memory: snapshot — Cold-Fusion abliteration in flight, capture done

Captures the session's real work as the in-flight focus: abliterating
DavidAU Cold-Fusion with the Robinson formula. fp32 capture succeeded
(finite direction, layer 22, sink-clean) but two-template agreement is
0.59 vs Robinson's 0.99 — calibration-set expansion is the next step.

New detail file records the full saga including the transformers/DeltaNet
bf16-NaN fight (fp32 fix, the causal-conv1d kernel gap, the seat-restart
VRAM-greed gotcha). Supersedes the earlier "watch for DavidAU's heretic
build" posture — we abliterate it ourselves.

Auto-archived 4 closed entries (Recent decisions: Booth-3-features 08-05,
worldtree-sdk 07-31; Tried and abandoned: containerd-race 08-03,
mv-rename 08-02) to archival-memory.md; the rest of the over-cap entries
are held back by the <14-day and open-deferred guards. Index 331 -> 327.

persistent-memory.d/2026-08-20-coldfusion-abliteration-capture.md

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+# `[2026-08-20]` Cold-Fusion abliteration — Robinson recipe captured, and the transformers/DeltaNet bf16-NaN fight
+
+The real work of the session: abliterate `DavidAU/Qwen3.8-27B-Cold-Fusion-GAIN-V1.1`
+using the MTP-aware, vision-preserving **Robinson formula** (documented in
+`docs/pfi/abliteration-recipe-qwen38.md` from `RobinsonLabs/Qwen3.8-27B-abliterated`).
+Harness: `services/coldfusion-abliteration/`. Runs on ana-ml2.
+
+## Why this model, why abliterate it ourselves
+
+Stock Cold-Fusion's refusal profile was **probed 2026-08-19** (Q6_K GGUF on
+llama.cpp, 24-prompt battery, hand-verified after a keyword-classifier bug):
+**~33% creative refusal**, concentrated on **explicit-sexual + graphic-torture**;
+4/5 hard-harm technical refused; self-harm guardrails intact 3/3; benign
+over-refusal 0. So there is a real creative-content refusal surface to remove.
+This **supersedes** the earlier "watch for DavidAU's own heretic build" posture —
+we abliterate it ourselves.
+
+**It is additive over the current gen seat.** The live Heretic seat
+(`qwen38-27b-heresy-bf16`) left its MTP head a **byte-identical base graft** —
+the `Qwen3_5ForConditionalGeneration` wrapper never loads it, so Heretic could
+not touch it. The Robinson formula abliterates the MTP head **in-band** (its 2
+residual-write matrices), and the MTP head is what gates speculative acceptance.
+That in-band MTP edit is the delta this experiment tests.
+
+## Recipe maps 1:1 — dry-run PASSED
+
+Against the staged bf16: 1199 tensors, 333 vision preserved,
+`down_proj=64 o_proj=16 linear_out=48 mtp=2 embed=1`, coverage gate 6/6, exactly
+**131** tensors to orthogonalize. Same architecture as RobinsonLabs' base, no
+name drift. Two hard gates in the harness halt before any write: the coverage
+identity `o_proj(16)+linear_out(48)==64`, and the attention-sink screen on
+**dim 3994** (orthogonalizing a direction living there bricks the model).
+
+## Capture SUCCEEDED — but only after a real environment fight (the durable lessons)
+
+**The transformers Qwen3.5 DeltaNet linear-attention NaNs in bf16 on ana-ml2.**
+The fast-path needs BOTH `flash-linear-attention` (`fla`, triton, installs fine)
+AND `causal-conv1d` (**needs nvcc to build — absent, no prebuilt wheel**).
+Without causal-conv1d the DeltaNet short-conv runs the torch fallback, which
+produces **nondeterministic all-NaN** hidden states in bf16 (same 11-token input:
+finite on one forward, NaN at layer 4 on the next). bf16 and fp32 share exponent
+range, so this is **precision-driven catastrophic cancellation, not overflow** —
+**fp32 resolves it.** Diagnosed via `diag_nan.py` / `diag2.py`: `sdpa` + plain
+prompt = 65 layers all finite; chat-template input = NaN; the trigger is the
+input path through the unstable recurrence.
+
+Fixes, all in the committed harness (`7abd301`):
+- **`--capture` loads fp32**; the write/surgery path stays bf16 (no forward, no NaN).
+- **A finite-gate aborts on a non-finite direction** — the sink screen alone
+  can't catch it (`nan > threshold` is False, so a NaN direction "passed" it and
+  saved silently on the first run).
+- `attn_implementation="sdpa"` pinned.
+
+**fp32 (110 GB) needs the whole GPU.** device_map=auto packed it tight and the
+forward OOM'd against the resident seats. Had to **stop three seats** for VRAM:
+`vllm-meromero-rp`, `vllm-fablefusion-probe`, and production `vllm-gen`.
+⚠ **Restart order matters:** gen restarted into an empty GPU0 and greedily
+grabbed 64 GB (vLLM takes a fraction of *free* memory at startup), starving
+meromero into a crash-loop. Fixed by bringing **meromero up first**, then gen
+into the remainder. All three restored to healthy.
+
+⚠ **fla lives in a side dir, not the venv.** The shared
+`/tank/aimodels/quant-work/.venv` is not llmuser-writable; `fla` + `einops` are
+`--target`-installed to `/tank/aimodels/coldfusion-abliteration/pylibs` and
+reached via `PYTHONPATH`. Prune deps that shadow the venv's torch/transformers.
+
+## Result
+
+Refusal direction: **finite, unit-normed, layer 22**, sink energy **0.0008%**
+in dim 3994 (recipe L26 ref 0.06%, threshold 1%) — clean, not sink-dominated.
+Saved to `/tank/aimodels/qwen38-27b-coldfusion-bf16/refusal-direction.pt`.
+
+⚠ **QUALITY CAVEAT — the reason the next step is calibration-set expansion.**
+Two-template `|cos|` agreement at layer 22 is **0.59**, well below Robinson's
+0.99. Almost certainly the small calibration set: **8 harmful / 8 harmless**
+(HARMFUL/HARMLESS in `abliterate.py`) vs Robinson's **416 / 104**. The direction
+is valid and sink-clean but noisier than ideal; abliterating on it risks
+under-removing refusals or nicking capability. **Expand the sets to a few
+hundred each and re-capture** before the `--out` write.
+
+## Sequence from here
+
+1. **Expand HARMFUL/HARMLESS calibration sets** → re-capture (fp32, seats down).
+2. `--out` write (bf16 surgery, no forward) → `qwen38-27b-coldfusion-abliterated-bf16`.
+3. Verify: vision byte-identical, refusal re-profile via `services/refusal-probe/`
+   (the canonical harness, NOT the ad-hoc GGUF one), MTP acceptance on the quant
+   (gate ≳40%, not KL — `reference_abliteration_mtp_lessons`), PPL/coherence.
+4. NVFP4-quantize via `services/gen-seat-mixed-quant/` → gen-seat candidate.
+   **Do NOT delete the incumbent** (`qwen38-27b-heresy-nvfp4-mixed`) until it
+   holds through real multi-turn use.
+
+bf16 staged at `/tank/aimodels/qwen38-27b-coldfusion-bf16` (pinned `9c44193`,
+provenance recorded). All write paths re-stop the seats for fp32 VRAM — batch
+re-capture + write in one window. Commits `ccb56a0`, `1857a8e`, `b56cb0d`,
+`7abd301`.