Order averaging (Prime, after the 739aa03 spike):
- A decision may set orderings: rotations|all (all only for <= 4 options). Every
ordering goes to the engine in one shared batch.
- The reply keeps each native result and adds combined {probabilities (log-mean),
top, agreement, spread}.
- Through the service on SemIf's labelled sets (252 rows): 78.6% -> 88.1%
(group-bootstrap 95% CI +5.1..+14.3). Unanimous agreement is 94.5% accurate.
Fast kernels: flash-linear-attention 0.5.2 and causal-conv1d 1.7.0 are now the
default build. A/B on the empty GPU 3:
- parity with upstream went from 142/144 to 144/144;
- a ~2k-token /decide went from 169 to 92 ms server-side;
- short 3-rotation batches cost ~3-6 ms more.
triton builds a C shim at runtime, so the image carries gcc. Without it the
warm-up failed and startup failed closed.
Heid bug-hunt panel (4/4 arms, thread 01M3H3F4RR7XBP90KQ3A39H4SX), folded:
- Startup validation: VRAM cap 0 no longer means uncapped (C1); limits must be
>= 1 (S1); the token must be visible ASCII (S2); the calibration file must
exist and parse, with T in [0.05, 20] (S8, and C3's NaN leg).
- The body limit is checked before a chunk is kept, and a Unicode-digit
Content-Length no longer crashes (C2, S3).
- Failures while building the response now get the 500 envelope (C3).
- 429 busy past SEMIF_MAX_QUEUE requests in progress (C6).
- The engine releases memory on every non-validation failure, unchained after
gc; an empty OOM message is handled; 'out of memory' RuntimeErrors map to 503
(C4, C5, S9).
- The entry point forces HF_HUB_OFFLINE (S10). README wording fixed (S5, S6).
- New guard tests close the gaps the arms' mutation grids exposed: early stop of
the body read, a shared-route lock, calibration pass-through, the gc cycle,
the exact caps, TorchEngine.load's arch and device checks, and the offline
entry point.
86 tests.
Deployed on fv-ml1 GPU 1: parity 144/144, OOM and burst release verified, shared
capacity 63/51/26/16 rows at ~140/520/1960/3900 prefix tokens.
183 lines
9.9 KiB
Markdown
183 lines
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Markdown
---
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title: semif-serve
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kind: module-contract
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status: draft
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owner: infra-ops
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created: 2026-09-27
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depends_on:
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- SemIf-OpenJev (MIT) at commit 23cf1f39fc9534fe81437200959b6dfc7106e45a, package semif_phase1
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- Qwen/Qwen3.5-4B at revision 851bf6e806efd8d0a36b00ddf55e13ccb7b8cd0a, BF16
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---
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# semif-serve: an HTTP wrapper around SemIf's direct and shared scorers
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## Purpose
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SemIf decides by reading the logits of the option letters after one forward pass.
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It ships as a batch CLI only. semif-serve loads the model **once** and exposes the
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two torch scorers over HTTP, so fleet callers can ask typed questions without
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decoding. It adds nothing to the scoring itself: every score it returns is what
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`semif_phase1.direct.score` or `semif_phase1.shared.score_shared` returned,
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unchanged, and it adds an optional calibrated view next to it.
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Operator decisions (Prime, 2026-09-27): runs on fv-ml1 GPU 1 under a hard VRAM
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cap; built by infra-ops with a light process (this contract → TDD → heid bug
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hunt); no consumer is named yet.
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## Endpoints
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Every POST takes and returns JSON. Every endpoint except `GET /health` requires
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`Authorization: Bearer <token>`.
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| method | path | body | success |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| GET | `/health` | — | 200 `{status: "ok", semif_commit, model, vram_cap_gib, max_tokens, max_decisions, workloads}` |
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| POST | `/decide` | one SemIf row `{id, state, question, options[2..16]}` + optional `workload` | 200 the `direct.score` dict + optional `calibrated` |
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| POST | `/decide/shared` | `{state, decisions: [{id, question, options}], workload?}` | 200 `{results: [...], timing: {...}}` from `score_shared` |
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`options` items are `{id, description}`, as in SemIf. `state` is a nonempty
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string, object or array. For `/decide/shared`, each decision becomes a SemIf row
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by adding the shared `state`.
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**Calibration.** `workload` is optional. When it names an entry in the
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calibration table, each result gains `calibrated: {workload, temperature,
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probabilities}` with `softmax(option_logits / T)`. The argmax never changes. The
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native `probabilities` and `probability_status` stay untouched. An unknown
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`workload` is a 422. With no `workload`, no `calibrated` key appears.
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**Order averaging (0.1.3, Prime 2026-09-27).** A decision (the `/decide` body, or an
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entry in `decisions`) may set `orderings`, whose default is `"none"`:
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- `"rotations"`: the n cyclic shifts of the caller's option list, starting with
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the caller's order, so every option sits in every position exactly once.
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- `"all"`: every permutation (n!), the caller's order first. It is allowed only
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when n ≤ 4, else 422.
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Every ordering of every decision in the request becomes its own SemIf row
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(`id` = `"<id>#o<k>"`, same state and question, reordered options). **All rows go
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to the engine in ONE `shared` call**, which includes `/decide`. The result for an
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averaged decision is:
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```
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{id, option_ids (caller's order),
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combined: {method, orderings: n, probabilities, top, agreement, spread: {option_id: [min, max]}},
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orderings: [the SemIf result for each ordering, unchanged]}
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```
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- `probabilities`: per ordering, log-softmax of `option_logits`; averaged per
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option id; renormalised; reported in the caller's order.
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- `agreement`: the fraction of orderings whose top option equals `combined.top`.
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- `spread`: each option's min and max native probability across orderings.
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Every expanded row counts toward `SEMIF_MAX_DECISIONS`. `workload` together with
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`orderings` is a 422, because a temperature is fitted per method and none is
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fitted on combined scores yet. Decisions without `orderings` keep the exact
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pre-0.1.3 result shape. Averaging cancels any additive position bias exactly.
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Measured by the 2026-09-27 spike: 3 rotations take SemIf's labelled sets from
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78.6% to 87.7% accuracy, and unanimous agreement is 94.4% accurate.
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## Invariants
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- **INV-1 pass-through.** `option_ids`, `probabilities`, `option_logits`,
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`prompt_sha256`, `prompt_version`, `model` and `probability_status` are exactly
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what SemIf returned. The wrapper never rewrites a score.
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- **INV-2 one model, one inference at a time.** The model is loaded at startup,
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and a process-wide lock serialises every scorer call. The app runs as one worker.
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Scorer calls run off the event loop, so `/health` answers while one is in progress.
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- **INV-3 fail-closed startup.** Startup refuses to serve unless the model sits
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on a CUDA device, torch's arch list includes the card's `sm_XY`, and one
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warm-up decision scores. `device=cpu` is allowed only when set explicitly.
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- **INV-4 VRAM cap.** When `SEMIF_VRAM_CAP_GIB` is set, the process is capped at
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that share of the card (`torch.cuda.set_per_process_memory_fraction`) before
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the model loads. An out-of-memory error during a request is a 503
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`out_of_memory`, followed by `torch.cuda.empty_cache()`. The process stays up.
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**After every scorer call**, when the reserved memory exceeds the post-warm-up
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baseline by more than 512 MiB, the engine calls `empty_cache()`. A burst must not
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keep the card's shared headroom: on 2026-09-27 a 64-decision request left the
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process holding 12.6 GB, leaving scriberr 3.5 GB.
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**Any other scorer failure except `ValueError`** also releases before it is
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reported: it is logged with its traceback, then re-raised unchained as
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`ScoringFailed` after `gc.collect()` + `empty_cache()` (bug hunt C5). A
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`RuntimeError` whose message says "out of memory" (cuBLAS/cuDNN allocation
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failures) counts as an OOM → 503 (S9). An OOM with an empty message is reported
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as "CUDA out of memory" rather than crashing the handler (C4).
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- **INV-5 no network at runtime.** Weights come from the mounted HF cache at the
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pinned revision. The entry point sets `HF_HUB_OFFLINE=1` itself before torch or
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transformers load, so this holds outside the image too (S10).
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- **INV-6 constant-time auth.** Token comparison uses `hmac.compare_digest`. The
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token is ≥ 32 characters of visible ASCII (33–126). Startup refuses anything
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else, because a CR, LF or NUL in the token can never arrive in a header (S2).
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## Limits and errors
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- `SEMIF_MAX_TOKENS` (default 4096) is passed to the scorers. A longer prompt is a
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422, never truncated (SemIf raises).
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- `SEMIF_MAX_DECISIONS` (default 64) caps `decisions` per shared request. It must
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hold 1..max entries, else 422.
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- Request body ≤ `SEMIF_MAX_BODY_BYTES` (default 1 MiB), else 413. The limit is
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checked **before** each chunk is kept, so no more than the limit is ever held
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(C2). A declared `Content-Length` is trusted only if it is ASCII digits (S3).
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- **Admission:** at most `SEMIF_MAX_QUEUE` (default 32) POSTs may be in progress,
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counting both queued and scoring. The next one is refused with 429 `busy`
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before its body is read (C6).
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| status | code | when |
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|---|---|---|
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| 401 | `unauthorized` | missing or wrong bearer |
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| 413 | `request_too_large` | body over the limit |
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| 422 | `invalid_request` | bad JSON shape, a SemIf `ValueError` (validation, token limit, tokenisation), unknown workload, too many decisions |
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| 429 | `busy` | `SEMIF_MAX_QUEUE` requests already in progress |
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| 503 | `out_of_memory` | CUDA OOM during scoring |
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| 500 | `scoring_failed` | any other scorer exception, **or a failure while building the response** from a scorer result (calibration, averaging): always the envelope, never a bare 500 (C3) |
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The error body is `{error: {code, message}}`.
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## Configuration (env)
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`SEMIF_API_TOKEN` (required), `SEMIF_MODEL` (default `Qwen/Qwen3.5-4B`),
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`SEMIF_REVISION` (default the pinned SHA), `SEMIF_DEVICE` (default `cuda`),
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`SEMIF_VRAM_CAP_GIB`, `SEMIF_MAX_TOKENS`, `SEMIF_MAX_DECISIONS`,
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`SEMIF_MAX_BODY_BYTES`, `SEMIF_MAX_QUEUE`, `SEMIF_CALIBRATION` (path to a JSON
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`{workload: T}`).
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Startup validates every value and refuses a bad one with a `ValueError` naming
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the variable (C1, S1, S8):
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- the VRAM cap, when set, is finite and > 0 (`0` used to mean uncapped);
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- every limit is an integer ≥ 1;
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- each T is a finite number, not a bool, in [0.05, 20] (a tiny T overflowed to
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NaN, and the response then failed to render);
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- the calibration file must exist and parse.
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## Tests (TDD, fake scorer: no torch, no model)
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auth required on POSTs and not on /health; a short token is refused at startup;
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`/decide` passes the row through and returns the scorer dict unchanged;
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`/decide/shared` builds rows with the shared state and returns results + timing;
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calibration adds `calibrated` and keeps the argmax; an unknown workload → 422; a
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scorer `ValueError` → 422; the engine's `OutOfMemory` → 503; the torch engine,
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against a fake torch, turns `torch.cuda.OutOfMemoryError` into an **unchained**
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`OutOfMemory` and calls `empty_cache()` only after the failed call's tensors are freed
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(found on the card: a chained exception kept 11.9 GiB allocated after the 503); after
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a call, reserved memory over baseline + 512 MiB is released and at or under it is left
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alone; any
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other exception → 500; malformed
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JSON or a wrong body shape → 422; too many decisions → 422; an oversized body → 413; requests
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are serialised (two concurrent calls never overlap inside the scorer); `/health`
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answers while a scorer call is blocked. **Averaging:** `rotations` sends n rows
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in one shared call, each option once per position, with ids `<id>#o<k>`, and
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cancels a position bias exactly; `all` sends n! rows and is 422 above 4 options;
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agreement and spread are computed from the orderings; a mixed shared request
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(averaged + plain) is one engine call, with results in request order and plain
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results unchanged; expanded rows count toward the cap; `workload` + `orderings`
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→ 422.
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## Acceptance (on fv-ml1, real model; not unit tests)
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1. **Parity:** our `/decide` over SemIf's `authored144` against their committed
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torch predictions (top choice and max probability gap).
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2. **Noise floor:** the same run twice (A-vs-A).
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3. **Negative control:** shuffled option descriptions must break agreement.
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4. **Shared vs direct:** the same rows agree within the A-vs-A floor.
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5. **Speed:** 21 binary criteria over one state, N ≥ 3, p50 + spread.
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6. **VRAM:** the peak at a 4096-token input sets `SEMIF_VRAM_CAP_GIB`.
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