Symptom: granite-4-small and qwen3.6-27b were evicting each other
when called in alternation. granite is the news-digest curator (fires
twice daily on cron) — being evicted means a cold reload (~5s) on
every digest tick, plus visible churn whenever the user uses 27b
concurrently.
Added granite-4-small to the `pinned` group as a persistent member.
~5-6 GB at Q4_K_M + 120K KV ≈ comfortable inside the existing pin
budget (qwen3.5-9b ~6 GB → ~12 GB total persistent). Single RTX 6000
Ada is 48 GB, leaves ~36 GB headroom for whichever non-pinned model
the user invokes (qwen3.6-27b at ~30 GB fits cleanly).
Updated the pinned group's docstring to capture the current member set
+ VRAM math + the historical context (qwen3.6-35-a3b was here, was
too heavy, got removed yesterday). Marked the granite ttl: 0 with the
matching "pinned — never unloads" comment as the other group members.
Symptom: qwen3.6-35-a3b refused to deload when other models needed
the VRAM, even with the model itself at ttl: 0. The pinning came from
the `pinned` group's `persistent: true` flag, which exempts members
from eviction by the scheduler regardless of memory pressure. The
model's ttl: 0 only governs idle-timeout, NOT scheduler eviction —
those are separate concerns.
Removed qwen3.6-35-a3b from the group's members. Kept ttl: 0 on the
model itself: still no idle-unload, but the scheduler CAN now evict
it when another non-coexistent model is requested. qwen3.5-9b stays
pinned (~6 GB at Q4 — cheap to hold).
Updated the inline comment + the group-header docstring to reflect
the new semantics so future-Claude doesn't undo this.
The base qwen3.6-35-a3b is already ttl: 0 via the `pinned` group.
The three other Qwen 3.6 variants (abliterated, heretic, 27b) had
ttl: 600 → llama-swap auto-unloaded them after 10 min idle, costing
the next request a full reload (~5-15s). Removed so they stay loaded
once warm. Still get evicted by the normal swap when another
non-pinned model is requested — these aren't joining the pinned group,
just losing their idle-unload timer.
Decision recorded in CLAUDE.md ("Stack tree convention") and memory
(convention_stacks_vs_mirror.md):
stacks/<stack>/ canonical / intent. git-tracked.
deploy-stack.sh reads from here.
stacks-mirror/<host>/<stack>/ snapshot / reality. gitignored.
sync-stacks.sh writes here. Used
for drift inspection only — never
a deploy source.
Bug this fixes: deploy-stack.sh was reading from the mirror, so edits
to stacks/llama-swap/config.yaml never reached ana-ml2. Today's
two new model entries (qwen3.6-35-a3b-heretic + qwen3.6-27b) lived
in the canonical for hours but the deploy reported "in sync" because
the script only diffed mirror vs server.
Changes:
* deploy-stack.sh: source switched from MIRROR_DIR/$HOST/$STACK to
STACKS_DIR/$STACK. Header comment + error message updated.
* sync-stacks.sh: header explicitly identifies its role as drift
detection; documents the diff command for comparing canonical vs
mirror.
* stacks/llama-swap/{config.yaml → conf/config.yaml}: matches the
deploy mapping (conf/ in canonical → /opt/docker/conf/ on host).
* CLAUDE.md: "Stack mirror (pull / push)" section rewritten as
"Stack tree convention (canonical vs mirror)" with the role table
+ workflow rules + diff recipe. Layout diagram updated.
vh