Files
vh 6851ecbd0b fix(fv-ml1): pin vLLM KV in bytes on meromero (22 GiB) and coder; gen-small KV 8 -> 5.5 GiB
meromero-rp sized its KV from --gpu-memory-utilization, and vLLM's profile
counts co-booting neighbours as its own non-torch memory. Three boots gave
20.37 / 26.74 / 29.04 GiB of KV, and the 2026-10-05 Docker-move restart cut
GPU 1 free memory to 3,981 MiB, below intern-decision's 32k-token budget.
Coder read negative KV on every co-boot. Both are now pinned, so util only
gates the boot check (meromero util 0.52 -> 0.47, just above its footprint).

GPU 0 plateaus at ~60 MiB free 1-2 days after a boot (Beszel), so
gen-small's KV drops to 5.5 GiB (461,215 tokens, 1.76x) and parakeet-nemo
stays on GPU 0 with room for its 3,840 MiB cap. GPU 3 stays clear.

Applied with playbooks/fv-ml1-kv-pin-20261005.yaml: GPU 1 free 3,981 ->
11,801 MiB, GPU 0 495 -> 5,039 MiB right after boot; all nine seats healthy.
2026-10-05 21:40:28 -07:00
..

meromero-charrp — MeroMero-v2 char-rp prose seat (ana-ml2 GPU0)

The non-thinking, multimodal RP prose seat. Serves the LiteLLM char-rp alias.

  • Model: G4-MeroMero-v2-31B-NVFP4A16 (Gemma-4-31B, home-quantized weight-only NVFP4A16).
  • Host/GPU: ana-ml2, GPU0 (co-located with gen / vllm-aeon-gen).
  • Port: :8016 → LiteLLM char-rp.
  • Context: 256K (--max-model-len 262144). Gemma-4 uses sliding-window attention → KV-efficient, ~2× concurrency at full context.
  • Vision: enabled (image + text). preprocessor_config.json was materialized from the model's own processor_config.json (Gemma4ImageProcessor); audio is config-declared but weightless.
  • Tool-calling: enabled via the gemma4 parser (not qwen3_coder — that's the Qwen-family XML the other seats use). Gemma-4 emits its own native <|tool_call>call:name{...}<tool_call|> syntax.

Tool-calling — the three flags are a set, don't split them

- --tool-call-parser gemma4        # native <|tool_call> syntax; without it ANY tools request 400s
- --enable-auto-tool-choice
- --reasoning-parser gemma4        # absorbs the <|channel>…<channel|> thought markers
- --default-chat-template-kwargs '{"enable_thinking": false}'   # MANDATORY, see below

Why the last one is mandatory: the gemma4 parser reads enable_thinking out of chat_template_kwargs and defaults it to True (vllm/parser/gemma4.py:439). With True, is_reasoning_end() returns False at a new turn, which pre-initialises the parser engine to REASONING — so all plain RP prose lands in reasoning_content and content comes back null, breaking every char-rp consumer. This model's chat_template.jinja:350 already defaults enable_thinking to false, so passing it explicitly renders a byte-identical prompt (verified across plain / tools / post-tool-response / system-prompt shapes) — it changes nothing about generation, it only corrects the parser's state machine.

Without --reasoning-parser gemma4, the post-tool-response turn leaks a literal <|channel>thought\n<channel|> prefix into content (upstream vllm #45834 — the chat template leaves the prompt sitting inside an open channel block).

Verified green after the fix: tool call (streaming + non-streaming), tool-result round-trip, plain prose in content, vision.

  • Tuning: .env — MEROMERO_GPU_MEM_UTIL=0.52 (leaves ~4.6 GB GPU0 headroom), MEROMERO_MAX_MODEL_LEN=262144, MEROMERO_GPU_ID=0.

Replaces the retired char-rp-gguf (Magidonia-24B GGUF / llama.cpp) seat. The quant pipeline lives in ana-ml2:/tank/aimodels/meromero-v2-nvfp4-work/.

Deploy

scripts/deploy-stack.sh ana-ml2 meromero-charrp     # diffs vs live, prompts y/N
# on host: cp .env.example .env; docker compose up -d