# AGENTS.md — serverAppConfigs Agent Rules ## Overview This repository is the single source of truth for the two homelab servers and the FrankBook-Pro Mac mini. It tracks the Podman container stacks and the LLM inference fleet. One repo, one checkout per host, one deploy script. All services run from `/home/dank/serverAppConfigs` on each host (the 2026-08-22 merge absorbed the former `vllmScripts` repo, history preserved). - **Dankserver** (192.168.0.235) — media/library stack (RomM, Copyparty, Calibre-Web, Jellyfin, Plex) plus the `frank-primary` LLM service. - **Dankclaw** (192.168.0.143) — AI/search/dev/observability stack (SearXNG via Gluetun, ComfyUI, OpenWebUI, Hermes, Gitea, Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, Alloy, Pi-hole) plus TWO LLM services: `frank-large` (stock llama.cpp on the gfx1151 iGPU) and `frank-small` (llama.cpp on the RTX 3090). Caddy on Dankclaw reverse-proxies both hosts. - **FrankBook-Pro** (192.168.0.112) — macOS mini running the *arr stack (Prowlarr, Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, Readarr, qBittorrent) as quadlets inside its podman machine; all egress rides the Gluetun WireGuard netns. Deployed via the `frankbook-pro` handler. ## Fleet topology (ACTIVE) | Target | Service | Runtime | Model | Port | |--------|---------|---------|-------|------| | Dankserver | `frank-primary` | unsloth llama.cpp b11030-mix prebuilt (ROCm gfx120X, bundled runtime, root systemd unit) | unsloth Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-GGUF Q_8 (175.30 GiB, 6 split parts) with the shared Q_8 MTP head (depth 2) chained behind `ngram-mod`, BF16 vision (mmproj), layer split `-ts 1,1` across both R9700s with the routed experts + 51B-param n-gram table computed in host RAM (`-ot exps=CPU,per_layer_token_embd.weight=CPU` — the shared-head borrow path needs the last), 262144 ctx single stream (1 slot), mmap on, `--cache-ram 16384` | 7770 | | Dankclaw | `frank-large` | unsloth llama.cpp b11030 prebuilt (ROCm gfx1151, root systemd unit) | unsloth Qwen3.8-27B-GGUF:UD-Q8_K_XL (27B dense, 31.5 GiB) with the z-lab DFlash2 Q4_K_M drafter (depth 4) on the gfx1151 iGPU (Strix Halo LPDDR, 114 GiB GTT), 262144 ctx single stream (1 slot), q8_0 KV, text only | 7770 | | Dankclaw | `frank-small` | mainline llama.cpp master 37b53fd (root systemd unit) | HauhauCS Gemma4-12B-QAT-Uncensored-Balanced Q4_K_M (BF16 mmproj + MTP assistant sidecar, `draft-mtp,ngram-mod`) on the RTX 3090, 1048576 pool / 4 slots of 262,144, q8_0 KV, the fleet's fastest vision endpoint | 7771 | Retired endpoints (`frank-npu`, and every prior runtime) are in the [runbook index](#runbook-index). The full swap history lives in `serverAppConfigs-docs/LLM/index.md` — do not grow it here. ## Repository Layout - `dankserver/` — compose.yaml + Caddyfile + .env.example for the media stack - `dankclaw/` — compose.yaml + Caddyfile + .env.example for the AI stack - `shared/` — homepage, Prometheus, Loki, Alloy, SearXNG configs - `scripts/` — `deploy.sh` / `deploy-plan.py` / `deploy-remote.sh`, LLM serve scripts, systemd units, env tunables, bench harnesses - `old/` — retired LLM scripts (reference only) - `serverAppConfigs-docs/` — knowledge base (Obsidian vault, OKF format) - `tests/` — bats suite + Playwright e2e ## Git Workflow All edits flow through git. Never edit files on a remote machine directly. 1. **Source** the live config from the target machine 2. **Commit** the fetched version here (redact secrets into `.env`) 3. **Edit** locally 4. **Test** — `./tests/run.sh` must pass 5. **Commit and push** — origin is Gitea on Dankclaw 6. **Pull** on the target (`deploy.sh` does this) 7. **Deploy** — `scripts/deploy.sh` plans and dispatches only changed services ## Deployment ``` ./scripts/deploy.sh dankclaw ./scripts/deploy.sh dankserver ./scripts/deploy.sh dankclaw --service searxng ./scripts/deploy.sh dankserver --service frank-primary ./scripts/deploy.sh dankclaw --dry-run ``` The planner maps changed paths to services; the remote runner restarts only the selected service and records its revision outside the checkout. Documentation-only changes are a no-op. LLM services are selected only by their own files — every endpoint (`frank-large`/`frank-small`/`frank-primary`) by its unit/env/serve trio in `scripts/` — so unrelated container changes cannot interrupt inference. Set `FRANK_SUDO_PW` for headless runs on a host without passwordless sudo; the value never enters the repo. ### Deployment completeness (MANDATORY) A deploy is **not complete** when `deploy.sh` exits green. It requires: 1. `./tests/run.sh` — all seams green, and 2. the Playwright e2e suite (`tests/e2e/run.sh`) — runs **automatically** as the `[3/3]` gate at the end of `deploy.sh` against the LIVE fleet; a behavior-affecting deploy that fails it exits `DEPLOY INCOMPLETE`. Bypass only with `--skip-e2e` in an emergency. ```mermaid graph LR A[Edit locally] --> B[Tests pass] --> C[Commit + push] C --> D[deploy.sh plan] --> E[Target pulls ff-only] E --> F[Dispatch selected service] --> G[Per-service health] G --> H[Playwright e2e gate] --> I{green?} I -->|yes| J[Deploy complete] I -->|no| K[DEPLOY INCOMPLETE] ``` ## Boot Persistence & Self-Healing (MANDATORY) Every deployed, working Podman container MUST have a self-healing, boot-persistent Quadlet unit. A container that runs only from `compose.yaml` or a manual `podman run` dies silently at reboot — rootless Podman does not auto-start bare containers, and `restart: unless-stopped` does not survive the explicit stop that shutdown performs. Never report such a service as "up". Unit requirements: - **Boot persistence** — `[Install] WantedBy=default.target`, installed to `~/.config/containers/systemd/.container`, enabled in the user manager, with linger on for the deploy user (`loginctl show-user dank -p Linger` → `Linger=yes`). - **Self-healing** — `Restart=always` (or `on-failure`) with a short `RestartSec`; quadlet health check where the service has one. - **Repo provenance** — the `.container` file lives in this repo (`//quadlet/`), is installed by the deployer, and is covered by the quadlet test seam. The host-side unit is generated state; the repo file is the source of truth. Before declaring a service deployed: `systemctl --user is-enabled ` → `enabled`, `is-active` → `active`, and the container answers its health check. A running container with no unit is a gap: write the unit, test it, deploy it. This rule exists because reboots found gaps twice (2026-08-26: Caddy as a bare compose container never returned; 2026-09-11: five observability services had no units). The observability services now have units under `dankclaw/observability/quadlet/` and their compose definitions were removed — one owner per container name. The stack is **configured and delivering as of 2026-09-17**: a Grafana datasource and the `llm-fleet` dashboard are provisioned from `shared/grafana/provisioning/`, `shared/prometheus/rules/ llm-fleet.yml` loads 5 alert rules + 1 recording rule, and firing rules are delivered: Prometheus → Alertmanager (`dankclaw/observability/quadlet/ alertmanager.container`, loopback :9093) → host-side Signal relay (`scripts/signal-relay.py`, user unit, 192.168.0.143:18093 — the host LAN IP, the one bind a container can reach as `host.containers.internal`; iptables admits loopback, the host and the podman bridge subnet only) → signal-cli account 318311. Prometheus targets read down for structural reasons (HTML-scraped "probes", Gitea metrics off); the remedy is a blackbox exporter. See `serverAppConfigs-docs/Infrastructure/Observability.md`. ## Testing Tests are mandatory before commit (`bats` required on the dev machine): ``` ./tests/run.sh ``` Seams: compose validity, env consistency (no leaked secrets), Caddyfile validity, quadlet units, docs completeness **including vault link integrity**, script syntax (shell + python), LLM unit integrity, LLM secret hygiene, deployment flow, service-scoped planning, homepage config/pages/deploy/checker, and `e2e_scaffold` — which fails if a Playwright spec file's number prefix is in no project, because such a spec silently never runs. See `serverAppConfigs-docs/Architecture/Testing Policy.md`. ## Secret Rules - Never commit real secrets. The live Gitea DB password and sudo password are test-enforced leak checks. - `.env` files are git-ignored; commit only `.env.example` with placeholders. Exception: `scripts/*.env` LLM tunables (paths and numbers, never credentials). - Do not document passwords anywhere in the repo. SSH keys are the auth mechanism; `FRANK_SUDO_PW` covers headless sudo and never enters the repo. - **A token passed as `curl -H "Authorization: Bearer …"` is world-readable.** It lands in `/proc//cmdline`, so any `ps`/`pgrep -a` on the host prints it — that leaked an HF token into a session transcript on 2026-09-16, while merely checking whether a download was still running. Pass secrets out of band (`curl -K ` carrying the header, or `HF_TOKEN` in the environment for `hf`/`hf_transfer`) and never `pgrep -a` a fetch command that carries an auth header. ## External Exposure Policy (MANDATORY) Every Caddy-proxied service is either behind the auth chain (Anubis :8923 → Authentik embedded outpost) or explicitly internal-only — no public DNS name, no vhost. New services default to internal-only until guarded. When guarding a new vhost — provider first, then route: 1. Create the outpost proxy provider FIRST (`external_host` = exact vhost URL with trailing slash; `internal_host = http://caddy:8017`). If the vhost flips first, authenticated traffic hits the outpost error page. 2. Flip the vhost to `reverse_proxy anubis:8923` with `header_up X-Real-Ip {remote_host}`, and add the post-auth `@ host ` handler on the `http://:8017` listener routing to the real upstream. 3. Anubis guard set, Caddy TLS edge, and outpost provider list change together in one deploy. 4. Service-to-service traffic targets internal addresses (`loki:3100`), never the public hostname — non-browser clients cannot solve challenges. Exempt categories (document the reason in the vhost comment): the IdP itself (`auth.`), git smart-HTTP endpoints, services with their own complete auth. ## Deletion & Trash Policy (MANDATORY) Never `rm`. Move deletions into trash so they stay recoverable: 1. In-repo files → `.AGENTTRASH/` beside the item's directory. 2. Elsewhere → dated staging dir `~/.AGENTTRASH/YYYYMMDD-topic`. 3. List staged items and sizes; wait for explicit user approval to purge. `rm`, `rm -rf`, and `git clean -f` are forbidden without explicit permission. `git * --no-verify` is forbidden. The trash is a temporary hold, not an archive. ## Benchmarking Policy (MANDATORY) **STOP the production service BEFORE benchmarking** — these servers serve real users, and a bench beside a live service starves the GPU and corrupts results. Use the runtime's own harness: `llama-bench` for every llama.cpp endpoint (all three are llama.cpp now). Rolling your own bench requires asking first. Scratch ports are not used on LLM hosts — a test process cannot share the single GPU anyway; validate against the service itself. This covers **any GPU experiment, not just benchmarks** — including a bare 2-rank RCCL/`torch.distributed` probe. On 2026-09-16 one such probe was run against the live service "because it only needs 200 MB of VRAM"; the host went hard down ~20 minutes later (no ARP reply, 100% ICMP loss from two subnets, no recovery — a power cycle was required). A hung AQL dispatch wedging the GPU driver is the plausible mechanism, and this host has precedent for going unreachable until a power cycle. If an experiment needs GPUs, stop and mask first, or use a host that serves nobody. Telling an off machine from a wedged one: `ip neigh show ` from a peer — FAILED means off/NIC dead, while a merely wedged kernel usually still answers ARP. 1. Stop and mask (self-healing would restart it): - Dankclaw `frank-large` (root unit, stock llama.cpp on the iGPU): `sudo systemctl stop frank-large && sudo systemctl mask frank-large` - Dankclaw `frank-small` (root unit, llama.cpp on the 3090): `sudo systemctl stop frank-small && sudo systemctl mask frank-small` - Dankserver `frank-primary` (root unit, llama.cpp on the 2x R9700): `sudo systemctl stop frank-primary && sudo systemctl mask frank-primary` 2. Bench. 3. Unmask and start; verify `curl http://192.168.0.:7770/health`. **CRITICAL:** never `systemctl disable` a system unit on these hosts — it deletes the unit file from `/etc/systemd/system/`, not just the symlink. `mask` symlinks to `/dev/null` and is safe/reversible. ## Model Config (harness) The harness reaches the fleet through `.omp/agent/models.yml` in the operator's home — `/home/blank/.omp/agent/models.yml` on the dev box, which is where the harness runs; there is no copy on the servers. Each provider is one HOST:PORT; each model `id` is the served alias: `frank-primary` → `192.168.0.235:7770`, `frank-large` → `192.168.0.143:7770`, `frank-small` → `modelRoles`. Resolution rules: the default model resolves as a `defaultProvider` + `defaultModel` pair (the provider must serve the model); a subagent override uses a bare model `id`, which resolves only when unique across providers. Two ports on one host need two providers — the file cannot express "same host, different port". When renaming a service, retiring an endpoint, or moving a model: update the provider block, model `id`, `contextWindow`, `maxTokens`, `input` in `models.yml`, then fix every `modelRoles` entry that named the old endpoint — a role pointing at a provider the file does not define fails at call time. As of 2026-09-26 both `frank-small` and `frank-primary` accept images (`input: [text, image]`) — frank-primary loads the BF16 mmproj explicitly (this build never autoloads projectors); `frank-large` remains text-only because its stock llama.cpp deployment loads no vision projector (the mmproj is not loaded). Note also that the reasoning channel differs by runtime: llama.cpp endpoints emit `reasoning_content`, vLLM emits `reasoning` — academic since the 2026-09-26 swap, as every endpoint in the fleet is llama.cpp now. There is **no audio** input anywhere in the fleet except frank-small: that capability left with the FLM NPU endpoint on 2026-09-11 and returned on 2026-09-17 with the Gemma4 projector's audio encoder (frank-small transcribes WAV verbatim even though `audio` is omitted from its `input` list — OMP's schema rejects it). ### frank-large — stock llama.cpp Qwen3.8-27B UD-Q8_K_XL (Dankclaw, ACTIVE) The unsloth llama.cpp prebuilt `app-b11030-mix-5ff778e` (ROCm gfx1151, `/home/dank/GitPackages/unsloth-llama-b11030/`, bundles its own ROCm runtime — no host SDK gate) as a **root systemd unit** (`scripts/frank-large.service`, `User=dank`), serving `unsloth/Qwen3.8-27B-GGUF:UD-Q8_K_XL` (27B dense, 31.5 GiB, sha256-verified) on port 7770 from the gfx1151 iGPU. One stream, full 262,144 ctx (the model's native window, `PARALLEL_SLOTS=1`), DFlash2 spec decode (the z-lab `Qwen3.8-27B-DFlash2-Q4_K_M` drafter, depth 4, `SPEC_DRAFT_N_MAX=4`), reasoning extracted to `reasoning_content`, and **no vision projector**. It replaced the Kairic Edge ROCmFPX build (jcbtc Qwen3.8-27B-IU4-Kairic-Edge), which had replaced the unsloth Qwen3.8-Flash-Next UD-IQ4_XS. The spec method is DFlash2 (block-diffusion drafter) at depth 4. The drafter is loaded via `--model-draft`; the chain is `--spec-type draft-dflash` with `--spec-draft-device ROCm0`. KV is **q8_0** (the unsloth b11030 build does not support fp8 KV; q8_0 is the highest-precision 8-bit option, ~8 GiB at 262k). The serve script (`scripts/serve-frank-large.sh`) validates binary → main GGUF → drafter and exits with a pointer message if any is missing, then `exec`s `llama-server` with `--jinja --alias frank-large --chat-template-kwargs '{"preserve_thinking":true}' --chat-template-file $TEMPLATE_FILE` (the Qwen-Sharp v22.4.0 template; without `--chat-template-file` the binary falls back to the built-in `peg-native` template, which produces a ~73,600-token prompt for a ~250-token request). The iGPU addresses **114 GiB** (the GTT aperture over the shared LPDDR, `gtt_total` in `/sys/class/drm/card1/device/`; `rocm-smi`'s 2 GiB "dedicated" is not the budget). The 27B dense model (31.5 GiB) is mmap'd in with `--n-gpu-layers 999`; budget at 262k ≈ 41-43 GiB (weights + KV + buffers), leaving ~71 GiB of aperture headroom. The 8 GiB prompt-cache budget (`CACHE_RAM=8192`) is the qualified config. Fetch: `scripts/download-frank-large.sh` (per-file, each file verified against its declared byte count + sha256; `--verify-only` re-checks). Runbook: `serverAppConfigs-docs/LLM/frank-large-unsloth-qwen38-27b-q8xl.md`. Rollback: [[frank-large-kairic-edge-qwen38-27b]] (payload and runtime intact on disk). ### frank-small — llama.cpp on the RTX 3090 (Dankclaw, ACTIVE) Mainline llama.cpp master `37b53fd` (CUDA build with `-DGGML_CUDA_FA_ALL_QUANTS=ON`) as a **root systemd unit** (repo `scripts/frank-small.service`, `relink_unit`ed into `/etc/systemd/system/`), serving `HauhauCS/Gemma4-12B-QAT-Uncensored-HauhauCS-Balanced` at Q4_K_M. The MTP head is a SEPARATE assistant file (`mtp-gemma-4-12B-it.gguf`, 4 nextn layers) loaded via `--model-draft`; the draftless **ngram-mod** matcher chains behind it in the same `--spec-type` value. BF16 mmproj, port 7771, q8_0 KV, `CTX_SIZE=1048576` / `PARALLEL=4` (four FULL 262,144-token slots — the measured card ceiling), batch **8192/1024**, greedy default. Deployed flags are in `scripts/frank-small.env`; the serve script refuses to start if the weights, the projector, the sidecar or the binary are missing. Verified at deploy (2026-09-17): `/v1/models` reports `frank-small`; a chat completion returns content plus `reasoning_content`; a tool call returns `tool_calls`; an image request is answered from the projector; an `input_audio` WAV transcribes verbatim. Post-tuning live numbers at max length: pp@254k ~965 t/s, tg@253k 226–302 t/s with ~94% draft acceptance; idle 23,300 MiB of 24,576. The throughput sweep (and why ubatch 2048 OOMs the draft's pp buffer, and why draft depth 4 + poll 100 is WORSE at long ctx) is tabled in the runbook. Runbook: `serverAppConfigs-docs/LLM/frank-small-gemma4-12b.md`. Rollback: [[frank-small-qwen38-gsq-rco]]. ### frank-primary — llama.cpp Qwen3.8-Flash-Next Q8_0 (Dankserver, ACTIVE) unsloth llama.cpp **b11030-mix prebuilt** (ROCm gfx120X, commit `6ba30d05b`, bundled ROCm runtime at `/home/dank/GitPackages/unsloth-llama-b11030/`, **root systemd unit** `scripts/frank-primary.service`, `User=dank`) serving `unsloth/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-GGUF` at **Q_8** — 175.30 GiB across six split parts under `/home/dank/models/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-GGUF/Q8_0/`, fetched by `scripts/download-frank-primary.sh` (per-file sha256 + byte-count verified) — on **both** Radeon AI PRO R9700s. Replaced the Lucebox DS4.1 quadlet (hours old) on 2026-09-26, which had replaced radiance frank-medium the same day. **Placement: compute the experts in RAM, never stream them.** Layer split `-ts 1,1` with `-ngl 999`; the routed experts and the 51B-param n-gram (PLE) table are overridden to CPU (`-ot exps=CPU,per_layer_token_embd.weight=CPU`) and computed from the mmap page cache — the x4-pair law (streaming over PCIe loses at 3.7 t/s; computing in RAM does not care). `per_layer_token_embd.weight=CPU` is REQUIRED by the shared MTP head's borrow path (a GPU-resident borrow crashes the draft load with `invalid vector subscript`). Dense weights, attention, the BF16 projector and the MTP head sit on the cards (~29 GiB); mmap must stay on (`--no-mmap` forces the table into anonymous memory → silent cgroup kill) and the PLE tensor must never carry a GPU target (23 → 13.4 t/s when tried). `--cache-ram 16384`; KV is the hybrid DeltaNet/QSA pattern, a fraction of the dense-model cost. **Spec chain `draft-mtp,ngram-mod`, depth 2.** The shared Q_8 head (`MTP/mtp-Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-shared-Q8_0.gguf`, 2,786,568,256 B — unsloth's recommended pairing) loads via `--model-draft` and borrows the target's embedding tensors; `ngram-mod` chains behind it (draftless, so legal). The dankclaw UD-IQ4_XS deployment of the same model family ran this head at depth 2 with 0.83–0.92 acceptance. ngram-mod prints no startup banner — identify it behaviourally (`draft_n` > 0 where text repeats). **Vision explicit, reasoning deepseek-format.** `--mmproj` names the BF16 projector (this build never autoloads one — a server without the flag comes up healthy and text-only and answers image requests 500). `--jinja` with the GGUF's embedded template; `--reasoning-format deepseek` fills `reasoning_content`. The Qwen3.8 template gates `reasoning_effort` to `{xhigh, medium, low}` — folded by `reasoningEffortMap` in `models.yml`. One stream, full 262,144 ctx (`PARALLEL_SLOTS=1`); greedy server default, Qwen-recommended sampling rides `compat.extraBody` per request. `--flash-attn on`, batch 8192 / ubatch 512 (the measured ROCm optimum class), port 7770, alias `frank-primary`. Files: `scripts/frank-primary.service` (root unit, relinked to `/etc/systemd/system/`), `scripts/serve-frank-primary.sh` (validates binary + all 6 parts + drafter + mmproj, then `exec`s llama-server), `scripts/frank-primary.env` (tunables; the bind address is `BIND_HOST` — never a bare `HOST`, HIP reads it). The deployer's `deploy_llm_primary` gates every artifact at its declared byte count (`stat -c %s`, never `wc -c`), retires the lucebox quadlet to `~/.AGENTTRASH/20260926-llamacpp-cutover/`, waits out port 7770, relinks/enables/restarts the root unit and waits up to 1800 s for `/health` (cold start page-ins ~175 GiB). Runbook: `serverAppConfigs-docs/LLM/frank-primary-llamacpp-qwen38-flash-next-q8.md`. Rollback: the lucebox DS4.1 material on host (image `localhost/lucebox-rocm:gfx1201` + the 377 GiB payload + the archived quadlet files in `dankserver/.AGENTTRASH/20260926-llamacpp-cutover/`) — see [[frank-primary-lucebox-ds4]]; the Qwen payload stays fetched, so a forward re-swap is a redeploy. ## Key Lessons Learned Durable operational lessons from the fleet's history. Full detail in the linked runbooks. **PCIe / multi-GPU** - **RCCL collectives need PCIe atomics on every participating GPU.** RCCL's kernels carry a hidden hostcall-buffer parameter; ROCr refuses to dispatch them when the device has no atomics, and the failure surfaces as `hipErrorIllegalState` ("the operation cannot be performed in the present state") from `hipLaunchKernel`, not as anything that names atomics. The value is consumed at driver probe time, so writing the AtomicOp Requester bit with `setpci` at runtime changes nothing. Check the *chain*: `lspci -vv -s ` and every upstream bridge must show `AtomicOpsCap: Routing+` (a `Routing-` bridge is a hardware wall), and the endpoint's Device Control 2 (`setpci -s CAP_EXP+28.w`) must have bit 6 set. AMD desktop platforms put one card on CPU root ports (atomics work) and the rest behind the chipset (usually not) — that asymmetry is what blocked frank-medium's TP=2. A one-card collective proves nothing: NCCL short-circuits at `world_size=1`. - **That wall was physical, and it was fixed on 2026-09-20 by a board swap.** Both paths that put two cards on CPU root ports were: an M.2→PCIe x4 riser into a *CPU-attached* M.2 slot, or a board whose CPU lanes bifurcate to x8/x8. dankserver took the second: **ASUS ProArt B850-Creator WiFi NEO**, `PCIEX16_1` + `PCIEX16_2` at x8/x8 Gen5 on root ports `00:01.1` / `00:01.3`, every bridge now `Routing+` and **both endpoints `ReqEn+`** — the exact precondition the old test plan named. Bandwidth was never the constraint (a 27B TP=2 allreduce at batch 4 is ≈10 MB per token-step, ≈1.4 ms at Gen4 x4 and under 0.4 ms at Gen5 x8). **Proven on the same day.** vLLM's R4D one-shot allreduce runs TP=2 here and frank-medium serves on it; llama.cpp's RCCL path was built too (`GGML_HIP_RCCL=ON`) and its tensor mode measured — real collective, slower shape. Note the collective choice matters: TheRock's RCCL builds lack gfx1201 device code (`invalid device function`), which is why R4D is the path vLLM uses at all. Evidence matrix and the measured three-arm verdict: [[Dual-R9700-Cooperation]]. - **When a GPU collective dies, read the runtime, not the framework.** The message that identified the cause came from `AMD_LOG_LEVEL=3` (`Pcie atomics not enabled, hostcall not supported` → `AQL dispatch failed!`), not from vLLM or RCCL. `AMD_LOG_LEVEL` costs one env var and prints the failing HIP call with its return code. - **The software path that puts both cards on ONE model without a collective: llama.cpp's layer split.** On the old board vLLM could not do it in any of its parallelisms — TP needs an allreduce, PP needs the same p2p primitive, and both died on the card that could not dispatch an RCCL kernel. `--split-mode layer` in llama.cpp needs no collective: layers are distributed in order and only the boundary activation crosses PCIe, once per forward pass. Measured here: 1991 t/s prefill / 18.8 tok/s decode layer-split, against 272 / 26.3 tensor (butterfly fallback). This was what `frank-medium` ran until 2026-09-20, when the board swap made collectives legal and radiance TP=2 beat it on every axis (95.8 vs 45.7 t/s decode, 0.21 vs 0.72 s TTFT, 259 vs 72 t/s burst-4) — see [[frank-medium-radiance-mxfp4]]; the llama shape is the rollback target [[frank-medium-llamacpp-dflash2]]. - **Layer split is also the cross-vendor answer — and `-ot` is what cannot be combined with it.** On Dankclaw (2026-09-16) a CUDA 3090 + Vulkan iGPU layer split ran a real two-device graph: `-dev CUDA0/Vulkan1 -sm layer -ts 0.15/0.85` held 14,994 MiB on the 3090 and gave 27.2 tok/s with 268.5 t/s prefill at 64k depth (iGPU alone: 25.8 / 231.8). What does NOT work is per-tensor placement across devices: `--override-tensor =` sets `has_tensor_overrides()`, a REQUIRED term of the scheduler's `pipeline_parallel` flag (llama-context.cpp:433 — the only place in the tree that reads it), and that flag is what sets `n_copies` in `ggml_backend_sched_new`; with `n_copies == 1` a pre-allocated weight on a non-primary device has no backend and the graph aborts (`ggml-backend.cpp:941`, reported with the leaf's own op name `(NONE)`). `=CPU` is the only override target that works, because the CPU backend is last in the list. Pure Vulkan changes nothing here — the gate is the override, not the driver mix. See [[x4-pair-experiment]]. - **A host↔3090 link at x4 measures 6.72 GB/s, and that is a design constraint, not a detail.** `pcie-link-test.cu` on Dankclaw (2026-09-16, services stopped): pinned H2D 6.72 GB/s, D2H 6.60 GB/s — 85 % of the Gen4 x4 ceiling — with async no better than sync and pageable within 1 % of pinned, i.e. the copies are link-limited rather than staging-limited (the usual "pageable costs 2x" rule does not apply here). The card is x16-capable and the Strix Halo port beneath it is x8-capable (`LnkCap: 16GT/s, Width x8` on `00:03.1`), so the x4 lives in the adapter or cable; the link idles at 2.5 GT/s x4 and trains up under load. Consequence for any engine that *streams* weights across it: a 3 MiB slab costs 474 us, and a 111 GiB A3B model needs ~1.70 GiB of active experts per token ⇒ **3.7 tok/s** (4.6 with a 20 % resident cache), against **20.46 tok/s** for the same model with the experts *computed* in host RAM by llama.cpp (`-ot exps=CPU`, whence the link carries activations only) and 25–26.5 on the iGPU. Streaming over PCIe loses; computing in RAM does not care. FreeToken — expert LRU in host RAM, exactly this streaming shape — also loads only modelopt block-FP8 safetensors for `qwen3_5_moe`, so a Q4_K_M GGUF is unloadable there before bandwidth is even the question. See [[x4-pair-experiment]]. **ROCm / GPU** - **Layer split was the deployed shape on both multi-device llama.cpp services, for two different reasons.** On Dankserver it was the *only* way both R9700s served one model (no collective could be dispatched on card #2) until the 2026-09-20 board swap; frank-medium now runs radiance TP=2 instead. On a RCCL-less fork build it is also the fast one: tensor parallel falls back to a butterfly allreduce and collapses prefill ~7x (measured 271.8 vs 1991 t/s). Pin the spec-decode drafter to one device — an unpinned draft under tensor mode aborts the KV build, and on a layer split the natural home is the card that ends up holding the target's last layers. - **Bundling a ROCm runtime next to a llama.cpp binary: `cp -r SRC DST/` is a trap.** With a missing `DST`, cp creates `DST` as a copy of `SRC` and drops one directory level. rocBLAS and hipBLASLt look for their device code at a fixed depth (`../lib/rocblas/library`, `../lib/hipblaslt/library/`), and the flattened copy fails at *request* time, not load time: the engine reads the weights, answers `/health` and dies on the first completion with `Cannot read .../TensileLibrary.dat: No such file or directory for GPU arch : gfx1201`. Declare the destination, then copy the contents. - **mmap must stay on** for the big-PLE models: `--no-mmap` forces the ~50 GiB PLE table into anonymous memory → silent cgroup kill, dmesg is the only evidence. mmap pages ARE page cache. Never pin the PLE tensor with `-ot` (23 → 13.4 t/s). - **HIP reads bare env vars** `TEMP`, `HOST`, `GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE`. Serve scripts export env files with `set -a`, so a tunable named `TEMP` leaks into HIP (`TEMP=1.0` sent the JIT cache to path `1.0` and segfaulted every load, fixed 2026-08-13 by renaming to `TEMPERATURE`). Never name a tunable these; check with `strings /opt/rocm-*/lib/libamdhip64.so.* | grep -xE "TEMP|HOST|GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE"`. - **`-DGGML_CUDA_FA_ALL_QUANTS=ON` is required** for q8_0 KV + flash attention on CUDA builds; without it prefill collapses ~12x (95 vs 1300+ t/s, measured 2026-08-17). - **Flash-Next MTP heads do not load on any current loader** — they need full per-layer `blk..hc_attn_norm.weight` and ship only `blk.48` (verified 3x). Don't re-attempt without new loader support. - **QSA flash-attn assert:** `GGML_ASSERT(a-type == GGML_TYPE_F32)` on qwen4exp needs `scripts/patches/qwen4exp-qsa-f32-mask.patch` — but only on the agentionai FAST layer set; the kingjones STRIX set works unpatched. - **GPU budget on Dankclaw is the GTT aperture (~114 GiB), not the rocm-smi "dedicated" figure.** The Radeon 8060S (gfx1151) reports 116,732 MiB (`llama-server --list-devices`; `gtt_total=122402963456` in `/sys/class/drm/card1/device/`). The older "64 GiB, SVM-backed" lesson was already stale — the CIRU Orca predecessor held 92.6 GiB of weights on the iGPU. `free`/`dmidecode` show the CPU-side carve-out — intentional, do not change. **Load / crash diagnosis** - Model load is slow (minutes cold); health returns 503 while loading; do not kill the process. `deploy.sh` waits up to 20 minutes (`LLM_WAIT`). On halogen, the FIRST request after a (re)start can go silent ~45–60 s (health `engine_unresponsive`, 503s) and then self-recovers — do not restart over it. - Crash-loop procedure: (1) `journalctl -u -n 100` + kernel line via `journalctl -k` (segfault at address 8 in `libamdhip64` = NULL unref in HIP); (2) run serve script, then raw binary — different outcome isolates the env file; (3) `gdb -batch -ex run -ex "bt 25" --args bash scripts/serve-.sh` — llama-server buffers stdout and loses the log tail on SIGSEGV; trust gdb, not the log; (4) `amdgpu: SVM mapping failed` spam is a symptom, not a root cause. - Journal signatures: client abort logs `W srv stop: cancel task, id_task = N`; natural stop logs only `slot release` with `truncated = 0`. The server never preempts a running generation; excess tasks queue when slots are busy. **Host memory / swap** - Swap resize ordering: create and `swapon` the replacement BEFORE `swapoff` of the old one, or live pages must land in RAM that `MemAvailable` overstates. Dankclaw swap (64 GiB at `/swap.img`, fstab-driven) protects the co-tenants, not frank-large — pinned weights don't swap, and paging the KV pool is worse than the OOM it prevents. - Host swap state is invisible to `deploy.sh` (no repo file) — check `swapon --show` before reasoning about headroom. **Runtime-specific guards** - **Kairic Edge** (if ever re-deployed): the pinned CK commit needs `third_party/composable_kernel/include/ck/config.h` generated manually (untracked; `git clean` removes it), and its greedy-argmax fastpath rejects non-greedy requests and reasoning budgets. Re-test chat before production. - **FastMTP sidecar**: build must be commit `4df29be4` + the HauhauCS patch; stock binaries fail the draft load with a tensor-shape mismatch. **llama.cpp serving** - **MTP is a property of the FILE, not of the flags.** The `-mtp` GGUF build carries the head as `blk..nextn.*` (`qwen35.nextn_predict_layers = 1`); `--spec-type draft-mtp` then sets `load_mtp`, and the draft context runs on the MAIN model's weights (`shares_model`), so there is no second copy of a 12 GiB model in VRAM and no `-md` argument. The plain build has no MTP tensors at all, and pointing `--model-draft` at the file would load it twice. - **What can be chained, and what cannot.** `--spec-type a,b` builds every enabled implementation and chains drafting through them, in a fixed internal order (ngram types first, then the drafters — CLI order is irrelevant). The gate is `ctx_dft`: **draftless** types (the ngram family) are added unconditionally, while `draft-mtp`, `draft-dflash`, `draft-dspark` and `draft-eagle3` all require a draft CONTEXT. So a chain may hold one context-backed drafter plus any number of ngram types — `draft-dflash,ngram-mod` is legal and measured (2.6x the drafter alone on prompt-echo traffic, byte- identical to it on prose at the fleet's 48/64 window) — but `draft-mtp,draft-dflash` dies at load: *"context type MTP requested but model doesn't contain MTP layers"*, because MTP builds its context against whatever model the draft context holds. Two context-backed types cannot share one process, and MTP's head only loads when MTP **is** the draft model. - **A drafter's KV scales with the TARGET's context, and its window policy decides how much that costs.** The draft context is built with `cparams.n_ctx = llama_n_ctx(ctx_tgt)` (`common/speculative.cpp`) — there is no flag to cap it — so a drafter that declares NO sliding window caches the whole window on whatever device `--spec-draft-device` names. Swapping DFlash2 (`dflash.attention.sliding_window = 2048`, ~40 MiB of draft KV) for DSpark (no window; 5 layers x 2 x 8 kv heads x 128 dim x 2 B = 20 KiB per position, so **5.0 GiB at 262144**) put ROCm1 at 33.9 GB of 34.2 GB and killed the FIRST draft graph capture with `ROCm error: out of memory` — after the model had loaded and `/health` had answered. Read `sliding_window` out of the drafter's GGUF header before sizing any spec-decode deployment, and prefer a skewed `-ts` over a context cut when the full window matters. The pair was swapped DFlash2 -> DSpark -> DFlash2 in one day (2026-09-16) and the round trip moved the balance point FOUR layers (~4.3 GiB of headroom, 40:25 -> 36:29), which is the practical size of the effect. See [[frank-medium-llamacpp-dflash2]]. - **`--ubatch-size` has an OPTIMUM on this stack, not a plateau — and its compute buffers land about TWICE as heavy on the card that holds the output layers and the drafter.** Measured on frank-medium 2026-09-16 at the deployed shape (262144 over two slots, a 64k prefill measured at 64k depth, `scripts/bench-batch-ubatch.sh`): prefill runs 1046 tok/s at ubatch 256, 1068 at 384, **1193 at 512 (the peak)**, 1135 at 768, 1152 at 1024, 1151 at 1280, 1165 at 1536, 1148 at 1792 and 1078 at 2048. Both ends lose — below 512 the SMs are not saturated, and 2048 is 10 % off the peak — and 512 -> 1536 costs ROCm0 1.30 GiB and ROCm1 2.41 GiB to go 2.4 % SLOWER. The logical `--batch-size` does not matter: 2048 through 8192 land within 2 % of each other at a fixed ubatch and use identical VRAM. Decode never moves at all (15.88 tok/s at depth 65536 on every cell). Because the buffers are asymmetric, a split balanced at one batch is unbalanced at another: 512 -> 1536 shifted frank-medium's balance by a layer, so 36:29 became 35:30. Re-measure the balance after changing the batch. (8192/2048 failed to allocate its 2020 MiB pp buffer here under the DSpark drafter, when ROCm1 had 0.08 GiB free. That was a CONTIGUITY failure, not a total-bytes one, and no totals model — the sweep's or the seam's — can see it.) - **One `-ts` step is one LAYER, and a hybrid stack's layers are not the same size.** qwen35 is 16 x (3 Gated DeltaNet + 1 Gated Attention), so a step is worth ~0.43 GiB on a DeltaNet boundary and ~1.43 GiB on a full-attention one (0.45 GiB of weights plus ~1.0 GiB of its own f16 KV at 262144) — both measured on frank-medium. Balance by measurement, never by interpolating between two splits; an affine fit reproduces the deployed point and overstates the gaps in between. `tests/frank_medium_unit.bats` encodes that fit as a gate. See [[frank-medium-llamacpp-dflash2]]. - **ngram-mod prints no startup banner.** The load log shows the drafter's `adding speculative implementation 'draft-dflash'` and nothing at all for the matcher, so a chain can look unengaged while it is working. Identify it behaviourally (`draft_n` > 0 only where text repeats) or by the per-task `draft acceptance = ... mean len = ...` line. It costs no VRAM (a 64 MiB host-RAM hash table) and its window decides which traffic it can see: too short and it proposes on ordinary prose fragments, which costs verification without acceptance. - **`--jinja` is what `tools` needs.** On 2026-09-16 a subagent died with `500 tools param requires --jinja flag`, from the ik_llama.cpp runtime that then served frank-large: every tool-using agent on that endpoint was broken and the failure read like a model fault. Mainline llama.cpp 0.4.1 defaults `--jinja` on and the serve script pins it; halogen also accepts `tools` and returns `tool_calls`. Check tool support before routing a role at an endpoint. - **Quantized KV on CUDA needs `GGML_CUDA_FA_ALL_QUANTS=ON`** — the same option and the same ~12x prefill collapse described in the ROCm note above. f16 KV needs nothing; frank-small ran f16 for that reason until 2026-09-17, when `build-cuda` was rebuilt with the option ON so the endpoint could take q8_0 KV. - **llama-bench separates a LIST with `/` and SWEEP values with `,`.** Both `-dev` and `-ts` follow this: `-dev CUDA0,Vulkan1` is two *single-device* configurations, never one two-device run, and `-ts 0.85,0.15` is two sweep values each becoming `[0.85, 0, …]` / `[0.15, 0, …]`, i.e. device 0 takes everything. Write `-dev A/B -ts x/y`. This artifact produced a wrong fleet conclusion on 2026-09-16 — "CUDA + Vulkan cannot serve one model", with two bogus OOMs that were really "all 111 GiB on the 24 GiB card" — and the bench table's own `dev` column was printing the truth the whole time. Any placement-dependent number needs an independent check: sample the other device's memory (`nvidia-smi`) while the run is loaded. - **A model's own template can REJECT the harness's thinking level.** Qwen3.8's template accepts only `xhigh`, `medium` and `low` for `reasoning_effort` and raises on anything else — HTTP 500, not a clamp — so the harness's levels must be folded onto that set in `models.yml` (`compat.reasoningEffortMap`). A role whose level is unmapped fails on its FIRST request, and the failure names Jinja, not the model: every subagent on `frank-small` died with `Unexpected reasoning effort high` until `high: xhigh` was added on 2026-09-16. Halogen accepts the wider set, so the two entries legitimately differ. **Ops** - Never `pkill -f` a pattern that appears in your own command line — it kills your ssh session. Use `pkill -x `. - Both hosts allow passwordless sudo for the deploy user. Use plain `sudo` in committed scripts (no `echo pw | sudo -S`); `FRANK_SUDO_PW` covers hosts without it. - ComfyUI on Dankclaw runs with **GPU access** (`/dev/kfd` + `/dev/dri` via `AddDevice`, `GroupAdd=keep-groups`, plus the udev rule that makes those nodes world-writable — user-unit spawns carry no supplementary groups). It must NOT pass `--cpu`: the gfx1151 ROCm wheels exist and the unit's `--cpu` era ended 2026-09-16, when a stale device-less container was found restarted 9,146 times (`RuntimeError: No HIP GPUs are available`). - SearXNG outbound traffic must stay on the Gluetun tunnel; do not move its ports off the gluetun service. - `amd_iommu=off` on Dankclaw (bought 13–16 % prefill for frank-large, 2026-09-11) permanently retired the XDNA2 NPU: the driver's SVA/PASID bind needs an enabled IOMMU (`/dev/accel/accel0` fails `err=-19`). Revert path in `serverAppConfigs-docs/LLM/dankclaw-iommu-translation-off.md`. - Rootless Quadlet containers run with `--replace --rm`: `podman logs` covers only the CURRENT instance; history across recreations lives in `journalctl --user -u .service`. Read rootless storage WITHOUT sudo (per-user storage — `sudo podman logs` finds nothing). - **A dead rootless podman pause process breaks ALL container management on the host, and `podman system migrate` panics in 5.7.0.** Symptoms: every `podman` command fails with `invalid internal status … could not find any running process`, every container start fails binding podman's bridge addresses (`Error starting server failed to bind udp listener on 10.89.x.1:53: Cannot assign requested address`), and every `Restart=always` quadlet loops. Container storage is intact; what is gone is `/run/user//libpod/tmp/alive` (a UUID token, not a pid) and the rootless netns holding the bridges — deleting the stale token is not enough, and `podman system migrate` segfaults in `teardownNetworkBackend`. Repair: **reboot** (`/run/user` clears and all 28 quadlets return on their own — check `Linger=yes` and `WantedBy=default.target` first). Seen 2026-09-16, hours into heavy GPU work on the same host — but the trigger is NOT established (`journalctl -k` recorded no OOM kill; the kernel had no other word on it). Treat the pause process as host state that can die for its own reasons, and reach for the reboot when it does. - **A container cannot reach a `Network=host` service at the host's LAN IP.** netavark DNATs *published* ports only: from a bridge container `192.168.0.143:` answers while `192.168.0.143:` and the gateway `10.89.1.1` are both refused. Use `host.containers.internal` (169.254.1.2). This is what 502'd `hermes.franksdank.cloud` until the Caddyfile upstream was changed on 2026-09-16 (its vhost comment had claimed the LAN IP was open from that bridge — it never was). - **A `*.gguf` filter misses mradermacher's payloads: large quants ship as `.partNofM` fragments.** `mradermacher/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-Uncensored-i1-GGUF` carries Q4_K_M (37.00 + 37.00 + 36.97 = 110.97 GiB) and Q4_K_S (35.00 + 35.00 + 34.09 = 104.09 GiB) as parts, while the smaller rungs (Q2_K, Q3_K_*, IQ3_*, IQ4_XS) are single files. Fetch the parts, verify each against the Hub's LFS sha256, concatenate in numeric order — that is how the deployed 111 GiB file was assembled. Listing the Hub tree and filtering `endswith(".gguf")` makes Q4_K_S look like it does not exist. - **A fetch script must `-f` and verify, or it reports success on an access error.** `curl -o FILE URL` exits 0 on HTTP 401/403 and writes the error body as the "artifact": a gated repo yielded three 153-byte shards with identical sha256 values and a cheerful `DOWNLOAD_DONE` in 20 seconds for 104 GiB. Use `-f`/`--fail-with-body`, compare each file's byte count to the Hub's declared size, and check the LFS sha256 — `scripts/download-frank-medium-gguf.sh` already does all three; ad-hoc fetches tend not to. Gated repos (e.g. `orcarouter/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-Uncensored-GGUF`, same 104.09 GiB Q4_K_S) return 403 even with the host's HF token until that account accepts the gate. ## Runbook Index Active: | Service | Runbook | |---------|---------| | frank-large (stock llama.cpp Qwen3.8-27B UD-Q8_K_XL, Dankclaw) | `serverAppConfigs-docs/LLM/frank-large-unsloth-qwen38-27b-q8xl.md` | | frank-small (llama.cpp Gemma4-12B QAT, Dankclaw) | `serverAppConfigs-docs/LLM/frank-small-gemma4-12b.md` | | frank-primary (llama.cpp Qwen3.8-Flash-Next Q8_0 + shared MTP, Dankserver) | `serverAppConfigs-docs/LLM/frank-primary-llamacpp-qwen38-flash-next-q8.md` | | Dankclaw kernel posture (`amd_iommu=off`) | `serverAppConfigs-docs/LLM/dankclaw-iommu-translation-off.md` | | Deployment flow + incidents | `serverAppConfigs-docs/LLM/deployment.md` | Retired (rollback targets and history): | Runtime | Host | Window | Runbook | |---------|------|--------|---------| | kingjones STRIX Qwen3.8-Flash-Next ROCmFP4 | Dankclaw | 2026-08-30 → 09-11 | `kingjones-strix-rocmfp4.md` | | ik_llama.cpp Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-Uncensored i1-Q4_K_M (`frank-large`) | Dankclaw | 2026-09-15 → 09-16 | `frank-large-ik-uncensored.md` | | vllm-radiance TP=2 MXFP4 + DFlash2 (`frank-medium`) | Dankserver | 2026-09-20 → 09-26 | `frank-medium-radiance-mxfp4.md` | | Lucebox DS4.1 DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash ROCmFP23 (`frank-primary`) | Dankserver | 2026-09-26 (same-day swap) | `frank-primary-lucebox-ds4.md` | | halogen-flash-server Qwen3.8-Flash-Next w4b (`frank-large`) | Dankclaw | 2026-09-16 → 09-19 | `halogen-flash-server.md` | | CIRU v4.4.1 Orca Qwen3.8-Flash (`frank-large`) | Dankclaw | 2026-09-19 → 09-21 | `frank-large-ciru-orca.md` | | unsloth llama.cpp b11030 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next UD-IQ4_XS (`frank-large`) | Dankclaw | 2026-09-21 (same-day swap) | `frank-large-unsloth-qwen38-flash-next.md` | | Kairic Edge Qwen3.8-27B IU4 W4A4 (`frank-large`) | Dankclaw | 2026-09-21 (same-day swap) | `frank-large-kairic-edge-qwen38-27b.md` | | ISTA-DASLab Qwen3.8-27B-GSQ-RCO IQ3_S (`frank-small`) | Dankclaw | 2026-09-16 → 09-17 | `frank-small-qwen38-gsq-rco.md` | | vLLM Gemma4-12B w4a16 (`frank-small`) | Dankclaw | 2026-09-19 (same-day revert) | `frank-small-vllm-gemma4.md` | | agentionai ROCmFP4-FAST imatrix | Dankclaw | 2026-08-29 → 08-30 | `agentionai-fast-imatrix.md` | | eemin Qwen3.8-27B ROCmI4 W4A4 MTP | Dankclaw | 2026-08-18 → 08-25 | `eemin-rocmi4-mtp.md` | | Kairic Edge IU4 | Dankclaw | 2026-08-22 (same-day revert) | `kairic-edge.md` | | CIRU ActiveFPX v3 / PromptForge | Dankclaw | through 2026-08-22 | `ciru-activefpx-promptforge.md` | | DFlash2 Vulkan | Dankclaw | 2026-08-21 (same-day revert) | `dflash2-large-vulkan.md` | | FastFlowLM NPU (`frank-npu`) | Dankclaw | twice, retired 2026-09-11 | `frank-npu.md`, `FastFlowLM NPU Inference.md` | | FreeToken (official + Huihui FP8, `frank-small`) | Dankserver | 2026-09-02 → 09-15 | `freetoken-frank-small.md` | | FastMTP patched llama.cpp | Dankserver | retired 2026-08-18 | `qwen3.8-spec-matrix.md` | | ik_llama.cpp Ornith CRACK | Dankserver | retired 2026-09-02 | `ikllama-ornith-dankserver.md` | | llama.cpp layer split + DFlash2 (`frank-medium`) | Dankserver | 2026-09-16 → 09-20 | `frank-medium-llamacpp-dflash2.md` | Retired runbooks are under `serverAppConfigs-docs/LLM/`. Retired scripts live in `old/` and `.AGENTTRASH/`. ## Why Direct edits on the remote drift from version control, and future agents won't know what changed. Git is the single source of truth. The two workloads share two hosts, one Caddy, and one Gitea; one repo keeps them in one history. ## Summary | Context | Action | |---------|--------| | Editing a compose/Caddyfile/serve script | **Through git** — fetch, commit, edit, test, push, pull, deploy. Never edit on the remote. | | Config exists only on remote | **Pull it into the repo first** — commit the fetched version (redacted) before editing. | | Unstaged local changes | **Commit or discard** — check `git status` before starting work; ask if unsure. | | Deploying a committed change | **`scripts/deploy.sh `** — pushes, pulls ff-only, plans, dispatches, health-checks. | | Container without a Quadlet unit | **Give it one** — boot-persistent, self-healing `.container` via git. | | Benchmarking | **Stop and mask the service first**, bench, unmask, restart, verify health. | | Deleting a file | **Move it to trash** — `.AGENTTRASH/` (in-repo) or `~/.AGENTTRASH/YYYYMMDD-topic`. Never `rm`. | | Tests exist | **Run them** — verify tests pass after every change. Do not commit failing tests. | | Real secrets | **Never commit** — host `.env` files; `.env.example` holds placeholders only. |