command-center/agent/managed-skills/harness-model-config-wire-capture/SKILL.md

name, description

name	description
harness-model-config-wire-capture	Verify what the omp harness actually sends to a local inference endpoint (reasoning_effort, sampler keys, thinking-off) by pointing a scratch HOME at a logging proxy, instead of inferring it from models.yml comments.

A models.yml comment claiming "the wire sends X" is a claim about the harness, not the engine, and the harness rewrites between the two: compat maps pass unmapped values through, effort ladders clamp before the map applies, and a "disable reasoning" role flag can be implemented as send the lowest effort rather than a switch. Read only the wire.

Recipe (minutes, no production state touched)

1. Logging proxy — python ThreadingHTTPServer on 127.0.0.1:7799 forwarding body+path to the real engine and appending the request body's interesting keys (model, reasoning_effort, max_tokens, temperature, top_p, top_k, chat_template_kwargs) as one JSON line per request. Run it as a named bash service with ready.port so the port is proven before use.
2. Scratch HOME — mkdir -p /tmp/omph/.omp/agent, copy the candidate models.yml + config.yml there, rewrite that provider's baseUrl to http://127.0.0.1:7799/v1. Never edit ~/.omp/agent/ — in dank/command-center the checkout is the deployment.
3. One-shot runs — HOME=/tmp/omph omp --model '<provider>/<id>:<effort>' --no-tools --no-session --no-skills --no-rules --no-extensions --no-pty --no-lsp -p 'Reply with exactly: OK', once per effort (off minimal low medium high xhigh max). Add --print-thoughts when the question is "did thinking actually happen".
4. Read the log, and assert the value after the change. A config edit that never engaged is the failure mode this exists to catch.

Traps found doing this on frank-dragoon (2026-10-21)

• --model X:off does not mean reasoning_effort: off on the wire. Reasoning is switched through compat.reasoningDisableMode (enum includes lowest-effort, none-effort, qwen-enable-thinking-false, qwen-template-false, chat-template-thinking-false); the default derives from thinkingFormat, and lowest-effort quietly keeps thinking alive (:off arrived as "minimal", with a canned 26-token thinking block on every "off" request). none-effort sent "none" → reasoning_tokens: 0.
• Effort levels are clamped to the harness's per-model ladder before reasoningEffortMap applies, so a map row for a level the ladder lacks is inert (:max arrived as xhigh even with max: max). Capture before promising a level works.
• Map lookup is compat.reasoningEffortMap?.[effort] ?? thinking?.effortMap?.[effort] ?? effort — removing a row is a pass-through, never a 400. Claims about rejection must be proven against the engine.
• Engine-side claims: ask for a deliberately bad value and read its 400 — the engine prints its own accepted set (reasoning_effort 'maximum' unsupported; use minimal|low|medium|high|xhigh|max|none).

Engine-side probes that transfer to any OpenAI-compatible endpoint

• Accepted parameters: {model, messages, max_tokens:1, <param>:<value>} → status + error.message. Acceptance is not honouring: report it as acceptance.
• Level honoured? same prompt at max_tokens 2048 per level, compare usage.completion_tokens_details.reasoning_tokens. Equal values across levels = the parameter is ignored; reasoning_closed_at reveals a per-level thinking ceiling.
• Thinking off: chat_template_kwargs {"enable_thinking": false} and top-level enable_thinking: false → expect reasoning_tokens: 0.
• Vision: build a solid-colour PNG in-script (zlib+struct, no PIL), 512×512, ask for the colour in one word with thinking disabled — otherwise the answer is cut off by the thinking block and the probe is inconclusive. A 1×1 image only proves token accounting.

Teardown

Kill the proxy service, remove the scratch HOME, the proxy script and its log. Never leave copies of config.yml/models.yml in /tmp: they carry provider endpoints and sometimes tokens.