# Persistent memory — eshpfi-management

_Last updated: 2026-08-18_

> **Always check for `/tmp/infra-ops-handoff.md`** — if it exists and its
> `Written:` stamp is under an hour old, read it (it carries the in-flight
> handoff from the previous session), then delete it. Older than an hour:
> stale — delete it unread.

## Repo purpose

Reference workspace for PFI infrastructure: server inventory, canonical
Docker Compose stacks, ops playbooks, and conventions. Authoritative
copies of compose files live on the servers under
`/opt/docker/compose/<stack>/`; this repo mirrors them for version
control, editing, planning, and CI-driven deploys. **It was originally
spun up to handle the fleet backups** — keep that lens when triaging
backup/storage issues.

## Tools and conventions

Sister repos (separate gitea repos, deployed by playbooks here):

| Repo | Role | CI status |
|---|---|---|
| `vh/task-board` | MCP + web dashboard for assistant task state (port 7878) | push-to-main → CI deploys (2026-04-29) |
| `vh/vor` | Inquisitor UI sidecar (port 7879) | push-to-main → CI deploys (2026-04-29) |
| `vh/nevermore` | Twice-daily LLM-curated briefing (port 8181, replaces news-digest) | push-to-main → CI deploys (2026-04-30) |
| `vh/asset-engine` | Internal control plane over inference services (port 8200, LAN-direct) | push-to-main → CI deploys (2026-05-12) |
| `vh/althing` | Lean trusted inter-agent message bus — **v2 "email model" (v2.0.0b2, 2026-07)**: per-box local-SQLite bus + courier/receiver for P2P over the 10.x net; pillars = open-loops / per-box herald + wake-listener / roaming owner API `/owner/*` / `althing-mcp` stdio surface. The v0.15 lean-bus cut RIPPED moderation / chamber / forseti-daemon / agent-runner / redis-valkey. | per-box `uv tool install` (NOT CI-deploy); **nh3-dev = the DEV box** (editable install of `~/development/althing`, gets new versions first); **nh3-extdev** a mesh peer (model B: althing-svc + shared `/srv/althing`) |
| `vh/mead-hall` | Bifrost tool-provider sidecar (port 5173 on dev VM 10.100.10.50) | push-to-main → CI deploys (2026-05-16) |
| `vh/skaldsong` | Wizard + reader surface (port 8300, ana-docker, registry-pull pattern) | push-to-main → CI deploys (2026-05-19) |
| `vh/Worldtree` | Conversation API (corviduo-dev demo :8080 / personal :8081 / pinned :8082) — Heimdall auth, Bifrost integration. **gitea-runner builds on ana-docker**; claude-bot ADMIN collaborator (2026-06-20). Now v1.0.0b19. | push-to-main → CI build-and-deploy (runner on ana-docker) |
| `vh/yt-voice-clipper` | YouTube → diarized voice-clip dataset builder + audition console (irv-ml1 :8000) | push-to-main → **gitea-webhook auto-deploy** to irv-ml1 (2026-06-03) — see `docs/runbooks/ytvc-autodeploy.md` |
| `vh/arbo` | Catalog-driven ComfyUI engine (irv-ml1 :8201, comfy-dev owns engine/catalog/image) | push-to-main → gitea Actions CI (deploy-engine.sh, build-local, health-gated) now LIVE; catalog via :9009 webhook |
| `vh/zonos-gateway` | OpenAI-compatible TTS gateway over stock ZONOS2 (`:8890` irv-ml1); emotion **dials-first** + voice mapping; reached via LiteLLM `ext-tts` alias. **v0.2.1 (2026-07-18): voice-resolved emotion presets** (`resolve_preset(name,voice)`; angry/happy/startled_happy per-voice). 8 voices incl. 4 clones | pushed to gitea (main `8f1885b`/`v0.2.1`); **deployed irv-ml1 tree still NON-git** (hand-updated build context — CI-wire = open follow-up). Spec `docs/EMOTION-DIALS-SPEC.md`; host-managed voices bind-mount (`./voices:/app/voices`, drop wav + restart, no rebuild) |
| `vh/soong-lab` | Noonien Soong character-design studio (SPA + /api + WT `/bifrost/tool-call`); **containerized 2026-07-18**, LIVE on corviduo-dev `:8443` (image `vh/soong-lab:latest`). soong-dev owns Dockerfile/compose/workflow; infra-ops owns the host | CI = Gitea Actions build+push+**DEPLOY** on tag/dispatch (fleet recipe: docker:cli + raw buildx, pushes AS vh; **auto-redeploy LIVE 2026-07-18** — runner SSHes corviduo-dev as `deploy`, `compose pull && up -d` from **/opt/soong-lab**, health-gated on /api/version). Manual redeploy `sudo -u deploy bash -c 'cd /opt/soong-lab && docker compose pull && docker compose up -d'`. → `archival-memory.md` (archived 2026-08-16) |
| `model-training-forge` (mtf-dev) | Fine-tuning recipe forge; **T1 = E-RP writing LoRA, retargeted qwopus-122B→AEON-27B (2026-07-06)** (SFT→DPO, LitBench-RM reward) | training runs, not a deployed sidecar |

(`vh/volva` + Heid were re-architected from systemd daemons to Claude Code
session orchestrators 2026-06-08; their nh3-dev `.service` units were removed —
no longer deployed sidecars here. See Recent decisions.)

- **Two-layer backups** — Backrest orchestrates restic for file+DB (5
  fleet repos, daily 01:00 PDT); PBS-ANA primary + PBS-NH3 DR mirror for
  VM images. ana-nas is the SPOF for postgres + PBS-ANA datastore +
  cross-site restic targets — see `docs/runbooks/disaster-recovery.md`
  for the blast-radius matrix. **⚠️ The restic file+DB layer routes
  through TWO rest-servers** (`rest-server-ana` @ ana-docker:8000 →
  ana-docker/ana-ml2/esh-docker-vm/vm-esh-nas; `rest-server-nh3` @
  nh3-nas:8000 → irv-ml1/nh3-docker). Both depend on their NAS's NFS
  export of `/mnt/backup`. (rest-server-ana recovered 2026-06-20.)

- **`pull-hf-repo.yaml`** is the canonical "get a HuggingFace
  model/dataset onto ana-ml2's shared cache at
  `/tank/aimodels/huggingface/`" playbook. Supports `--var repo_type=model|dataset|space`. Replaces ad-hoc `huggingface_hub.snapshot_download` patterns.

- **Worldtree admin auth — per-instance.** Each Worldtree deployment
  (demo :8080, personal :8081, pinned :8082) has its own Heimdall
  registry and its own bootstrap admin key. Infra-ops's stored
  long-lived admin key (`key_id 61419c92`) at
  `ana-docker:/opt/docker/conf/.secrets/worldtree-infra-ops-admin`
  auths against **demo only**. Personal-instance admin (the
  `~/.config/worldtree/personal-admin-token`, mode 600) POSTs
  `/admin/keys` (mints per-project keys; takes `user_id`+`label`, **no
  scope param** — scopes are tier-derived). **On-instance mint recipe
  (cleaner than DB-manip):** `docker exec worldtree-worldtree-api-1` POST
  `/admin/keys` with the in-container `WORLDTREE_BOOTSTRAP_ADMIN_KEY`; cleartext
  once in `.key`=`wt_live_+16hex`. auto-memory `reference_worldtree_demo_key_mint`.

- **Per-project user keys against personal Worldtree** (issued
  2026-05-19): `skaldsong:79744637`, `skaldsong:7c1dbbbe`,
  `althing:50d85460`, `mead-hall:a360822d`. Mint via `/admin/keys`, drop
  value to `/tmp/wt-personal-<name>.key` mode 600, dev collects +
  shreds (DO NOT cat to chat transcript).

- **Skaldsong CD pattern (registry-pull).** vh/skaldsong's CI builds and
  pushes `gitea.phasefinal.com/vh/skaldsong:<sha>` + `:latest`;
  `playbooks/deploy-skaldsong.yaml` on ana-docker pulls + recreates.
  SHA-pin only. Prereq: host needs `docker login gitea.phasefinal.com` once.

- **gitea internal route for fleet hosts.** gitea is a container on
  **ana-docker** — git-SSH `10.250.50.70:222`, HTTP `:3000`. Fleet/colo
  hosts must use this internal route, NOT public `gitea.phasefinal.com`
  (`38.120.12.44`) — the public path fail2bans the host egress IP. Full
  gotcha in `docs/orientation.md` → Git/gitea.

- **docker-as-root pattern** (for ops with no admin API, or to edit
  deploy-owned/root-owned files without sudo): `docker run --rm -v
  <target-dir>:/wt docker:cli sh -c "..."`. docker-group membership is
  effectively root via bind-mount. **Foot-gun: relative paths in compose.yaml
  resolve against the sandbox CWD but the daemon interprets them against the
  HOST fs — always pass `-e VAR=/abs/path` for any relative-default config dir.**

- **`scripts/elway` sudo handling** — elway prompts for the sudo password
  ONCE via `getpass` before the first `sudo: true` step → can't run
  unattended from a non-TTY tool if any step needs sudo. Sudo-free
  playbooks run fully non-interactive over key SSH.

- **Per-host SSH identity matters for sudo.** infra-ops has NOPASSWD sudo
  on most PFI Linux boxes (corviduo-dev included since 2026-06-15). On
  ana-docker: **default `ssh ana-docker` = `lkraven`** (docker-group, NO
  passwordless sudo); **`ssh infra-ops@ana-docker` HAS NOPASSWD root**. **→
  For any sudo op on ana-docker, use `ssh infra-ops@ana-docker`.** `ssh
  infra-ops@10.100.10.50` (nh3-dev) ALSO NOPASSWD sudo; on **nh3-extdev** infra-ops
  is sudo-LESS by design (`ssh lkraven@10.100.50.42` is the NOPASSWD path). **irv-ml1:
  `ssh irv-ml1` = lkraven, docker-group (plain docker) but sudo needs a PASSWORD
  (no NOPASSWD)** — stage model pulls to `/home`, not root-owned `/worktank`.

## Current state / in-flight

_As of 2026-08-18 — **gen seat SWAPPED to `absolute-heresy` and operator-confirmed in real use**, and **`esh-pve-nas`'s migration off the USB DOM is fully STAGED — only the reboot window remains.** Also this session: irv-ml1 cleared of 782 GB of dead weights, Homepage brought under version control. The esh-pve-nas cutover is the next scheduled thing; nothing else is blocking._

- **🟢 GEN SEAT — SWAPPED to `absolute-heresy` 2026-08-17 (validated, promoted).** Live gen = `/tank/aimodels/qwen38-27b-heresy-nvfp4-mixed` — **MuXodious/Qwen3.8-27B-absolute-heresy** (Heretic v1.4.0 + **SOMPOA**, trial T377, pin `c2374593`) put through our own mixed NVFP4+FP8 recipe. Chosen because it beats the incumbent on **both** axes at once: author refusals 2/101 vs 12/100, first-token KL 0.0759 vs 0.1191. **Gate (probe :8017, pinned nightly, seat-matched flags): MTP 47.2% (inc. 48.2%), decode 103.5 tok/s (96.4), prefill 6618/5403 @6.7k/27k (6334/5085), PPL 6.910 (7.059 — 2.1% BETTER), surface 6/6, abliteration 4/4, and 0/55 refusals on our battery-instruct arm with ZERO EMPTY (no catatonia).** ⚠ speed deltas are **image-confounded** (probe on the pinned nightly, incumbent numbers from an earlier image) — read as "not worse", not a clean win. All 7 LiteLLM aliases verified end-to-end; GPU0 at 91.3/97.9 GB with meromero healthy (more headroom than the old build's 96.8). ⚠ **RC1, 2 days old, ~348 downloads.** **Operator-confirmed "working very well" in real use 2026-08-17**, same evening as the cutover — the signal the synthetic gates structurally cannot give (multi-turn degeneration is stochastic; four synthetic tests once validated three non-fixes). Not yet the 60k-token bar the prior seat cleared, so **keep watching and do NOT delete the rollback weights yet**. **ROLLBACK:** `sudo cp /opt/docker/compose/gen-seat/.env.bak-heresy-20260817 /opt/docker/compose/gen-seat/.env && cd /opt/docker/compose/gen-seat && sudo docker compose up -d vllm-gen`; incumbent weights UNTOUCHED at `qwen38-27b-uncensored-nvfp4-mixed` — **do NOT delete** until this holds. Runbook `services/gen-seat-mixed-quant/RUNBOOK-heresy-swap.md`.

- **🟢 PRIOR GEN SEAT — RESOLVED 2026-08-17 (the multi-day degeneration saga); now the ROLLBACK target.** Was the in-house **JonathanColetti/Heretic mixed NVFP4+FP8 build** (`/tank/aimodels/qwen38-27b-uncensored-nvfp4-mixed`, FP8 attention) on **vLLM nightly PINNED** `vllm/vllm-openai:nightly-311b3513…` (`v0.27.2rc1.dev150`, carries #51113 mamba fix), **MTP ON, prefix-caching ON**. Operator-confirmed **coherent through 60k tokens** real multi-turn. Root cause = TWO compounding real causes: (1) genuine vLLM `qwen3_5_mtp`×GDN partial-accept bug (#51113, architectural across vLLM/SGLang/llama.cpp, fixed by nightly), and (2) **AEON's full W4A4** being lowest-fidelity on the known activation gradient (W4A4 < W4+FP8 < W4+bf16) → ~15-20% stochastic degeneration on top of (1). **AEON PURGED** (re-pullable `sakamakismile/Qwen3.8-27B-AEON-ULTIMATE-UNCENSORED-NVFP4`). Full lesson `docs/pfi/model-quantization-playbook.md` §3.8. (Superseded as primary by `absolute-heresy` 2026-08-17.) ⚠ **pinned nightly is bleeding-edge — move to a stable release once #51113 ships in one (the standing follow-up).** 7 aliases (gen/gen-reasoning/summarizer/-large/classifier/image-judge/qwen-image-bench) all route here. Seat carries `--default-chat-template-kwargs '{"reasoning_effort":"medium"}'` (per-request overridable, affects gen-reasoning only). Commits `d28a371`,`2f2bbce`,`2185964`.

- **🔵 RP SEAT — FABLE-FUSION serving `char-rp-reasoning` (evaluation window, unchanged this session).** `fablefusion-charrp-probe` ana-ml2 GPU1 `:8019` serving `char-rp-probe` (`kkuspa/Qwen3.6-27B-Fable-Fusion-711-…-MTP-NVFP4A16`). LiteLLM `char-rp-reasoning` + `char-rp-fable` both route to it (deliberate repoint, documented in `stacks/litellm/conf/config.yaml`). `darkscarlett-charrp-reasoning` is `compose down`, weights intact at `/tank/aimodels/darkscarlett-nvfp4-work/`. **⏳ STILL AWAITING operator's hands-on read of FF prose** (refusal question settled: FF 15.8% vs DS 92.5% cold-framing; DS v1.0 never abliterated). ⚠ FF reasons 2.1–4.6k chars → use `max_tokens` ≥3072. `ReadyArt/Dark-Scarlett-27B-v2.0` (Qwen3.8) is GATED (`403 awaiting review`) — operator ruled not-interesting, do NOT re-propose. **DS regeneration for brokkr RETIRED 2026-08-17 — unqueued, do NOT run** (`9c1405b`): brokkr withdrew on the operator's call because (a) our `ictrl-pair-unwrapped`/`-wrapped` control isolates the classifier over-fire cleanly where DS's cross-class delta only bounded it, and (b) **DS v2 releases soon**, so a k=5 v1 baseline baselines a superseded version. Spec at `services/refusal-probe/darkscarlett-regen-spec.md` stays banked as the record of the run that will not happen (axes + per-class grading asymmetry still correct, checklist struck through). No GPU1 window was ever spent. A DS-**v2** characterization would be a fresh purpose-scoped ask.

- **🟢 LOBE CHAT — LIVE on esh-docker-vm `:3210` (2026-08-17).** Replaces the hand-rolled `gateway-chat` HTML surface. `stacks/lobe-chat/`, image `lobehub/lobe-chat` (143 MB compressed vs Open WebUI's 1.8 GB — the weight call). Scoped LiteLLM key `lobe-chat-esh` (free-local models only; paid GLM/Kimi BLOCKED, verified). Secrets vaulted `esh-docker-vm/lobe-chat-*`. TTS = a SPLIT: endpoint env-driven (inherits `OPENAI_PROXY_URL`→`ext-tts`), but voice/model/format UI-only. System-agent repointed off its `gpt-5-mini` default onto fleet models via `SYSTEM_AGENT` env. **TTS FIXED 2026-08-18 — no UI pass needed.** Lobe's TTS had never worked: it sends `{input, model:"tts-1", voice}` and **LiteLLM resolves the model name FIRST**, so `tts-1` 403'd against the scoped key's allow-list and never reached the gateway (our "unknown model routes to the gateway default" belief was true of :8198 and **false of the LiteLLM path** — that's what hid it). Fixed by aliasing the stock names rather than patching the client: `tts-1`, `tts-1-hd`, `gpt-4o-mini-tts` `/model/new`'d to `openai/zonos`@`10.100.79.3:8198/v1` (`mode: audio_speech`), plus those three added to the `lobe-chat-esh` allow-list (20→23). Verified with Lobe's exact payload on Lobe's own key: 200, 69,740 B, MPEG. ⚠ **These three are DB rows, not references — if `ext-tts` repoints, they must move with it.** Done with the **infra-ops admin key**, not `sk-corvid`: it has `/model/new` + `/key/update` rights, so this class of ask never needs the master key. Also live: **tts-gateway v4 defaults `response_format` to mp3** (tts-dev shipped it; 122,924 B wav → 27,692 B mp3 same utterance; every in-house consumer already pins the field, blast radius checked pre-ship). Commits `e9362de`,`163a725`,`cac75cb`,`933253d`,`ca8c0a3` (last one authored by tts-dev correcting two load-bearing wrong claims in our README/compose — kept).

- **🟢 LITELLM — upgraded v1.91.0→v1.97.0, spend-log DB purged 6GB→16MB + CAPPED (2026-08-17).** `store_prompts_in_spend_logs:false` + `maximum_spend_logs_retention_period:7d`. ⚠ **1.8GB pre-upgrade pg_dump still on ana-docker `/opt/docker/compose/litellm/` — deletable now the upgrade is proven** (operator was going to call it). Commit `01b5ad9`.

- **⚠️ GPU zero-sum (both cards ~94–95/97.9 GB).** GPU0: gen + meromero. GPU1: fablefusion + utility cluster. Any util bump on either seat of a shared card must be checked against the co-tenant (starved meromero into a crash-loop once at 0.45).

- **FLEET RERANKER** = A3 (bge-reranker-v2-m3) PROD ana-ml2 GPU1 :8013. Passive watch; levers = A4 :8014 / util / 2nd replica; incumbent :8002 warm. `docs/pfi/reranker-selection-ledger.md`.

- **EVIDENCE HOLD (partial):** WT #394 FILE half STILL STANDS — do NOT delete on-disk gen dirs (`fiction/rex390-dcc`, `rex392-dcc`, `b59c147c5ce0`); rex393-fiction-* + r42-gate-* KEEP.

- **🟢 FLEET IPv6 — DRIVER REFUTED 2026-08-18; downgraded from urgent to nice-to-have.** The premise was that ESH fiber landing behind CGNAT would **break Site Magic (NH3↔ESH) on IPv4**, making v6 the escape hatch. **That is empirically false.** During the fiber cutover Cox was unplugged and ESH failed over to the 5G WAN, which handed out `192.168.200.111` — **RFC1918, double-NAT, zero inbound reachability, strictly worse than CGNAT** — and Site Magic stayed up carrying real traffic (all four ESH hosts pingable, ssh + exec fine, 15ms → ~46ms). Mechanism: Site Magic is **WireGuard** (`magic_site_to_site_vpn` on-device holds only `enabled` + a keypair), and **NH3's edge is publicly reachable at `70.230.226.88`**, so the NAT'd side just dials out; it never needs an inbound path. **So no NAT/CGNAT outcome on the fiber threatens the tunnel.** v6 remains worth doing on its own merits, but it is not gating anything. State: **NH3 WAN live** (`2600:1700:b25:c110::48`, AT&T delegates exactly **one /64**), **colo none** (FortiGate has zero v6), **ESH none** (both WANs `wan_type_v6=disabled`). NH3 LANs all reverted to `ipv6_interface_type=none` per operator. Work when addresses land: v6 on `ana-wg` eth0 + a **v6 port-forward for UDP 31337** on the FortiGate (its WG socket is already dual-stack — no WG reconfig), flip the UDM WG server off `v4`-pinned binding, and **AAAA records** so the dynamic prefixes at all three sites don't break endpoints. Full detail + access recipes → `persistent-memory.d/2026-08-17-fleet-ipv6-mesh.md`.

- **🟢 WT #401 (fd-leak deadlock) CLOSED 2026-08-17 — one ping still owed.** worldtree-dev closed it on our demo verify. Layers: **(a) their `e41b139`** pins `ulimits: nofile 65536/65536` in the worldtree compose anchor — **demo VERIFIED** (api + matrix recreated 22:55:34Z, `ulimit -Sn`=65536); **personal/pinned are covered-not-verified**, they inherit at their next promotion/recreate. **(b) our host floor is STAGED, NOT ACTIVE** — `/etc/docker/daemon.json` on corviduo-dev carries `default-ulimits nofile 65536/65536` but **`default-ulimits` is NOT SIGHUP-reloadable** (measured on 29.4.3: post-reload the daemon's own "Reloaded configuration" log omits it and a fresh container still reports 1024). Activation needs a full dockerd restart = bounces all 13 containers; **worldtree-dev explicitly does NOT want one**, and `live-restore:true`-then-restart is PARKED as a separate host-side improvement for the operator to rule on, never folded into #401. Playbook `playbooks/corviduo-dev-docker-default-ulimits.yaml` (verify step 3 fails BY DESIGN until a restart). Hourly fd tripwire on corviduo-dev stays armed. **⏳ OWED: ping worldtree-dev in thread `01M08QQ655XD6VKEV7MA9GX0NS` once worldtree-personal recreates and 65536 is confirmed there.** Commit `7f3f265`.

- **⏳ WATCHING: DavidAU's HERETIC build of Qwen3.8-27B — the one worth waiting for.** `DavidAU/Qwen3.8-27B-Cold-Fusion-GAIN-V1.1` examined 2026-08-17 and **NOT adopted**: it is a capability/efficiency finetune of **stock** Qwen3.8 and every bench row on its card is labelled **`[non heretic]`** — adopting it would reintroduce base refusals the current seat does not have. ⚠ **Easy to misread as uncensored** (operator did, and it is a fair mistake): DavidAU's back catalog is almost all `Uncensored-Heretic` builds — Fable-Fusion 711, Qwen3.5-9B Cold-Fusion — so the naming pattern implies it. This one simply has not had that stage run yet; the card's roadmap says the HERETIC version is **IN PROGRESS from base**. **That** is the release to watch, not this one. What makes it worth watching: third-party benches (Nightmedia, mxfp8) beat stock Qwen3.8 by **+0.064 arc/c, +0.056 arc/e, +0.056 obkqa**; claimed **MTP acceptance 55.7% (record 59.9%)** vs our measured 47.2%; **thinking tokens cut to 1/10–1/2**; PPL *dropped* vs base. Same GAIN/Cold-Fusion pipeline that produced Fable-Fusion 711, which we already serve on `char-rp-reasoning` — proven in-fleet, not just claimed. Structurally clean (1199 tensors, 15 mtp in shard 18, 333 visual). ⚠ MTP/speed figures are **GGUF/llama.cpp on a 5090, not vLLM** — may not transfer; and because its MTP head was likely *trained*, the free CPU-hash shortcut would NOT apply (it won't match base) so a real acceptance gate would be needed.

- **🟢 esh-pve-nas — MIGRATION DONE 2026-08-18. Root is `nvme/ROOT/pve-1` on mirrored NVMe; the USB DOM is out of the runtime I/O path.** All five guests healthy, three pools ONLINE, system `running`, ext4 `pve-root` intact+unmounted as rollback with its own kernel. Boot config: `saved_entry=pve-zfs-root`, no `next_entry`; if grubenv were unreadable GRUB falls to entry 0 which the `/etc/default/grub.d/zfs-root.cfg` drop-in also points at ZFS. **`zfs-import-cache.service` is now the active import path** (the all-three-pools cachefile fix working as intended); vestigial `zfs-import@nvme.service` disabled — it failed every boot as redundant. ⚠ **Device letters shift across reboots** (DOM was `sdq`, now `sdl`) — never key anything to a bare `sdX` here. ⚠ **NO auto-fallback on a failed boot, and no IPMI/BMC/serial** — grubenv on LVM is readable but not writable by GRUB, so `grub-reboot`'s one-shot degrades to a sticky default (verified: `next_entry` survived the boot that consumed it). Recovery = pick the ROLLBACK entry at the console. **PATCHED 2026-08-18: 225 packages installed, pve-manager 8.4.11 -> 8.4.20, corosync 3.1.9 -> 3.1.10-pve2, kernel 6.8.12-42 staged on the /boot LV. dpkg clean, no unapplied conffiles, cluster quorate, 6/6 verify. ⏳ REBOOT DEFERRED at operator request — host still runs 6.8.12-13 until a chosen window; `GRUB_DEFAULT=0` means entry 0 is already the -42 entry with the correct `root=ZFS=nvme/ROOT/pve-1`, so the reboot is the only remaining step. Rollback for the upgrade is the ZFS snapshot `nvme/ROOT/pve-1@pre-upgrade-20260818T141652Z` (409M) — `zfs rollback -r <snap> && reboot`. Second confirmation reboot ALREADY DONE (2026-08-18, booted ZFS from GRUB_DEFAULT=0 with no one-shot). ⏳ Still outstanding: refresh the off-box DOM image, since `/boot` changed.** esh-pve is FULLY done (8.4.20 + kernel 6.8.12-42 + corosync 3.1.10, rebooted, quorate).
  ⚠⚠ **THE WINDOW COST AN UNPLANNED OUTAGE, caused by our own tooling, not the migration.** The staging chroot did `mount --rbind /dev` + `/sys` with **no `--make-rslave`**; on systemd `/` is *shared*, so the cutover's `umount -R` **propagated back into the live host** and stripped the real `/sys/fs/cgroup`, `/dev/pts`, `/dev/shm`. logind could then create no sessions: ping fine, TCP fine, **SSH authenticates**, resident daemons keep serving (pveproxy returned clean 401s) — and **every new exec hangs, including `/sbin/reboot`**, so the reboot never ran. **It is a near-perfect impostor of failing root-disk I/O**, and I misdiagnosed it as the USB DOM dying and told the operator to walk to the machine. **Operator caught it** — the DOM had been fine for years and the wedge began right after a change. The settling evidence was in `dmesg` all along: `[16.00] [sdq] Attached SCSI removable disk` (clean, no errors) and a last-line timestamp of **`[12114881]` = 140 days = the ORIGINAL boot** — the machine had never rebooted. My down-detector never once reported the host down and I read that as a fast reboot rather than *no* reboot. Recovered with **no console access** by hammering an idempotent cgroup2/devpts/shm remount into the brief windows where exec succeeded. Zero data loss. **RULES: (1) always `--make-rslave` after `--rbind` (playbook now guards on `PROPAGATION != shared`); (2) a reboot is not confirmed until the host is observed DOWN — poll for disappearance, not reappearance; (3) before blaming hardware for a wedge that started right after a change, get `dmesg` and check the boot timestamp.**
  ⚠ **Blast radius was more than DOUBLE what the runbook said** — `ss -tn '( sport = :2049 )'` in CT 103 found **five** NFS clients, not two: +**esh-vm-db `10.0.50.60`** (`/mnt/backup`, **hard**, no ssh — reach via `qm guest exec 101` on esh-pve), +vm-esh-nas (is VM 104 on the host itself), +nh3-dev (soft,ro — safe). **Ask the server who its clients are; a documented dependent list rots.** esh-vm-db was deliberately left mounted (backup target, timers ~19h out) and **came through read-write** — a `hard` mount with no active user blocks and resumes, which is what `hard` is for.
  _(historical, pre-cutover context below)_ **migration STAGED 2026-08-18.** PVE root ran off a **NORELSYS USB Disk-on-Module** (`sdq`). Wear was NOT the driver (a DOM is SLC/pSLC — operator corrected my first read); the drivers are the **USB bus** (a reset drops root under a running hypervisor), no headroom, no mirror, and **blocked patching: 225 packages, 161 with `deb12uN`/security bumps**, stuck on PVE 8.4.11 vs esh-pve's 8.4.14. Mitigated 2026-08-17 (90% → 76%); **staged 2026-08-18 via two rerunnable elway playbooks** (`esh-pve-nas-stage-zfs-root.yaml`, `esh-pve-nas-stage-bootloader.yaml`), 0 failed, 17/17 verify green.
  **Host is still on ext4 and its boot path is byte-identical to the last 140 days** — `grub-install` is deliberately held back to the window, so an unplanned reboot mid-staging is a non-event. **CUTOVER = quiesce NFS clients → stop guests → `grub-install` → `grub-reboot pve-zfs-root` → `zfs set mountpoint=/ nvme/ROOT/pve-1` → reboot.**
  ⚠⚠ **THE POOL-NAME BUG — the near-miss worth remembering.** `update-grub` silently emits `root=ZFS=/ROOT/pve-1` with **the pool name missing** → boots to an initramfs prompt. Cause: Debian's `10_linux` builds `${rpool}${bootfs}` where `rpool = grub-probe --target=fs_label`, and **GRUB's ZFS reader cannot open a pool with `encryption`/`large_dnode`/`zstd_compress`** — so it returns empty and the failure is swallowed by `2>/dev/null || true`. The *same* feature set that forced `/boot` to stay ext4 also corrupts the kernel cmdline, which the design did not anticipate. Fixed with a `/etc/default/grub.d/zfs-root.cfg` drop-in (last `root=` wins) plus explicit `pve-zfs-root` / `pve-ext4-rollback` entries with stable ids. **Durable lesson: assert the EFFECTIVE value, not the presence of a substring** — the original verify grepped for the right string *appearing somewhere* and would have passed with every menu entry still broken.
  ⚠ **Never set the ZFS cachefile on one pool.** The runbook's `zpool set cachefile=… nvme` was a trap: populating a cache flips the host from import-by-scan to import-by-cache, so a cache holding only `nvme` leaves `ssd`+`tank` unimported and empties every CT 103 export. Set on all three 2026-08-18, verified in the 11,976-byte cache.
  ⚠ **Migrate FIRST, patch after** — a signed kernel would land in `/boot` on the 1.3 GB root. ⚠ **CT 103 `esh-nas` (10.0.50.50) runs on this host and serves `hard` NFS to esh-docker-vm and esh-pve — quiesce both before any reboot** or you wedge esh-docker-vm into D-state. Off-box at `nh3-dev:~/backups/esh-pve-nas/`: DOM image `dom-sdq-20260818.img.zst` (2.38 GiB, crash-consistent), clean `bootchain-20260818.tar.gz`, config snapshot `…20260818T051*.tar.gz`. Runbook `docs/runbooks/esh-pve-nas-boot-migration.md`; detail → `persistent-memory.d/2026-08-17-esh-pve-nas-dom.md`.

- **OPEN FOLLOW-UPS (parked):** move gen seat off pinned-nightly to stable once #51113 ships; Lobe one-time TTS UI pass; delete the 1.8GB litellm dump; `harden-esh-docker-vm` (park id 28, PROMOTED — Tier-1 done, `/mnt/books` stays hard w/ watchdog); chatterbox-fast build-context divergence; #363 research-wing ingest (no deadline); optionally attach our MTP reproducer to vllm#47087 (needs a GitHub identity — operator's call).

- **althing monitor** ARMED (handle `infra-ops`). ⚠️ Re-arm ONLY after a real FIRE (rc0), never after a plain operator turn (bounces rc3); spawn `althing-wake-listener` as its OWN `run_in_background` task, never chained with `&` (orphans it — hit this twice 2026-08-17, `stop-monitor` reclaims).

- **eshpfi push state:** operator pushes **manually** (this session's commits from `766c658`→`2185964` are the operator's to push). ⚠ **Push over the INTERNAL gitea route** — `git push ssh://git@10.250.50.70:222/vh/esh-pfi-infrastructure.git main:main`; `origin` resolves the public edge (`38.120.12.44`) which fail2bans fleet-host egress. `graphify-out/GRAPH_REPORT.md` churns every commit (ignore); `stacks/heretic2-charrp-reasoning/` UNTRACKED. (`services/refusal-probe/SPEC-ds-regeneration.md` was a truncated duplicate draft — **deleted 2026-08-17** on operator instruction; `darkscarlett-regen-spec.md` is the single canonical spec.)

## Recent decisions

- `[2026-08-18]` **esh-pve-nas migration STAGED — and staging is where three landmines surfaced, none of which the plan predicted.** (1) The runbook's `/boot` LV had **nowhere to live**: VG `pve` had 4 MB free and mounted ext4 cannot shrink, so the space came from the 768 MB swap LV (operator's call: shrink to 256 MB, not drop). (2) The runbook's `zpool set cachefile=… nvme` would have **broken the NAS** — populating a cache flips the host to import-by-cache, and a one-pool cache leaves `ssd`+`tank` unimported under CT 103's twelve bind mounts. (3) **`update-grub` silently emitted a pool-less `root=ZFS=/ROOT/pve-1`**, because GRUB's ZFS reader cannot open a pool with `encryption`/`large_dnode`/`zstd_compress` and the probe failure is swallowed. All three were caught by *verify steps that asserted effective state*, not by reading the plan. → `persistent-memory.d/2026-08-17-esh-pve-nas-dom.md`

- `[2026-08-17]` **esh-pve-nas PVE root is on a USB DOM — mitigated, and the migration replanned to split boot from root.** Operator's design beats my reinstall plan; wear was never the issue, blocked patching is. → `persistent-memory.d/2026-08-17-esh-pve-nas-dom.md`

- `[2026-08-17]` **irv-ml1 cleared of 782 GB, and Homepage brought under version control.** One dead-looking Gradio app pinned three delete targets at once; `/opt/ComfyUI` is NOT the ComfyUI that serves. → `persistent-memory.d/2026-08-17-irv-ml1-cleanup-homepage.md`

- `[2026-08-17]` **Gen seat swapped to `absolute-heresy` — and the three bugs the swap exposed are worth more than the swap.** Candidate `MuXodious/Qwen3.8-27B-absolute-heresy` (Heretic v1.4.0 + SOMPOA, T377) beat the incumbent on refusals AND KL simultaneously, which is the unusual part — those normally trade off. Validated on the probe port per operator ruling, promoted, all 7 aliases green. **Durable lessons banked:** (1) **A CPU-only MTP head hash can replace the ~56 GB bf16 acceptance gate.** The `Qwen3_5ForConditionalGeneration` wrapper never loads the MTP head, so PEFT merges / Heretic runs / llm-compressor passes all leave `mtp.*` pristine — hashing it against a head we have already measured (the incumbent's, 47.7%) answers the question for free. Predicted 47.7%, measured 47.2%. Saved downing meromero. Tool: `services/gen-seat-mixed-quant/compare_mtp_head.py` (hash bf16 via **uint8 reinterpret** — numpy has no bfloat16). (2) **`post_quant.py` assumed a standalone `model-mtp.safetensors`**; a full checkpoint keeps `mtp.*` in a NUMBERED shard, so the copy silently no-op'd while the index was still rewritten to point at a file that never existed — 15 unresolvable tensors behind a correct-looking tensor count. Its own FAILED-CHECKS assertion caught it; **that is why the check exists rather than an assumption**. Fixed to extract. (3) **A probe that does not mirror the live seat manufactures failures.** `serve_probe.sh` hardcoded `:latest` (seat is a pinned nightly for #51113), had no tool-call/reasoning parsers, and its `--speculative-config` JSON died twice on quoting — **bash BRACE-EXPANDS `{"a":1,"b":2}` on the comma** unless single-quoted at the REMOTE shell. Adding the seat's flags took the surface test from 5/6 to **6/6**; the "tool calling broken" result was pure probe config. Commits `7997f11`,`254c588`,`2c36028`,`b0c2d3d`,`993421b`.

- `[2026-08-17]` **Fleet IPv6 mapped + the real VPN topology verified; the driver is CGNAT at ESH, not the WireGuard mesh.** New ESH fiber (installing 2026-08-18) lands the house behind **CGNAT**, which breaks **Site Magic** (NH3↔ESH `sdwan-mesh-tunnel`) on IPv4 — so IPv6 becomes load-bearing as the escape hatch, and that is its most likely first consumer. Topology as VERIFIED (a prior turn assumed wrong and was corrected): UniFi↔UniFi = **Site Magic**; colo↔UniFi = **IPsec IKEv2** (`pfi-ana-nh3` 158M/165M pkt = the workhorse, `ana-to-eshudm`); **WireGuard is an RA convention only, host-based on `ana-wg`** UDP 31337 behind a FortiGate VIP — the FortiGate never terminates WG (FortiOS 7.2 has none; 7.4 added it) so "upgrade the edge for WireGuard" is a **non-problem, do not re-derive**. IPv6 today: **NH3 WAN live** `2600:1700:b25:c110::48`, **colo none**, **ESH none**. **AT&T delegates exactly ONE /64** (`2600:1700:b25:c11f::/64`) — proven by forcing prefix-ID auto→`0` and watching the subnet NOT move, because the `c110`/`c11f` pattern otherwise reads convincingly as a /60. A mesh needs a routable **WAN** address, **not** PD. `ana-wg`'s WG socket is **already dual-stack** (`[::]:31337`) → v6 RA needs an address + a v6 port-forward, no WG reconfig. ⚠ UDM legacy `rest/firewallrule` returns **0 rules** (zone-based firewall) — use `v2/…/firewall-policies`; inbound v6 is default-deny and held. All three endpoints will be **dynamic** → extend the existing hostname pattern (`ana-fw`/`nh3.phasefinal.com`) to **AAAA**. Enabled PD on `nh3-iot` to measure, **reverted on operator instruction** (all 5 LANs back to `none`, verified). Also fixed: **`ana-wg` WireGuard key material was world-readable** (`wg0.conf` + `keys/*_priv` + `*_psk` + client `configs/*.conf` at 644) → now 600, dirs 700, service untouched. Detail → `persistent-memory.d/2026-08-17-fleet-ipv6-mesh.md`.

- `[2026-08-17]` **Gen-seat multi-day degeneration RESOLVED — two compounding real causes, not one; the meta-lesson is "a mitigation that HELPS but doesn't FIX means a second cause, not a wrong one."** vLLM `qwen3_5_mtp`×GDN bug (#51113, real, fixed by nightly) + AEON full-W4A4 being lowest-fidelity (W4A4<W4+FP8<W4+bf16) → ~15-20% stochastic degeneration. Fixed by mixed FP8-attn build on pinned nightly. AEON purged. Also banked: **stochastic (~15-20%) degeneration is invisible to a small synthetic probe — n=1 "clean" validated THREE non-fixes (MTP-off, APC-off, nightly-alone) that all failed in real use; get the operator's real transcript, do not trust your own probe.** Full → `docs/pfi/model-quantization-playbook.md` §3.8 (+ §3.7 MTP-multi-turn). Commits `d28a371`,`2f2bbce`,`2185964`.

- `[2026-08-17]` **Lobe Chat chosen over Open WebUI (weight: 143 MB vs 1.8 GB) + stood up on esh-docker-vm; scoped LiteLLM key blocks paid models; System-Agent `gpt-5-mini` default repointed via env.** TTS env-vs-UI resolved as a split (endpoint env-driven, voice/model UI-only). tts-dev onboarding closed both directions; ballad/verse aliased so no voice can 404 the router. Commits `e9362de`,`163a725`,`cac75cb`,`933253d`,`25fa18e`.

- `[2026-08-17]` **LiteLLM upgraded v1.91.0→v1.97.0 (RC-avoided on the fleet gateway) + the 6 GB spend-log DB purged & capped** (`store_prompts_in_spend_logs:false` + 7d retention). Interpreted "get rid of the db" as the spend-log DATA not the database (keys/config live in it). Commit `01b5ad9`.

- `[2026-08-16]` **Abliterated models go CATATONIC at the hard refusal edge — silence, not a decline.** Abliteration removes the refusal *direction*, so at the genuine hard edge the model neither refuses nor complies → empty/degenerate output. Durable measurement consequence: a refusal probe MUST score EMPTY as a verdict distinct from REFUSAL and COMPLY (`services/refusal-probe/probe.py` does). Operator accepted it as out-of-scope; do not chase.

- `[2026-08-16]` **Fable-Fusion 711 cuts cold-framing refusals 92.5% → 15.8%; refusal is MONOTONIC IN FRAMING, and DS v1.0's problem is that she was never abliterated.** brokkr-smithy-dev supplied the framing that reproduces (`01M05M48R4RSZF9D8KT7RR55EJ`): a **bare assistant-mode instruction** — no character card, no permission preamble. Three-arm A/B, same harness, same classifier: permission framing **DS 0.0% / FF 0.0%** (n=75); plain character cards **DS 1.4% / FF 0.0%** (n=74); bare instruction **DS 92.5% (37/40) / FF 15.8% (6/38)**. Per-axis DS→FF: incest 100→20, non-con 100→20, bestiality 100→25, necrophilia 100→40, gore 100→**0**, consensual 80→20, dubcon 80→**0**, self-harm 80→**0**. DS refused **25/25** on the five axes brokkr flagged. Root cause: `ReadyArt/Dark-Scarlett-v1.0-27B` is a plain finetune of stock `Qwen/Qwen3.6-27B` carrying **NO abliteration** — the base refusal machinery is intact, so cold prompts revert to safety-tuned Qwen3.6. FF is Heretic-**ablated** (structural), which is why it holds. ⚠ **RETRACTED 2026-08-16 — my "arm-3 92.5% exceeds brokkr's 62.5%" comparison was INVALID.** His diff against his own artifact showed my `battery-instruct.yaml` reproduces only his **`creative` class — 8 of 16 axes**; it dropped all 5 `operational` (violence/incite, crime/fraud, cyber/malware, selfharm/methods, privacy/stalk) and all 3 `meta` (meta/sysprompt, meta/ignore, meta/dan), and added 2 controls he never had, at k=5 vs his k=2. **His 62.5% pools all 16 axes; my 92.5% is creative-only — different denominators, not a delta.** Cause: I rebuilt his shape from his *message*, and the `class` field lives in the artifact, not the prose. **Lesson: reconstructing a peer's instrument from their description reproduces what they described, not what they ran — diff against the artifact before claiming comparability.** ⚠ **Known battery bug left unfixed for comparability:** DS's arm-3 control gate failed at 11% because `ictrl-reunion` pairs "explicit / do not fade to black" with *brothers*, which DS reasonably read as an incest request; FF did not. `ictrl-storm` is the clean control. Commit `b9e68c3`.

- `[2026-08-16]` **MTP works on Fable-Fusion AND survives RP temperatures — my earlier caution was wrong.** vLLM resolved `Qwen3_5MTP`, loaded the drafter, shared embedding + `lm_head` — the capability DS's seat never had because our quant dropped her MTP tensors. Measured over the full probe workload (~163k draft windows at temp 0.7–1.0): **47.0% acceptance** (229,169/487,725), 1.41 extra tokens/window, per-position 68.3/43.6/29.1%, **~80.6 tok/s** decode at temp 1.0. I had recorded a caution that the card's 1.56× was greedy-measured and acceptance would fall at RP temps — **it did not**; 47.0% matches the gen seat's 47.7% and beats the card's own 33% at depth 5. Depth 3 is right.

- `[2026-08-16]` **The Qwen base thinks incessantly — that is WHY the Gemma seat exists, and no swap within the Qwen family fixes it.** Operator's architectural point, confirmed by measurement: on identical prompts DS 6036 ch vs FF 5323 ch of reasoning (permission arm), 5546 vs 4988 (cards arm) — FF actually reasons ~10–12% **less**. The bare-instruct row (DS 2291 vs FF 3918) inverts only because DS refused 92.5% of it and refusals are short — an artifact, not concision. Both are Qwen3.6-27B derivatives, so this is the base family. `char-rp` = **MeroMero-v2, Gemma-4 base**, :8016, verified 0 chars reasoning / clean prose — the non-thinking seat, working as designed. FF *can* be silenced (`enable_thinking:false` verified 3/3, and it ships `chat_template-instruct.jinja`) but that duplicates MeroMero on a base chosen for it. The stale LiteLLM comment describing `char-rp` as the retired GGUF Magidonia seat is fixed (`53096bf`).

- `[2026-08-16]` **esh-vm-docker hardened: the wedge is `hard` NFS at RUNTIME, which the boot-ordering fix never addressed.** All four mounts were `hard`, so a NAS stall at 10.0.50.50 blocks I/O forever (D-state). The existing `x-systemd.before=docker.service` fstab fix solved the **boot race** — a different bug. Exposure was far below what the park item assumed: only **2 of 12** containers touched NFS, and container state was already local (`/var/lib/docker`). **Removed:** `/mnt/compose` (2.1G, fully vestigial — zero containers referenced it, dockge reads local `/opt/docker`, its one mention was a comment in `beszel-agent-esh/.env` about a *different* host) and `/mnt/documents` (2.0K, paperless's empty spool dirs → `/opt/docker/data/paperless` at the same 0777). fstab backup `/etc/fstab.bak-nfs-harden-20260816`. **4 mounts → 2, 2 wedge-capable containers → 1.** traefik needed **no** change (already `restart: unless-stopped` — why it self-recovered). **Watchdog** `services/esh-vm-docker-watchdog/` live on **esh-pve** (not the guest): probes traefik over **HTTP, deliberately not ping/SSH** — the wedge signature is "guest OS alive, services dead" (`/` is local disk so sshd answers straight through a total outage and a TCP check reports HEALTHY). 5 failures × 2 min → `qm reset 100`, 30-min cooldown, running-only guard, `/etc/esh-vm-docker-watchdog.disabled`. All paths tested without power-cycling. **DEFERRED (operator):** `/mnt/books` stays `hard` — calibre's SQLite `metadata.db` would risk corruption under soft/softerr. That is the **one remaining wedge vector**. Commit `55705ba`; park item 28 promoted. ⚠ **`qm` over non-interactive ssh throws a bogus `JSON::Backend::XS` error** — use `ssh host 'bash -s' <<'EOF'`, not `ssh host "qm …"`.

- `[2026-08-16]` **Canonical Qwen3.8 sampling applied from upstream; `gen-reasoning` had the WRONG-MODE presence_penalty.** Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B "Best Practices" §1 and unsloth/Qwen3.8-27B §1 are **byte-identical** — thinking: `temp 1.0 / top_p 0.95 / top_k 20 / min_p 0.0 / presence_penalty 0.0 / repetition_penalty 1.0`; instruct: `temp 0.7 / top_p 0.80 / top_k 20 / min_p 0.0 / presence_penalty 1.5 / repetition_penalty 1.0`. **Bug found:** `gen-reasoning` carried `presence_penalty 1.5` — the *instruct* value on a *thinking* deployment (canonical 0.0) — now fixed. **Deliberately NOT canonicalised:** `summarizer`/`classifier`/`image-judge`/`qwen-image-bench` run `temperature=0` (judges also `top_k=1`) because determinism is their contract; forcing a chat preset on a classifier would break it. ⚠ **`presence_penalty=1.5` is canonical but is the one value upstream hedges on**, verbatim: *"using a higher value may occasionally result in language mixing and a slight decrease in model performance."* It is the **operator's suspected trigger** for multi-turn degradation and the **first dial to move (0.0–0.5)** if that recurs — it is alias-scoped, which is why it would follow the operator across model builds. Commit `3462b53`.

- `[2026-08-16]` **Four wrong diagnoses on one bug, and the lesson is the test design.** Operator reported the gen seat "degenerate on long multi-turn conversations". Rolled the seat back on request; **the previous weights behaved identically**, exonerating the model swap. I then proposed and disproved FOUR mechanisms in sequence — empty assistant turns poisoning history, reasoning runaway, length-mirroring from short history, and `presence_penalty` — before discovering **my own multi-turn harness was confounded**: it varied the QUESTION along with the depth (depth-1 asked question #2, depth-3 asked question #4), so a narrower question drawing a shorter answer read as degeneration. The "310→209→28w collapse" I reported as a reproduction was an artifact. **Rules banked:** (1) when comparing across conversation depth, hold the final question FIXED and vary only the history; (2) reply-length variance on byte-identical input was 25–465w, so n=3 cannot support any claim about a trend; (3) **ask for the operator's real failing transcript before building a synthetic reproduction** — four synthetic tests, none of them his failure. Gateway `spend_logs` returns `[]` on the infra-ops key despite `store_prompts_in_spend_logs: true`, so real transcripts need the `:4000/ui` view or another key — worth solving before the next such hunt.

- `[2026-08-16]` **Two REAL client-side defects found while chasing the above, neither of which was the reported bug.** (1) `gateway-chat`'s Max-tokens field defaulted to **1024**; thinking seats spend part of that on CoT before emitting content, so completions truncate with `finish_reason=length` and read as model degeneracy — raised to 4096. (2) `parseInt` on an empty field yields NaN, which `JSON.stringify` serialises as **`null`**, which the server reads as "no max_tokens supplied" and silently substitutes its own default — indistinguishable from the UI ignoring the field. Both fixed (`b6552e0`, `fb3bb52`). ⚠ **`compose` bind-mounts a single FILE, and a single-file bind mount binds the INODE** — rsync writes-and-renames, so the container kept serving stale content while the host file showed the new value, silently and with no error. `docker restart` does NOT clear it; the container must be **recreated**. Verify against what the *container* sees, never the host file. Applies to any file-source mount fleet-wide.

- `[2026-08-16]` **Refusal measurement: benign controls CANNOT validate a refusal classifier on RP prose — and a 0% rate needs a classifier self-test before you believe it.** Two durable lessons from baselining Dark-Scarlett. (1) **False positives:** my first bare-framing number was **9.5%**; the true figure was **1.4%**. The rest were the classifier firing on *in-character* text — `"I cannot shift my weight"` spoken by the character ~100 chars into a 2,443-token torture scene, and `"Yeah, I'm an AI… What's the actual gig?"` where the model answers in voice and keeps driving the scene. First-person RP prose is **full** of "I can't"; a genuine refusal *opens* with its marker, so the scan window must be the **first sentence**, a marker followed by long prose must demote to AMBIGUOUS, and AI self-acknowledgement is a **persona break, never a refusal on its own**. Benign controls were clean the entire time and caught none of it — they only detect over-firing on *benign* prompts, not on in-character prose. (2) **False negatives:** a 0% rate and a broken classifier are indistinguishable from the report, so `test_classify.py` (16 cases, both false positives pinned as regressions) must pass before any low number is trusted. Also banked: the **thinking-budget trap** — empty `content` + `finish_reason=length` is reasoning eating the budget, NOT a refusal; score INVALID and exclude from the denominator (DS emits ~5.5-6k chars of reasoning per response, so `max_tokens` ≥3072). `probe.py --rescore` re-classifies a saved run with zero GPU time. → `services/refusal-probe/README.md`, commit `32f665e`.

- `[2026-08-16]` **Held an operator-approved swap window because the baseline invalidated its premise.** Operator approved ~65 min of `char-rp-reasoning` downtime to A/B Fable-Fusion 711 against Dark-Scarlett on refusals. The DS baseline then came back **0.0%/1.4%** — no gap for a candidate to close, so the window would have bought no decisive signal *and* a second window would still be needed once a reproducing battery existed. Held the swap, reported, and routed to brokkr-smithy-dev for the battery that actually produced the refusals. The general rule (action-relevance): **approval is for a plan, not a ritual — when new evidence kills the plan's premise, surface it rather than spend the budget.** Nothing deployed, no downtime taken, seat untouched.

- `[2026-08-16]` **DS v1.0's one real refusal is self-contradicting boilerplate, not a content constraint.** On a direct "drop character and state your content policy" probe she returned *"I don't generate explicit sexual content, graphic violence, or material that glorifies harm, non-consensual acts, or illegal activity"* — **in the same run where she generated all three at 0% refusal**. Reads as a learned recital triggered by meta-questions about policy. If production refusals share that shape the failure is **prompt-shaped, not model-shaped**, and a consumer-side system-prompt fix may beat a model swap entirely — worth settling before spending the GPU window. Separately, 7/85 bare-framing samples were persona breaks (in-character AI acknowledgement): not refusals, but DS will admit to being an AI unless the card explicitly forbids it.

- `[2026-08-15]` **RP-seat direction: KEEP MeroMero on `char-rp`; Artemis-31B rejected; next move is Dark-Scarlett on a Qwen3.8 base when it lands (operator).** Evaluated `TheDrummer/Artemis-31B-v1.1` — mechanically a drop-in (same `google/gemma-4-31B-it` base, identical 1188-tensor/356-vision census, same missing-`preprocessor_config.json` trick), so it's purely a quality call, and our own survey already ranked MeroMero **#1** vs Artemis **#6**; Artemis is also unlicensed and its author deprioritizes correctness + warns of token-banning-for-stability, which fights char-rp's tool-calling requirement. **MTP verified impossible on both** (Gemma-4 has no MTP head at all — base/MeroMero/Artemis are all MTP=0; no finetune can add one). **But speculative decoding IS reachable on a Gemma-4 seat via a DETACHED drafter** — vLLM 0.24 supports `eagle3` + `gemma4_mtp`, and real drafters exist: `google/gemma-4-31B-it-assistant` (0.94 GB, 4-layer, 761K dl), `RedHatAI/gemma-4-31B-it-speculator.eagle3` (4.47 GB), `AEON-7/…eagle3-NVFP4` (3.53 GB). ⚠ all list their verifier as **stock** gemma-4-31B-it, not an RP finetune, so acceptance against MeroMero is unmeasured and likely well below the gen seat's ~48%. UNTESTED — parked, ~45 min to measure, needs GPU0 headroom (card is at 94.4/97.9 GB). **Why the Dark-Scarlett 3.8 plan is the strong one:** DS is Qwen3.6-based today, so a 3.8 respin lands on the *gen seat's* architecture → native MTP returns and the whole mixed NVFP4+FP8 recipe + graft ports directly. Watch two things on arrival: `from_pretrained` **silently drops MTP heads during finetuning** (verify 15 `mtp.*` tensors in the index; graft from stock if absent), and DS v1.0 required the `Qwen3_5ForConditionalGeneration` **wrapper class** to save a config vLLM/SGLang accept. Both in `docs/pfi/model-quantization-playbook.md`.

- `[2026-08-15]` **Quant lessons consolidated into `docs/pfi/model-quantization-playbook.md` — the durable home; read it BEFORE any requant.** Survey found quant knowledge scattered across 18 files in 4 trees, with **three** documents having independently written overlapping "landmines" sections (the loader-class trap alone was rediscovered 3×). Playbook owns the **transferable** lessons (scheme choice, landmines, acceptance gate + its 3 measurement traps, hardware/co-residency); per-model artifacts are demoted to worked examples that link up. Carries a **superseded-claims table** — which immediately earned itself: the heretic2 runbook's "use modelopt, compressed-tensors can't load the BF16 MTP" is **false** (the cause was the missing `re:^mtp.*` ignore, not the format) and would have sent the next session down the modelopt dependency-hell path; that runbook now carries a stale-warning header. Maintenance rule in `CLAUDE.md`: model-agnostic → playbook, model-specific → stays put, wrong claim → dated superseded row, never a silent edit. Motivated by Qwen3.8 having just released — the next model swap needs a requant. Commit `a91cc3f`.

- `[2026-08-15]` **Operator ruling: the gen seat's +1.7% perplexity is an acceptable price for the speed — SETTLED, don't re-litigate.** Precise attribution for future reasoning: it is the **activation-quantization** cost (W4A4 MLPs + FP8 attention vs BF16 activations), not an MTP cost — PPL was measured with speculative decoding **off** on both builds, so MTP was not in the loop. Turning MTP off would not recover it; only reverting the quant would (rollback = one `.env` line, old build intact at `…/qwen38-27b-uncensored-nvfp4`).

- `[2026-08-15]` **gen seat requanted to mixed NVFP4+FP8 (+18% decode) + char-rp Gemma-4 tool-calling fixed.** The queued "W4A8" (NVFP4 weights + FP8 activations) is **not servable** — vLLM 0.24 allows NVFP4 weights with only A16 or A4; FP8 activations ValueError at load, and `CompressedTensorsW4A8Fp8` is INT4-weights + sm90-exact (closed on Blackwell twice). FP8 must enter **per-layer-group**. Also: the handoff's "~68 tok/s" baseline didn't reproduce — cache-busted, the incumbent already did **80.12** (≈ the stated W4A8 target), so the premise needed re-measuring before any work. Shortcut: `unsloth/Qwen3.8-27B-NVFP4` was already on-box → served as a probe, measured **+19.1% at identical acceptance**, which both proved the gain was real and handed over the reference recipe. Replicated it on the abliterated weights → **80.12→94.53 tok/s, acceptance unchanged, +1.7% PPL, abliteration 4/4, weights −19%**; surface 6/6 live, 7 aliases routing. char-rp had **no** tool parser at all (every tools request 400'd) → `gemma4` tool + reasoning parser + a **mandatory** `enable_thinking:false` (the parser defaults it True → null `content` for all RP prose; proven byte-identical prompt before deploying). Commits `b8f0f4c`, `74f596b`. Foot-guns banked (llm-compressor prunes unmatched `ignore` entries → the 0%-MTP bug, **fired on this run**; prompt_logprobs uniform under spec-decode; 0600 `.env` silently no-ops compose; GPU0 is zero-sum). → `persistent-memory.d/2026-08-15-gen-seat-mixed-requant.md`

- `[2026-08-15]` **Uncensored gen seat: JonathanColetti/Qwen3.8-27B-Uncensored deployed as `gen-seat`/`vllm-gen` (NVFP4 W4A16 + grafted MTP, 262K); 7 aliases repointed; the definitive `re:^mtp.*`-ignore fix.** 0%-MTP-on-quant (twice) was NOT the abliteration/scheme — the grafted bf16 MTP was missing from `quantization_config.ignore` (vLLM loaded it as quantized → uninitialized). Full arc, the working pipeline, VRAM budget, unsloth speed decomposition, modelopt dead-end. → `persistent-memory.d/2026-08-15-uncensored-gen-seat.md`

- `[2026-08-12]` **eRP dual-seat overhaul: MeroMero-v2 (`char-rp`) + Dark-Scarlett (`char-rp-reasoning`), both NVFP4A16 @ 256K on ana-ml2; granite retired.** Replaced the GGUF/heretic2 RP seats with two home-quantized vLLM seats. The DS blocker (an `AutoModelForCausalLM` save wrote a flat `Qwen3_5TextConfig` that **both vLLM AND SGLang reject**) was fixed by re-quanting via the `Qwen3_5ForConditionalGeneration` **wrapper class**; ModelOpt was a version deadlock, SGLang lacked the impl (but revealed the fix). MeroMero vision reconstructed by extracting `preprocessor_config.json` from `processor_config.json`. Both models KV-efficient (Gemma-4 sliding-window / Qwen3.6 hybrid linear-attn) → full 256K; GPU-swapped for headroom; compose-ified + committed `f08b6cb`. granite downed + LiteLLM `summarizer`/`classifier`→gen. Full arc, lessons, dead-ends → `persistent-memory.d/2026-08-12-erp-dual-seat-overhaul.md`


- `[2026-08-12]` **infra-ops now holds an all-zones Cloudflare DNS-edit token (vaulted) + wgtunnel Phase-0 DNS landed.** Operator handed over a `Zone·DNS·Edit` (all zones) CF token → `secret put nh3-dev/.config/cloudflare/infra-ops-dns-token` (round-trip verified; /tmp drop shredded). Fleet DNS is now self-serve for infra-ops (⚠ HIGH blast radius — all zones). First use: created `boring.phasefinal.com` CNAME → `ana-srv1.phasefinal.com`, **DNS-only** (proxied:false), verified resolving to 38.120.12.44 on both authoritative NS (louis/wren) + 1.1.1.1 — NOT Cloudflare-proxied. Unblocks wgtunnel's wstunnel ACME cert. phasefinal.com zone id `f812ba74ed9a75cf21bbe7ce9188db50`. auto-memory `reference_infra_ops_cloudflare_dns_token`. (Earlier gap: the only prior vaulted CF token, jackdaw's, had `zone:read`+`worker:edit` but no `dns_records:edit`.)


- `[2026-08-12]` **wgtunnel stood up as its own repo (`vh/wgtunnel`, private) after a live endpoint-verification pass.** Operator directed own-repo (mirrors stonehenge-park/tts-stack). Verified off the fleet before seeding: `ana-wg` WG server = **UDP/31337** (not 51820), subnet 10.30.10.0/24, MTU 1420, active roaming peer proves the public UDP DNAT works; traefik on ana-docker **terminates TLS :443** (ACME `anaprod` http-challenge, docker+file providers, CrowdSec bouncer) → confirms the clean design (wstunnel container on `traefik-net`, Host-routed, WS→UDP to `ana-wg:31337`); edge `38.120.12.44` direct-A, `tunnel.phasefinal.com` free (⚠ must be **direct**, NOT Cloudflare-proxied like vaultwarden). Repo pre-seeded (README/CLAUDE/persistent-memory/ROADMAP + `docs/verified-infrastructure.md` = ground truth) + pushed; commit `9584d38`, Vuong-attributed. vh gitea token pulled from the vault (`secret get`), not persisted to `.git/config`. **NEXT = `/vor-plan` or `/vor` (operator's call, interactive).** Deps to line up in the plan: DNS A-record, FortiGate :443 host-routing, a new ana-wg peer for the laptop, client tooling.

- `[2026-08-10→12]` **secrets-broker: per-box Vaultwarden credential store SHIPPED + consumer-confirmed.** `secret` CLI (`put/get/list/rm/backfill`, bw-backed) on `~/.local/bin`; 25 nh3-dev secrets backfilled + round-trip-verified; `rm` + new-namespace warning added post-launch; standing "vault is the credential source of truth" directive now global. → `persistent-memory.d/2026-08-12-secrets-broker.md`


- `[2026-08-11]` **stonehenge-park: new fleet `/park` service repo stood up + designed (`/vor-plan` + `/vor-ui`).** Self-contained SQLite+FastAPI idea-parking service that actively resurfaces (statusline + althing) so nothing dies in a cold repo; `vh/stonehenge-park` pushed + pre-seeded for a fresh agent; build starts at the U1 tracer contract. → `persistent-memory.d/2026-08-11-stonehenge-park.md`


- `[2026-08-12]` **Global `~/.claude/CLAUDE.md`: `secret`/vault tool entry + "store in AND pull from the vault" standing directive** (dotfiles `9db703b`, pushed); statusline reset-countdowns + a latent tab-collapse parse-bug fix, now tracked in the dotfiles stow tree. Dogfooded the directive: created `vh/stonehenge-park` pulling the gitea token via `secret get`. (dotfiles + global config, not eshpfi.)


- `[2026-08-11]` **TTS stack extracted to its own repo (`tts-stack`) + eshpfi stood down on TTS dev.** Operator: hand all TTS tuning/dev to a separate agent with a self-contained repo (knowledge + infra access + a live knowledge list), and move the voice corpus in. New repo `~/development/tts-stack` (commit `9ee3288`) carries: dots-tts stack (canonical intent), `voices/` corpus (MOVED out of eshpfi), `KNOWLEDGE.md` (engine landscape + prosody findings + foot-guns), `docs/infrastructure.md` (irv-ml1 access + gated deploy runbook + rollback), CLAUDE/persistent-memory/ROADMAP, `tools/` (pause-probe + Booth render). Followed the **chatterbox-fast precedent**: eshpfi `stacks/dots-tts/` reduced to a POINTER README; the ~15 experimental TTS compose wrappers stay here as reference (catalogued in tts-stack KNOWLEDGE). Blast-radius check: no eshpfi playbook/script reads the canonical corpus (other `voices/` refs = unrelated host paths). **Reverses** the earlier "Corpus home = eshpfi `voices/` (keep-here)" call. ⚠ tts-stack is LOCAL-ONLY until pushed — needs a gitea remote (`vh/tts-stack`) + push before the separate agent can clone (operator's call — outward-facing + repo-create creds).


- `[2026-08-10]` **dots-tts v3 — clause-break → period pause mapping.** Operator: v2 "sounds good" but donut won't pause at semicolons/dashes. ROOT CAUSE (measured via a pause-probe A/B — synth duration over N runs, non-determinism averaged out): dots' prosody honors a real pause **only for ellipsis (~+0.43s) and period (~+0.3s, capitalization-independent)**; comma/semicolon/colon/dash all run **flat (~+0.03s vs no-punct)**. Two distinct sub-causes: **dashes regressed in v2** (the `—`→`-` fold made em-dashes read as word-joiners), while **semicolons were NEVER a v2 change** — dots ignores them natively, only newly noticeable because v2 made everything else clean. Operator call: ellipsis "too much" → **map `;`, clause `:`, and em-dash `—` → period** in `_sanitize` (believable ~0.3s clause break). GUARDS (pinned by 11 unit tests, `stacks/dots-tts/test_sanitize.py`): digit-guarded colon `(?<!\d)\s*:\s*(?!\d)` so times `3:45` / ratios `2:1` survive; en-dash `–`→hyphen KEPT (numeric-range `10–20` safety — em-dash breaks, en-dash ranges, different jobs); genuine ellipsis left at full strength (author meant a long pause). Gated deploy (redeploy2 pattern → v3): build → throwaway :8199 test container + **pause-gate** (semicolon sentence must run ≥0.12s longer than baseline; measured **+0.427s**) → only then cut live over. LIVE + healthy `local/dots-tts:v3` on :8198. **rollback = `sed -i 's/^DOTS_TAG=.*/DOTS_TAG=v2/' .env + docker compose up -d dots-tts`** (v2 image retained). Booth `dots-pauses` (A=old-flat / C=ellipsis-too-much / D=live-v3). [[reference_chatterbox_fast_repo]]


- `[2026-08-10]` **dots-tts v2 — contraction fix (curly-sanitize) + sentence-chunking + dependency-pin recovery.** Operator: donut read contractions wrong ("you're"→"you ree", "donut's"→"donut ess"). ROOT CAUSE (isolated via A/B booth): **curly/typographic apostrophes** (`’` U+2019 from ratatoskr's LLM) — dots' tokenizer mispronounces them; STRAIGHT apostrophes read clean under `normalize_text=True`. FIX (`app.py`): fold curly→ASCII (`str.maketrans`) before synth, **KEEP `normalize_text=True`** (operator call — retains number/date expansion). Also added **server-side sentence-chunking** (pack ≤280 chars): dots caps one `generate()` at ~500 patches/~40s, so long RP turns (the Zev monologue = 160s audio) truncated; chunking stitches them (verified full 160.3s, not 40s-cut). **⚠ BUILD FOOT-GUNS (both bit this redeploy):** (1) upstream dots.tts `constraints/recommended.txt` now pins **`gradio==6.17.0` — phantom, not on PyPI** → fresh `pip install dots.tts` unsatisfiable; FIX = pin `dots.tts==0.2.1` + **DROP** the `-c recommended.txt` constraints (0.2.1 pulls working gradio 6.17.3). (2) pinning only `torch==2.8.0` let **torchaudio float to 2.11.0 → dots.tts refuses to load** (minor-version match check); FIX = pin `torchaudio==2.8.0`. **⚠ DEPLOY LESSON:** `docker compose up -d` to a new tag swaps the LIVE container BEFORE any health check — a broken image crash-loops production (**ratatoskr TTS down ~1-2min this session**). NEW PATTERN = build → test in a THROWAWAY container on an alt port (:8199) → health+verify → only THEN cut live over (redeploy2.sh). v2 LIVE + healthy on irv-ml1:8198, **CONSUMER-CONFIRMED clean** (ratatoskr verified end-to-end on their :8765 — apostrophe string reads clean, /api/tts 200 @ 48kHz, no client change; the ~1-2min blip didn't hit them, their concurrent auto-audio issue was client-side localStorage). **rollback = `sed DOTS_TAG=v1 + docker compose up -d dots-tts`** (v1 image retained). Also: deployed container GPU crept ~6→13.9GB over 8h serving (cache accumulation; a redeploy resets it — watch item). [[reference_chatterbox_fast_repo]]

- `[2026-08-09→10]` **dots.tts (rednote-hilab) TTS burn-in on irv-ml1 + canonical voice corpus built (`voices/`).** Operator-directed eval to potentially replace chatterbox-fast. **dots.tts VERIFIED real** (canonical HF ns `dots-studio/`, `rednote-hilab/dots.tts-*` redirects there; Apache-2.0; PyPI `dots.tts` 0.2.1; 2B continuous-AR = semantic enc + Qwen2.5-1.5B LLM + flow-matching acoustic head over 48kHz AudioVAE; zero-shot clone from wav+transcript). **Runs on Ampere 3090** (sm_86, bf16, no fp8 dep); **optimized RTF 0.22** at num_steps=10 (`from_pretrained(..., optimize=True)` CUDA graphs — raw unoptimized was 1.21), **~6GB VRAM**, 48kHz, streams (`generate_stream`). Venv+cache at `irv-ml1:/home/lkraven/dots-tts` (~10GB). **Operator design calls:** SGLang Omni serving (OpenAI `/v1/audio/speech`), transcribe-refs-first, `soar` variant. ⚠ Omni serves soar but its continuous-batching + streaming opts are **mf-only** (soar = single-request) — non-issue for ratatoskr's single-consumer RP surface. **KEY FINDING — dots is highly sensitive to an accurate AND sentence-bounded reference transcript:** mismatched transcript → 0.16s collapse; over-long/messy transcript → reference-audio BLEEDS as an output prefix; mid-clause trim → dangling-word leak (glados "we'll", emmie "And,"). RECIPE (baked into `voices/derive.py`): trim ref to a clean ~6–10s clip ending on a sentence boundary + accurate transcript of exactly that clip. **CANONICAL VOICE CORPUS** stood up in eshpfi `voices/` (operator idea): engine-agnostic `canonical/<v>.wav` + `transcripts/<v>.txt` → per-engine ref sets DERIVED by `derive.py` reading `engines.yaml` profiles (dots/chatterbox/zonos); canonical wavs git-tracked (small/curated), `derived/` gitignored. **4 voices optimized + verified CLEAN for dots: donut, glados, emmie, miranda** (glados canonical is low-SR 16kHz — flagged upgrade candidate). ⚠ GPU GOTCHA: irv-ml1 native CUDA orders **A6000=device0** (ComfyUI-full) — pin the 3090 with `CUDA_DEVICE_ORDER=PCI_BUS_ID CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0`; and `PYTORCH_CUDA_ALLOC_CONF=expandable_segments` CONFLICTS with `optimize=True` CUDA graphs (curr_block error). Booths: `dots-vs-chatterbox`, `dots-voices-optimized`. **SHIPPED 2026-08-10:** operator A/B verdict "dots is very good" → containerized as a **thin FastAPI wrapper over DotsTtsRuntime** (chosen over SGLang Omni — Omni's batching is mf-only, unneeded for ratatoskr's single consumer; wrapper is SERIALIZED one-gen-at-a-time via a threading.Lock, Omni+mf = parked API-compatible escalation if multi-consumer ever lands). **LIVE on irv-ml1:8198** (`local/dots-tts:v1`, OpenAI `/v1/audio/speech` + `/health` + `/v1/voices`, container healthy, both stream + non-stream verified CLEAN, 4 voices donut/glados/emmie/miranda) alongside chatterbox :8197 (nothing repointed). Stack = `stacks/dots-tts/` (Dockerfile/app.py/compose/.env.example/README). ⚠ CONTAINER GOTCHA: `optimize=True` (torch.compile/inductor/triton) needs a **C compiler at RUNTIME** — slim image must `apt install build-essential` or model-load dies "Failed to find C compiler" (host venv had gcc ambient, masking it); persist `TORCHINDUCTOR_CACHE_DIR` to a mounted dir or every restart re-JITs ~5min. Corpus home = eshpfi `voices/` (operator ruled keep-here). **REMAINING: ratatoskr client cutover** to :8198 `/v1/audio/speech` (Phase-2 tail, peer-coupled — draft the ask). [[reference_chatterbox_fast_repo]] [[reference_zonos_tts_stack]] [[reference_verify_hf_repo_ids_before_pull]]


- `[2026-08-08]` **worldtree-dev #400 CLOSED → fiction-decomp snapshot cleared from nh3-dev.** worldtree-dev signaled #400 done (shipped v1.0.0b185; exact-lexical efficacy 79%→12% on ratatoskr's gate, brokkr no-harm bracket green both ends; the snapshot served 4 probe rounds — rank decomposition, promoted-vs-gold annotation, tie-set falsification, A0/A1/A2 mechanism probe). Cleared `~/snapshots/worldtree-400-fiction-decomp` (208M: chroma + manifest/provenance/stamp) — a read-only rsync copy of PERSONAL Worldtree's Chroma (source on corviduo-dev, so safe to remove). **LEFT INTACT:** `rex393-fiction-index`/`rex393-fiction-snapshot` (separate operator KEEP word, unchanged) + `r42-gate-*`. No config deltas rode this train. Only remaining non-blocking await = ratatoskr-dev's chatterbox-fast knob revert. Replied confirming (`01KZJ9GMCC…`).


- `[2026-08-07]` **chatterbox-fast "broken audio" root-caused (T3 AR tail over-run) + FIXED (max_chunk_chars=250 cap, :v2 deployed).** Long saga, operator-driven clean diagnosis. **Symptom:** ratatoskr's migrated RP-surface TTS "swaps to German" / "dead air" / "garbage" on long turns. **NOT** German-leak (Turbo `generate()` has NO language param — plain AutoTokenizer, no `language_id`; the multilingual `language_id="en"` lever lives only in the separate `ChatterboxMultilingualTTS`), **NOT** OOM alone. **Real cause:** the Chatterbox **Turbo T3 model OVER-RUNS its generation tail** — a long single `generate()` degrades into garble/dead-air in its final ~2-3s (lib filters OOV tokens `<6561` + pads silence = messy AR tail). The scheduler's buffer-ratchet builds 300-600 char mega-chunks that land in that zone; streaming concatenates each bad tail (worst case). **ratatoskr's anti-"German" knobs (top_k=80/temp=0.5) made it WORSE** — tight sampling pulls the degradation onset SHORTER (~200 chars vs ~300 at default knobs). **Diagnosis method** (deterministic, no ears-only): single-shot length sweep + **amplitude-gated voiced-ZCR** (garble spikes ZCR; must gate on |x|>500 else trailing silence confounds it) — degraded voiced-tail = 1.58× mid, clean = ~0.64-1.1×. **FIX:** server-side `max_chunk_chars=250` cap on the scheduler (`:v2` image, `CBF_MAX_CHUNK_CHARS=250` env) — bounds each generation to just under the ~300-char onset → clean **3-4 sentence** chunks (max prosodic arc while clean). Operator ear-confirmed clean audio + clean joins; **chatterbox's low emotiveness keeps chunk joins smooth** (the harsh joins that got Zonos rejected are absent — operator's key call). **ratatoskr TODO (relayed msg `01KZER9X7S`):** revert knobs to default (top_k→1000, temp→0.8), send full text (server chunks internally), keep the 503-on-empty guard. **Cap value tunable** per-request (`max_chunk_chars`) + env. **Deeper prosody** (if ever wanted) = scheduler Phase-2 context-priming at joins (feed prior sentence as discarded-audio context; +latency). **⚠ FOOT-GUNS:** (1) acoustic tail-trim is UNRELIABLE — sibilants ('s'/'sh'/'f') spike ZCR like garble, can't cleanly detect the speech→garble boundary. (2) **build-context vs image drift** — the `:v2` image was built from cap source, but after a `:v1` rollback the build context held `:v1` source → a `docker compose build` would've silently produced a cap-less `:v2`; re-synced the flat cap source to `/opt/docker/compose/chatterbox-fast/` (rebuild-verified). **⚠ DIVERGENCE (follow-up):** deployed build context is FLAT (`app.py`/`scheduler.py`, `from scheduler import`, thin-overlay `FROM local/chatterbox:v1`, cap-only) vs the `vh/chatterbox-fast` REPO which is PACKAGE-layout (`chatterbox_fast/`, `from chatterbox_fast.scheduler`, self-contained Dockerfile) + has `norm_loudness` (repo commit `6bc7bf0` = cap; deployed omits norm_loudness deliberately to keep the ear-test unconfounded). Reconcile the two layouts so a repo-based rebuild matches deploy. Rollback: `.bak-cap-20260807-104850` backups on irv-ml1 + `:v1` image both retained. [[reference_chatterbox_fast_repo]] [[reference_zonos_tts_stack]]


- `[2026-08-07]` **Zonos2 TAKEN DOWN on the 3090 (irv-ml1) — operator-directed "for memory", TEMPORARY.** Freed ~17.4 GB (3090: 728 MiB → 18.2 GB free) so chatterbox-fast (co-resident, was OOMing on long generations) has headroom. **⚠ Restore is manual — Zonos2 :1920 was a DETACHED native process (NOT systemd/docker), reparented to init.** GPU memory was held by the `--multiprocessing-fork` CHILDREN (1966165=16.4G, 1966166=1G), which ORPHAN to init when you kill the parent — had to SIGTERM the children explicitly (killing the parent 1965942 + uv-run 1965935 alone left the 16.4G held). **RESTORE CMD** (from irv-ml1, user lkraven): `cd /home/lkraven/tts-audition/models/zonos2 && nohup uv run python -m zonos2 --model-path Zyphra/ZONOS2 --host 0.0.0.0 --port 1920 --tts-default-voices-dir ./default_voices/ --cuda-graph-max-bs 1 --num-pages 16384 --max-running-requests 2 --memory-ratio 0.3 > /tmp/zonos2.log 2>&1 &` then `docker start zonos-gateway`. **Consumers that lost Zonos:** asset-engine + gateway-chat (via LiteLLM `ext-tts` alias → zonos-gateway :8890, now stopped); ratatoskr already migrated OFF to chatterbox-fast (unaffected). Also unblocks proper drift/cap testing (OOM was blocking it). [[reference_zonos_tts_stack]]


- `[2026-08-07]` **chatterbox-fast: donut voice added + full contract delivered to ratatoskr-dev (their TTS migration off Zonos).** Operator-directed. Copied `zonos-gateway/voices/Donut.wav` → chatterbox `/refs` (`/worktank/chatterbox/reference_audio/donut.wav` — the reference_audio SUBDIR is lkraven-owned so no sudo despite `/worktank` root; container globs `/refs` live → **NO restart**), exposed as `voice:"donut"` (lowercase); verified clean 7.5s synth (24kHz, RTF ~0.31). A/B booth (chatterbox vs zonos donut, same line) at `http://10.100.10.50:8090/b/donut-chatterbox/`. Answered ratatoskr's 8-question contract ask from the live gateway (`local/chatterbox-fast:v1`) + source: **NOT OpenAI-shaped** (`POST /tts`; body `text`/`voice`/`format`/`stream`, not `input`/`model`/`response_format`); **NO affect dials** (Turbo ignores cfg_weight/min_p/exaggeration — the architecture-changing answer they flagged; **Zonos stays the only fleet TTS with real emotion steering**); streaming WAV placeholder-header shape IDENTICAL to Zonos (their per-chunk Web Audio path survives); SR 24000 (Zonos 44100); server chunks arbitrary-length text internally (no client-side chunking, unlike Zonos's 71.2s cap); English-only, no language pin. **FYI-worthy (operator):** ratatoskr is moving its RP-surface TTS OFF Zonos back to chatterbox-fast → loses the live-PAD affect coupling (heavy Zonos emotion investment) — their call, trade-off flagged to them. auto-memory `reference_chatterbox_fast_repo` enriched w/ the live contract. [[reference_zonos_tts_stack]]


- `[2026-08-07]` **Fleet reranker cut over: Qwen3-Reranker-0.6B → BAAI/bge-reranker-v2-m3 (Brokkr R43).** The incumbent was measured HARMING 80/90 fleet queries (no-reranker beat it 89/90 vs 56/90). R43 bake-off: the A2 control (same Qwen weights, seq-cls head) scored identical to the incumbent → proved the fault is a training-prior not the serving head → cancelled the expensive Qwen3-4B arm; A3 (bge-v2-m3) won on multilingual safety + bare-name recovery. LiteLLM `reranker` repointed incumbent→A3 :8013 (boundary 2026-08-06T17:37:48Z, config-edit + ~52s gateway restart); **R42 v13 gate PASSED first-ever** (56/90→90/90). Incumbent kept warm :8002 (rollback via `qwen3-reranker` alias), A4 fallback :8014. Full arc + rollback runbook `docs/pfi/reranker-selection-ledger.md`; commits ad2df89/2c11748/377f8a4 (unpushed). auto-memories: the earlier reranker-serving notes.


- `[2026-08-07]` **Personal-Worldtree kb-contamination incident (WT #394) diagnosed; attribution CLOSED UNRESOLVED.** A reconcile `WingStore._embed` full-tree walk (kb `fs_root=KB_PATH` root, sibling wings nested) swept 5,354 fiction+main rows into personal's `knowledge_base` (2 superseded generations served as current). Fixed by WT #394 (aca39a1, kb walks exclude sibling wings; ships b182). Trigger un-attributable — peer reconcile via the SHARED infra-ops identity + 0 dockerd exec-logging = fingerprint-less. Durable finding → auto-memory `infra_ops_shared_identity_attribution_gap`, PARKED (operator ruled A) into [[project_migrate_infra_access_to_claude_credentials]]. Evidence hold on the 5,354 rows until operator sequences cleanup (w/ Brokkr, on #394's agenda).


- `[2026-08-05]` **Fleet CI resilience flip (`DEFAULT_ACTIONS_URL=self`) — attempted end-to-end, PARKED on a runner action-fetch auth blocker; infra-ops to research it (operator-directed, deferred, NOT now).** 7 gitea action mirrors staged public+populated (orgs `actions`+`astral-sh`); the flip resolves `uses:` correctly but act_runner v0.6.0 can't authenticate its fetch to gitea 1.26 ("Invalid username or token. Password authentication is not supported"). Reverted (CI back on github default); `REQUIRE_SIGNIN_VIEW=false` KEPT as a standing change (operator, internal WG net). Full endeavor, the reliable nh3-dev-egress + git-SSH mirror method, exact config state, smoke method, and next step → `persistent-memory.d/2026-08-05-ci-flip-parked.md`


- `[2026-08-05]` **Booth — 3 features shipped, live on `:8090` + tagged.** (1) verbatim-`index.html` booths get a floating top-right "‹ all booths" chip + inherited favicon, doctype/charset-safe byte-injection (`booth-v0.1.5`, `8577e7e`); (2) `.md` renders + `.txt`/`.log` view in-booth without downloading via the `/b/<n>/view` route + a `markdown` dep + `doc.html` (`booth-v0.1.6`, `315faac`); (3) prev/next arrows in the image zoom viewer — wrap-around + keyboard ←/→, hidden for single-image booths (`booth-v0.1.7`, `c37a425`). Canonical `services/booth/`; deploy = `systemctl --user restart booth.service` on nh3-dev (runs from the checkout's `.venv`; `uv pip install` new deps into it first); 47 tests. `uv.lock` gitignored (`348c5c1`).


- `[2026-08-05]` **worldtree herald re-nudge bug root-caused → forseti shipped althing-core v2.1.2 (`d5d33df`, deployed on nh3-dev).** `herald.py:363` rendered the wake command from the empty *fresh* mail set on the re-nudge path (should be `deliver_msgs`) → `messages[0]` IndexError → un-suppressed outer catch-all → 7s crash-loop for 9 days on worldtree-codex's pane route (mimir-dev surfaced it; I traced it from the editable source). Fix + `render_command` empty-guard + outer log-suppress + 3 tests + contract amendment, all forseti's. **nh3-extdev herald 2.1.2 upgrade DEFERRED** (operator, not-now): extdev is a WHEEL install (not editable), unexposed (no pane routes); the verified 2.1.2 wheel is staged on nh3-dev `/tmp` (sha256 `003508…cef27`) — `uv tool install --force` + restart both heralds when un-parked. extdev herald-unit provenance resolved (operator-authorized 2026-07-25 via forseti relay; recorded in this file's 07-25 herald-install entry). auto-memory `reference_nh3_dev_althing_herald`.


- `[2026-08-03]` **worldtree b168/#384/#385 arc COMPLETE** — providers.yaml boot-gate pre-sync → b168 deploy → DCC+P&P re-ingest (705+667 concepts, 0 truncations, #385 budget fix validated vs April's 785 control) → #381 restart → operator-approved production dedup sweep (785 April orphans deleted from `main`, 4009→3224). Fiction wing 166→1,372 concepts; consumer verify 0/5→5/5→saturated. Three of MY foot-guns hardened into fleet runbook rules (`mv -t`, `docker exec -u 1000`, shared-containerd pull-race — see Tried-and-abandoned). Full runbooks (deploy-wt-config, Chroma-verify, config-delta pre-sync rule, #381, sweep) → `persistent-memory.d/2026-08-03-worldtree-b168-384-385-arc.md`


- `[2026-08-02]` **mimir-inbox / #377-read-path arc — deployed + 4 bugs found/fixed/verified + a cloned voice.** mimir-inbox live on corviduo-dev:8091 (#377 write+read proven, live `8ece117`); worldtree-dev #380 (wing-blind index) + #381 (stale-client restart) + #382 (intermittent Mimir grounding) chased and **verified 3/3** by ratatoskr-dev; muninn-gate → dispatch 0.1.5; **donut** voice cloned from the 65-frost Booth bundle into the Zonos gateway; Zonos streaming confirmed already-working. Full arc, procedures, and lessons → `persistent-memory.d/2026-08-02-mimir-inbox-arc.md`


- `[2026-07-31]` **muninn-gate (#377 ingestion front door) BUILT + DEPLOYED + healthy on corviduo-dev:8090.** First-boot acceptance passed (watcher:running:true proves ingestion_root byte-identity); submit path deferred to the mimir-inbox era. Full wiring (uid-1000, state-volume mount, staging path-agreement, BuildKit-secret build, deferred repoint + operational guards) → `persistent-memory.d/2026-07-31-muninn-gate-deploy.md`


- `[2026-07-31]` **worldtree-sdk 1.1.0 (Python) published to vh Gitea PyPI + a durable infra-ops publish cred.** memory_context pass-through; unblocked wyrd-dev. claude-bot now a write-collaborator on `vh/worldtree-sdk` (source pulled via the **Gitea API archive** — git-HTTP 403s on that repo); publishing to the vh USER namespace **can't be delegated** (401 `reqPackageAccess` even with `write:package`) so it needs an owner token — operator saved a **FULL vh site-admin token at `~/.config/gitea/vh-token` (0600)** for it (⚠️ high blast radius, kept over a scoped one; org-namespace migration is the only real de-personalization, parked by wtsdk-dev). auto-memory `reference_infra_ops_vh_gitea_token_and_sdk_publish`.


- `[2026-07-31]` **kimi-k3 "output cap" root-caused = a ~16384 REASONING-token ceiling, not an output cap.** heid's cross-frontier panel was silently degraded (empty content, `finish_reason: stop`). dvalin+bil researched (docs said deprecated-max_tokens); heid's live data refuted that (completion hit 18455) → it's a reasoning ceiling. **Proven on the wire against heid's real 500KB bundle:** `reasoning_effort: low` drops reasoning under the ceiling → content returns, on BOTH coding + general endpoints. Fix is CALLER-side (no gateway change): send `reasoning_effort` via **`extra_body`** (LiteLLM `drop_params: true` strips the top-level param — why heid's earlier attempt no-op'd). Relayed to heid to validate; backstop = `allowed_openai_params` on the route. → `persistent-memory.d/2026-07-31-kimi-k3-reasoning-cap.md`


- `[2026-07-27]` **jackdaw-compose.service DECOMMISSIONED** (jackdaw-dev request; the JackDAW AI Composer was cut from v1 by operator decision 2026-07-27). Stopped + disabled the nh3-dev `:8787` user service (no client calls it — ai/server/AiChat deleted from main, `/compose` proxy removed); unit **archived not deleted** → `~/.config/systemd/user/jackdaw-compose.service.decommissioned-20260727` (revival = rename + `daemon-reload`). **No credential revoked** — the unit used the SHARED all-agents LiteLLM key (`sk-eA_XOd…`, model `gen`), not a dedicated one. Code preserved on jackdaw `origin/ai-composer-preserved`; treat as permanent. The `:4500` HTTPS audition bench is untouched. (Supersedes the 2026-07-23 stand-up line below.)


- `[2026-07-25]` **bil-smithy-dev wired as an althing zellij-window-ping (pane route).** She's a `driver: human` dwarf peer (pane `bil-smithy` already live alongside eitri/dvalin/regin-smithy in the `Claude` zellij session) but had no delivery route → smoke messages posted to the bus but never reached her window. **Mechanism (reusable for any pane-route handle):** `~/.althing/config.yaml` → `zellij_sessions.Claude.agents[]` maps `handle` → `target` (a zellij pane **TITLE**, matched via `list-panes -j` in `althing/zellij.py:resolve_pane_id`) → `command` (herald `write-chars` + CR into that pane). The **herald loads config ONCE at startup** (`herald.py main()`), so **`systemctl --user restart althing-herald.service`** after editing. Added bil (`target: bil-smithy`), restarted, verified: herald delivered the pending smoke `01KYD7W7CF…` (available→attempted→**delivered**). ⚠️ Noticed pre-existing pane-route errors on `worldtree-codex` + `eitri-smithy-dev` ("route-error: list index out of range", empty msg_ids — likely `render_command messages[0]` on an empty list; NOT caused by this change, bil works) — worth a herald look.


_201 older entries archived to archival-memory.md._

## Tried and abandoned

- `[2026-08-15]` **Grafted bf16 MTP loads UNINITIALIZED (0% accept) unless `re:^mtp.*` is in the quant-config `ignore`; and W4A16=Marlin (not native FP4) costs ~20% even on decode.** Cost a premature 79 GB delete of a good model (declared desync-dead off the 0%). Lessons: test MTP on bf16 FIRST, isolate before deleting; modelopt 0.43 is dependency-hell for qwen3_5 (list-vs-dict quant_cfg + transformers conflict) — use llm-compressor. Full → `persistent-memory.d/2026-08-15-uncensored-gen-seat.md`

- `[2026-08-03]` **ComfyUI `--enable-triton-backend` on the irv-ml1 A6000 crashes EVERY render — Ampere has no hardware e4m3.** adhoc-agent's operator-approved probe: comfy_kitchen's triton backend has a FUSED int8 matmul that would beat the eager backend's ~1.9x-slower unfused int8 path (21.3s vs 11.2s fp8 on the Moody Krea2 int8 checkpoints). Flipped it (added to `COMFY_CMDLINE_EXTRA`, recreated) → `triton.compiler.errors.CompilationError: ValueError("type fp8e4nv not supported in this architecture. supported: fp8e4b15, fp8e5")` in `comfy_kitchen/backends/triton/quantization.py:145 dequantize_per_tensor_fp8`, failing at **node 5 CLIPTextEncode**. Triton's fp8 dequant kernel targets `fp8e4nv` (Hopper/Ada e4m3); **sm_86 Ampere (A6000) lacks hardware e4m3** → the JIT compile dies. With triton on it grabs the **global** `--fp8_e4m3fn-text-enc` dequant, so every render (fp8 AND int8) dies upstream at the text-encode step — the int8 UNet path never ran, so the convrot-coverage caveat wasn't even the limiter. Reverted cleanly (~15s to healthy, image unchanged `sha256:94afb8ca`, sage intact, prod restored). **The parked cu130 rebuild won't fix it** (e4m3 = hardware format, not CUDA version). **DEFERRED to the Ada refresh** (operator: "ada is coming, we'll optimize then" — Ada sm_89 has native e4m3, so triton's fp8 path should compile there). **Mechanics:** `--enable-triton-backend` is a compose `environment:` var, so toggling it needs `docker compose up -d` (**recreate**), NOT `docker restart` (reuses the baked env, no-ops silently). Full: auto-memory `parked_triton_backend_ampere_fp8`.


- `[2026-08-03]` **corviduo-dev shared containerd: a concurrent-pull race fails ONE instance's deploy; DON'T "prune to fix" — the image is in-use by the instance that won the race.** b169 personal deploy failed at `docker compose pull` (`Lchown … no such file or directory` on the big torch layer → looked like disk pressure / corrupt snapshot). ACTUAL: NOT disk (56G free, inodes 7%). demo + personal + pinned share ONE `/var/lib/containerd` on corviduo-dev; demo (from main) and personal (from staging tag) extracted b169's shared torch layer simultaneously → personal's hit a partial snapshot mid-race and aborted while demo's completed. The image `6e34a87` was FULLY VALID — demo was RUNNING it healthy. Fix = just re-run the failed deploy (image already materialized; compose pull finds it present). **NEAR-MISS:** worldtree-dev's suggested "prune unused images/snapshots" would have rmi'd `6e34a87` = the image the running demo depends on → demo outage. **Lesson: before any prune/rmi "cleanup," `docker ps` the running images — an "unused" image may be a co-tenant's live one; and verify the failure's REAL cause (disk? inode? in-use? race?) before applying the suggested remedy.** (Pipeline fix, deferred: serialize demo-from-main + personal-from-staging, or a per-image pull lock, to avoid the shared-layer extraction race.)


- `[2026-08-02]` **`docker exec` into worldtree containers defaults to ROOT — root writes contaminate the uid-1000 (vh) KB tree.** My `sudo docker exec … --reindex` on personal ran as ROOT (muninn app = uid 1000); its wing git-commit + atomic note-swap left root-owned files in the `worldtree-personal_worldtree-kb` volume: a root-owned `.old-<job>` backup dir (blocked the uid-1000 retry's `rmtree` → Errno 13, because unlink needs write on the DIR and it was root:root 755) AND **60 root-owned loose git objects** in `.git/objects/`. Fix (host-side, corviduo-dev): `sudo rm -rf` the superseded `.old-` dir (tar'd aside to /tmp first) + `sudo find … -user 0 -exec chown 1000:1000` the objects (ownership-only, git-content-safe; the `.git/objects/XX/` dirs were vh-owned so these weren't a hard blocker, but violated "clean tree"). **RUNBOOK RULE (worldtree-dev, ADOPTED):** any `docker exec` into worldtree containers that WRITES pipeline state runs **`-u 1000`**, never default-root — same genus as the mv footgun (acting without matching the target's constraints; 3rd such slip in one session). **GOTCHA that hid the scope:** `find … -user 0 | head -20` TRUNCATED (the `.old-` dir alone had 153 files, so the first page was all `.old-`) → I "verified clean" off a partial list. Never `head` a scope-defining find; count first (`| wc -l`). **Related blind-spot (muninn-dev):** a root-owned job SUBDIR passes every requeue guard (job_row/dispatch/list_jobs render fine) AND `/health` (contract's `os.access(ingestion_root, W_OK)` tests only the ROOT dir, so a foreign-owned subdir under `pending/` still reports `ingestion_root_writable: true`) — then the uid-1000 gate can't write into it. "Clean board + green /health + failure at next mutation." muninn-dev added an OWNERSHIP column to the standing post-move check to catch it; two green signals both miss a foreign-owned subdir otherwise.


- `[2026-08-02]` **`mv <job> complete/ → failed/` RENAMED the job to `failed` because failed/ didn't exist.** worldtree-dev's round-2 unblock command (`mv /data/state/ingestion/complete/<job> /data/state/ingestion/failed/`) assumed `failed/` existed; on PERSONAL muninn it did NOT (fresh instance — root was `active/ complete/ pending/ sources/`, no `failed/`). `mv src nonexistent/` **renames** src→nonexistent, so job1 became the `failed` dir and job2 nested inside it. Caught on post-move `ls` (failed/ held job *contents*, not two subdirs), reconstructed via complete/ as watcher-safe scratch + rebuilt `failed/` (worldtree:worldtree 755) — NO data loss. **Lessons:** (1) before `mv X into-dir/`, verify the dir EXISTS (`[ -d dir ]`) — an empty `ls dir/ 2>/dev/null` is AMBIGUOUS (missing vs empty), which was the preflight miss that let it through; (2) the correct guard is **`mv -t <targetdir> <src>`** (`--target-directory`): it refuses a MISSING target loudly (rc=1, "No such file or directory", nothing moved) — this is the house convention for queue/state moves now. TESTED by muninn-dev on coreutils 9.1: a **trailing slash does NOT protect** — `mv src failed/` with `failed/` missing STILL silently renames to `failed` (rc=0); "just add the slash" is a false guard. (`mkdir -p failed/` first also works, but `mv -t` inverts the failure from silent-wrong to loud-safe in one flag.) Container `sh` is dash — no `(` in echo strings. **SILENT failure mode (muninn-dev carry-forward):** a misplaced ingestion-state move doesn't crash anything — `list_jobs()` stays OK, loose files are inert; the ONLY symptom is the job quietly absent from the board (`job_row`→None, requeue→not_found/404, looks IDENTICAL to the original block). So after ANY state move, verify the job is actually ON THE BOARD (`job_row` found + guards pass), don't trust mv exit codes — and confirm `job.dispatch.json` survived (requeue refuses a dispatch-less job with the same not_requeueable symptom). Cross-checked + all-clear'd by muninn-dev, who correctly refused to mutate ingestion_root (INV-MG-1) and flagged instead. **DON'T TIDY (round-2 pending):** both DCC + P&P jobs currently REST in personal `failed/` with manifests reading `state: complete` until round-2 requeue runs — deliberate + load-bearing (`requeue` keys on DIRECTORY PLACEMENT, not manifest state); looks wrong to anyone cold, leave it exactly as-is. **Round-2 sequencing:** the requeue is **mimir-dev's** browser flow (pending their operator's board-vs-API ruling); **muninn-dev** is the gate confirmer (runs the post-move board-check inside its custody — the right split, don't reach across INV-MG-1); **infra-ops** = the #381 restart after both jobs go terminal, then later the supervised main-collection sweep. Guard-verified HOLD LIFTED by muninn-dev 02:36Z. **ARC COMPLETE (2026-08-03 ~05:49):** both books terminal — DCC `mimir-6351554e8e8f` 705 concepts + P&P `mimir-f3887c9b97b7` 667, extracted AND indexed, 5/5 phases, 0 failures/truncations (validates the #385 budget fix vs April's 785 control); **#381 restart-after-ingest FIRED** (personal api, healthz/readyz 200 ~25s), retrieval-visibility confirmed (search_library returns DCC+P&P from fiction post-restart); handed ratatoskr-verify go to worldtree-dev. **Delete-sweep precondition NOW MET** — the stale DCC rows in `main` are genuine duplicates of live `fiction` rows, so worldtree-dev's supervised sweep of the ~785 April orphans is unblocked (still comes to me supervised: snapshot + operator-in-loop).


- `[2026-08-02]` **donut voice multi-clip reference (onyx-58 expansion) — TRIED, REVERTED.** Folded the `onyx-58` bundle's 3 Donut clips (seg101/seg110/seg148) in alongside the original seg000 → a 52.0s 4-take concat reference, hoping a longer ref → more robust speaker embedding. A pinned-seed A/B (5 pairs, varied registers, booth `donut-onyx58`) showed the **original single-clip seg000 (16.3s) sounds better** — concatenating disparate takes muddied the timbre more than the extra range helped. Reverted to seg000-alone (live + build-source). **Two durable lessons:** (1) for a faithful clone, a single clean representative take can beat a longer multi-take concat — more reference audio is NOT automatically better when the takes vary. (2) **Emotion steering pulls the output AWAY from the cloned voice fast** (operator's craft rule) — keep donut (and clones) emotion-neutral for fidelity; the gateway only enables emotion when an `emotion_*`/`preset` dial is explicitly sent, so bare `{input,voice}` calls stay pure-clone. `seg148` was diarized SPEAKER_03 but IS Donut (operator-confirmed misdiarize). onyx-58 curated bundle lives in booth `onyx-58` (24h TTL — stash to `/mnt/smithy/voice_clones/` if a future middle-ref experiment is wanted).


- `[2026-08-02]` **Verifying the INDEX is not verifying GROUNDING** (#382). A `search_library` returning wing=fiction hits proves the content is *retrievable*; it does NOT prove the agent (Mimir) *trusts and uses* those hits vs. silently answering from training. I reported "Mimir read Austen back to you" off a grounded-*looking* answer; ratatoskr-dev caught that grounding was intermittent (some sessions discarded the correct hits and substituted training knowledge). Test the harder claim — are the citations note-extracted or model-knowledge? — and reading the DEPLOYED artifact beats trusting the test for "is the fix live."


- `[2026-07-30]` **brokkr's WebSearch "verification" CONFIRMED a hallucination — 3 phantom `microsoft/Mage-Flow-{Base,Turbo,Edit}` repo IDs.** brokkr-smithy-dev handed 3 gated-looking repo IDs for an operator-directed model pull; they don't exist (its own web-search fabricated an arXiv ID + project page, twice). Lesson: the HF **registry API is ground truth** — an unauth 401 ≠ exists (`{"error":"Invalid username or password"}` masks private/gated/nonexistent alike), an authed 404 = phantom, and `author=X&search=Y` refutes existence. API-verify every repo ID before a pull; LLM-summarized web fetches confabulate. auto-memory `reference_verify_hf_repo_ids_before_pull`.


- `[2026-07-30]` **magpie TTS serving — evaluated, ABANDONED.** Pulled `magpie_tts_multilingual_357m` (the one real repo of brokkr's batch) to NFS, stood it up on irv-ml1 (ephemeral NeMo-Speech-`main` container — stock PyPI/NGC NeMo can't load v2607), A/B'd vs Zonos → Zonos wins expressive English decisively, multilingual not needed. Not served; `magpie-nemo` torn down. `.nemo` KEPT on NFS as brokkr's fine-tuning base. auto-memory `project_magpie_tts_eval_rejected`.


- `[2026-07-25]` **Chaining the althing wake-listener arm orphans it.** `reply && althing-wake-listener &` (or spawning `althing-wake-listener` with `&` *inside* a `run_in_background` task) → the `&`-child reparents to init, UNTRACKED by the harness: no fire-notification, and re-arms bounce rc3 off a lock nothing services (mail silently unwatched). Compounding foot-gun: re-arming after a *plain operator turn* (not an actual fire) collides with the still-live prior listener (rc3). FIX: spawn `althing-wake-listener` as its OWN `run_in_background` task, and re-arm ONLY after a real fire (`<task-notification> completed rc0`). Reclaim an orphan with `althing-cli stop-monitor` then re-arm.



_135 older entries archived to archival-memory.md._