feat(embed-rerank): TEI is the fleet embed/rerank engine; esh-ml1 sole backend; retire fv-ml1 seats

Prime, 2026-09-25: TEI serves embedding + reranking for esh-ml1 and the fleet
from now on; fv-ml1 retires both once esh-ml1 is up.

- stacks/embed-rerank: vLLM -> TEI 1.9.4 (89- Ada build), same ports
  8001/8013, fail-closed truncation (--auto-truncate false; embed
  --max-batch-tokens 32768).
- litellm: qwen3-embedding -> esh-ml1 only (hosted_vllm/, unchanged address);
  reranker -> huggingface/ provider at :8013 (hosted_vllm/ 422s on TEI's
  `texts` body). DB alias reranker-a3-bge-v2-m3 patched to the same target.
- Verified via the gateway against the retiring fv-ml1 seats: embed cosine
  median 0.999927 (n=203); rerank top-1/top-3 29/30.
- stacks/vllm: vllm-embed and vllm-rerank-a3 removed (containers retired on
  fv-ml1, GPU 1 freed ~6.1 GB); reward + coder unchanged.
- Bake-off record moved to docs/pfi/embed-rerank-tei-vs-vllm-bakeoff.md;
  CLAUDE.md gains the TEI convention.

persistent-memory.d/2026-09-25-tei-fleet-embed-rerank.md

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+# `[2026-09-25]` TEI adopted as the fleet embed/rerank engine; esh-ml1 is the sole backend; fv-ml1 seats retired
+
+**Prime's rulings (2026-09-25):**
+- Utility seats move off fv-ml1 to a utility host like esh-ml1, accepting slower
+  service; the Blackwells are kept for higher-requirement work.
+- **parakeet STAYS on fv-ml1** (real-time chat path, every ms counts).
+- **"TEI is embed/reranker server for esh-ml1 and the FLEET in general, in
+  future."**
+- fv-ml1 retires both embed + rerank once esh-ml1 is up. A **second RTX 2000 is
+  coming to the fleet soon**; until then embed/rerank has one backend (accepted).
+
+**Evidence chain:** speed A/B vs fv-ml1 (single queries a wash, bulk 3–10×
+slower on the Ada); whole-novel test (*The Stand*, 12,814 paragraphs) through
+the gateway ~12 min one per request on either site, because the gateway is the
+bottleneck; TEI bake-off (`docs/pfi/embed-rerank-tei-vs-vllm-bakeoff.md`):
+matches vLLM vectors, no re-embed, slower on bulk, much lighter. Dvalin
+(Grok research peer) reviewed: agree with caveats. Two caveats were actioned:
+fail-closed truncation (TEI's default silently embedded a 16,384-token prefix of a
+40k input and returned 200) and nevermore's 0.3 rerank threshold (0 flips in 2,000
+scores; low sensitivity, since few scores sit near 0.3).
+
+**Cut-over, 0820–0830 PT:**
+1. esh-ml1: vLLM pair down, TEI `tei-embed` :8001 + `tei-rerank` :8013 up (same
+   ports). The old `.env` is kept as `.env.vllm-retired-2026-09-25`. The vLLM image
+   (~30 GB) is kept in case the reward classifier (vLLM-only) moves here.
+2. Gateway: `qwen3-embedding` → esh-ml1 only (`hosted_vllm/`, unchanged
+   address); `reranker` → **`huggingface/`** provider (hosted_vllm 422s on TEI's
+   `texts` body); `order` fields removed; LiteLLM restarted (~58 s). The DB
+   alias `reranker-a3-bge-v2-m3` was PATCHed to the same TEI target.
+3. Verified through the gateway against the still-running FV seats: embed
+   cosine median 0.999927 / min 0.999881 (n=203); rerank top-1/top-3 29/30 (2 of
+   30 lists had a duplicate-source tie; the disagreeing query wasn't logged).
+4. **No direct (non-gateway) consumers existed**: per day, fv-ml1 seat POSTs =
+   gateway spend-log rows exactly (09-20→09-24). After the repoint, the only FV hits
+   were my own verification calls.
+5. fv-ml1: `vllm-embed` + `vllm-rerank-a3` stopped and removed; `stacks/vllm`
+   compose + `.env.example` updated (reward + coder untouched, 10–11 days up);
+   GPU 1 93,086 → 86,956 MiB (~6.1 GB freed).
+
+**Open:** esh-ml1 is now load-bearing with no monitoring (no Beszel, Kuma or
+Homepage). Next: "what else moves". vllm-reward (9.2 GB, vLLM-only) is the
+candidate and fits beside TEI's ~2.6 GB on 16 GB; vllm-coder (6.3 GB) is
+latency-sensitive.