
Only one item has a priority	That item scores 1.0
All items share the same priority	All score 0.0 (no item has strictly lower priority)

Complexity

Time: O(N) per item, O(N^2) total across all items in a scoring pass.
Space: O(1) auxiliary per invocation.

Conformance Notes

Higher numeric priority values produce higher scores. priority = 10 scores higher than priority = 5.
The comparison allItems[i].priority < item.priority is strict — items with equal priority do not increment the rank.
The denominator is countWithPriority - 1, not length(allItems) - 1. Only items that have a priority participate in the ranking.
The rank-based algorithm is identical to RecencyScorer, substituting priority for timestamp.

Cupel Specification