---
type: reference
title: "frank-zealot on Dankclaw — llama.cpp (PrismML fork 10777), Ternary-Bonsai-2-9B PQ2_0-MTP, 3 × 200704, f16 K + q8_0 V, MTP armed"
description: "The one frank-zealot reference: the live shape on Dankclaw's RTX 3090 (:7771) exactly as scripts/frank-zealot.env ships it, every era with its rollback path, the deduplicated laws of this card, the wire contract, and the owning files."
tags:
  - llm
  - frank-zealot
  - dankclaw
  - llama-cpp
  - gguf
  - rtx3090
timestamp: 2026-10-18
---

# frank-zealot — llama.cpp (PrismML) Bonsai-2-9B PQ2_0-MTP, 3 × 200,704, f16 K + q8_0 V, MTP armed

Dankclaw's RTX 3090 endpoint — `http://192.168.0.143:7771`, wire id `frank-zealot`, the fleet's **compaction hub**
(three conversations at 200,704 each, the window the other two endpoints also cap at). One page per
endpoint: eras are rows below, not pages. Siblings: [[frank-archon]],
[[frank-dragoon]]. Deploy with `./scripts/deploy.sh dankclaw --service frank-zealot`; swap mechanics in
[[Model Swap and Rollback]], sizing math in [[Llama Cpp Serving Sizing]]. `scripts/frank-zealot.env` and
`scripts/serve-frank-zealot.sh` are the authority for the shape; where any prose disagrees with them, the prose
is the bug.

## Current shape

| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Checkpoint | `/home/dank/models/Bonsai2-9B-MTP/Ternary-Bonsai-2-9B-PQ2_0-MTP-Q8_0.gguf` — 2,675,410,720 B, LFS sha256 `c79fcdfaf6b7bf47…` |
| Projector | `…/Bonsai2-9B-MTP/Ternary-Bonsai-2-9B-mmproj-Q8_0.gguf` — 624,229,664 B, sha256 `e0cb6f6988cea323…` — **Q8_0 is mandatory**, not a preference (see Contract) |
| Fetch | `scripts/download-frank-zealot-bonsai9.sh [DEST]` (`--verify-only`; `-f`, byte count, LFS sha256 per file) |
| Runtime | `/home/dank/GitPackages/llama-prism-b10777/llama-server` — PrismML **fork**, `0.2.0-dev (build 10777, commit e3de71522)`; the only loader for this payload |
| Trio | `scripts/frank-zealot.service` (root, relinked, `User=dank`, `Restart=on-failure`, `RestartSec=10`, `LimitMEMLOCK=infinity`, `TimeoutStopSec=180`) · `scripts/frank-zealot.env` · `scripts/serve-frank-zealot.sh` |
| Address / alias | `BIND_ADDR=0.0.0.0`, `LISTEN_PORT=7771`, `ALIAS=frank-zealot` (a flag, not a fact) |
| Flags | `--ctx-size 602112 --parallel 3` ⇒ 200,704 per slot · `--cache-type-k f16 --cache-type-v q8_0` (asymmetric, **14,406.00 MiB**) · `--flash-attn on` · `--batch-size 6144 --ubatch-size 1024` · `--n-gpu-layers 99` · `--jinja --reasoning auto --reasoning-format deepseek` · `--metrics` · `--mmproj` · `--log-verbosity 4` · `--presence-penalty 1.0` · **`--spec-type draft-mtp`** with `--spec-draft-n-max 2 --spec-draft-n-min 0 --spec-draft-p-min 0` |

**Why this shape.** `general.architecture qwen35`: 33 blocks (32 trunk + `blk.32` = the MTP block),
`full_attention_interval 4` ⇒ 8 full-attention + 24 Gated DeltaNet, 4 KV heads × 256 dim, `nextn_predict_layers 1`
(the head **is in the file**), trained window 262,144, `general.sampling.*` 1.0/0.95/20. Only the 8 full layers bill
per token and the DeltaNet layers add ~50 MiB of recurrent state **per slot**, so the shape is a single budget
equation at 25,088 B/token (f16 K 16,384 + q8_0 V 8,704): **14,406.00 MiB** of cache over a 602,112 pool +
**2,352.00 MiB** of draft cache (blk.32 at its own f16 rate, billed over the WHOLE pool) + ~7.7 GiB of weights,
projector, buffers and states, inside the 24,123 MiB the driver leaves addressable. Exact V (32,768 B/token ⇒
18,816 MiB here) buys neither the third conversation nor the drafter; the fully quantized pair (17,408 B/token)
buys both and costs the keys their precision.

**MTP is ON (Frank, 2026-10-19).** The drafter was always good — 2026-10-18 measured acceptance 0.798 / 0.617 per
position, mean accepted length 2.41, and the publisher's card says depth 2 works best — and arming it is a
budget decision, not a flag: the draft context is built against the *target's* pool, so `blk.32` bills 4,096
B/position (2,352.00 MiB at 602,112) plus ~0.45 GiB of buffers at this ubatch and its own recurrent cells.
`CACHE_TYPE_V=q8_0` (−3,840 MiB against exact V at this pool) and `UBATCH_SIZE=1024` (−~1,306 MiB of compute
buffers, and the rung every measured MTP arm here ran on) are what pay for it; `UBATCH_SIZE=2048` beside an armed
drafter is the shape that halved decode (167.2 → 109.2 t/s). `--spec-draft-type-k`/`--spec-draft-type-v` (default
f16, verified in this build's `--help`) would cut the draft's bill again and stay at their default; there is no
`--spec-draft-model` — the draft rides the main model's weights, so a draft file would load the trunk twice.
`SPEC_TYPE=none` is the rollback and strips the whole set.

**Harness contract** (`~/.omp/agent/models.yml`, provider `llamacpp (dankclaw-3090)`, id `frank-zealot`):
`contextWindow: 200704` — **the per-slot window**, because llama.cpp divides `--ctx-size` across slots and answers a
longer prompt with a 400, never a truncation — plus `maxTokens: 16384`, `input: [text, image]`,
`compat.reasoningContentField: reasoning_content`, `compat.reasoningEffortMap` (**load-bearing**: the template takes
only `xhigh|medium|low` and raises on anything else), `extraBody` 1.0 / 0.95 / 20 / `min_p 0`, and the
`compactionModel` of [[frank-archon]], [[frank-dragoon]] **and** frank-zealot all pointing here.

**This shape ships unbenchmarked, by law.** Frank ordered the reslice, not a
number, so the evidence a swap needs is the seam's fit gate (it prices cache +
draft cache + recurrent states against the 24,123 MiB the driver leaves
addressable, and refuses the two boots this shape can walk into: exact V with the
drafter armed, and the retired dtype pair at the retired pool), the deployer's
health gate, and the first verbosity-4 ledger of the new dtype pair — which is
recorded on this page because projections drift, and nowhere else. The previous
era's exact-KV boot and its rate floors live in that era's row below; those floors
were measured while another consumer drove the other slot (56 prompts in three
minutes, 96 % GPU-util), the exact condition a bench window exists to exclude.

**Fallback rungs**, cheapest first — one line of `frank-zealot.env` each, and each must keep the seam's fit gate green:

| Knob | Effect from the shipped shape |
|---|---|
| `SPEC_TYPE=none` | the drafter off: hands back 2,352 MiB of draft cache plus its buffers and recurrent cells, at the cost of the ~+28 % decode the 2026-10-18 census measured whenever the card has room |
| `UBATCH_SIZE=2048` | +~1,306 MiB of compute buffers and +4.6 % prefill — and the rung that HALVED decode beside an armed drafter (167.2 → 109.2 t/s) |
| `CTX_SIZE=401408` | two 200,704 conversations: frees 4,802 MiB of cache — `contextWindow` MUST follow the per-slot number |
| `CACHE_TYPE_V=f16` | exact V: +4,410 MiB at this pool with the drafter armed, which is a `cudaMalloc` death the seam refuses — legal only once the drafter or a slot is gone |
| `CACHE_TYPE_K=q8_0` | the fully quantized pair (17,408 B/token): frees 4,410 MiB and moves the quantization error into the keys |

## Eras

| Window | Payload | Runtime | Shape | Replaced because | Rollback |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-18 21:06 → 2026-10-19 | the same 9B MTP file and projector | PrismML fork 10777 | 2 × 262,144 (pool 524,288), exact f16 K+V = 16,384.00 MiB, `SPEC_TYPE=none`, batch 4096 / ubatch 2048; boot ledger KV 16,384.00 / RS 100.50 / compute 1,408.06 + 1,088.07 CUDA_Host / mmproj worst case 868.32 charged after the fit check, settled **21,176 used / 2,949 free**, `n_ctx_slot = 262144`, within 24 MiB of the projection; floors 134.1–141.5 t/s single-stream, 256.6–265.1 aggregate over two, 3,159.5 t/s prefill at 106,282, 71.5 t/s decode at 106k depth (contended — floors, not the shape's rates) | Frank ordered the third conversation back AND the drafter armed, and exact V funds neither: it bills 18,816 MiB at the pool that pays for the third slot, leaving nothing for the draft's 2,352 | one line each — `CTX_SIZE=524288 PARALLEL=2 CACHE_TYPE_V=f16 BATCH_SIZE=4096 UBATCH_SIZE=2048 SPEC_TYPE=none` — and redeploy; no payload move |
| 2026-10-18 13:19 → same evening (the boot `68afc6d` replaced) | the same 9B MTP file and projector | PrismML fork 10777 | 3 × 262,144 (pool 786,432), q8_0 K+V = 13,056 MiB, settled 17,956 / 6,169 MiB; 168.7 t/s decode (three runs 168.4–168.7), ~300 t/s over three streams (102.8 each), 2,877 t/s prefill at 106,418 | Frank ordered unquantized KV, and that pool cannot survive it: 24,576 MiB of f16 cache > 24,123 addressable | one env line — `CTX_SIZE=786432 PARALLEL=3 CACHE_TYPE_K/V=q8_0` — and redeploy; no payload move |
| 2026-10-18, 24 min (arm under the unit) | `Bonsai2-PTQ1_0/Ternary-Bonsai-2-27B-PTQ1_0.gguf` 5,946,648,928 B + hardlinked Q8 mmproj | PrismML fork 10777 | 2 × 200,704, batch/ubatch 3072/1536 | Frank scratched the 27B plan — ~48 t/s decode vs 76.6 for PQ2_0 on the same weights | `/home/dank/models/Bonsai2-PTQ1_0/` + `scripts/download-frank-zealot-bonsai2-ptq1.sh` |
| 2026-10-17 → 10-18 | Ternary-Bonsai-2-**27B** PQ2_0 7,206,168,928 B `3907dc16…` + Q8_0 mmproj 629,246,976 B | PrismML fork **10754** (`~/GitPackages/llama-prism/`) | 2 × 200,704 (pool 401,408), q8_0 K+V = 13,328 MiB, settled 22,664 / 1,461; 76.6 t/s decode, 109.4 aggregate over two streams, 691.7 t/s prefill at 166,027; MTP impossible — no head in the file | the 9B bills half the KV per token (8 full layers, not 16), which funded three slots at the native window and beat it on every rate | `/home/dank/models/Bonsai2-PQ2_0/` + the 10754 fork tree, `scripts/download-frank-zealot-bonsai2.sh`, revert the swap commit |
| 2026-10-07 → 10-17 | Qwen3.5-9B-Uncensored-HauhauCS-Aggressive Q6_K 7,359,259,008 B `c0ba7beb…` + BF16 mmproj 921,704,448 B | llama.cpp master `5fc4f3c` CUDA sm_86 (`~/GitPackages/llama-master/build-cuda/`) | 2 × 200,704, exact f16 K+V, MTP off (no `nextn` tensors) | the ternary 27B bought a larger model class at the same window | `/home/dank/models/Qwen35-9B-HauhauCS-Q6K/` + the master build, `scripts/download-frank-zealot.sh` |
| 2026-10-07 (same day) | Gemma4-26B-A4B-QAT Q4_K_M 16,796,015,520 B + BF16 mmproj 1,194,827,776 B + unused `gemma4-assistant` MTP 251,937,728 B | llama.cpp master CUDA | 1 × 200,704, f16 K + q8_0 V, ubatch 1024, MTP off; 21,868 / 2,257 settled, 139.9 t/s decode (the ~4 B-active MoE is at home here); MTP ON would cost ~1.9 GiB and boot at 319 MiB free | ONE slot serialized compaction; the 9B's lighter weights bought two slots and exact KV | `/home/dank/models/Gemma4-26B-A4B/` (ungated — plain `curl -fL`) |
| 2026-10-03 → 10-05 | MiMo-V2.6-Distill-Qwen-9B Q6_K 7,793,710,624 B `ef96d05a…` + f16 mmproj 918,166,048 B | llama.cpp master CUDA | 2 × 200,704, f16 K+V, batch 4096 / ubatch 2048; 21,846 / 2,279 settled, 94.44 t/s decode | Frank ordered the uncensored 27B with MTP drafted | `/home/dank/models/MiMo-Q6K/` |
| 2026-10-05 (committed `77decb5`→`380aafa`, **never deployed**) | Ornith-1.5-9B Q8_0 | llama.cpp master CUDA | 1 × 262,144, f16 K+V | Swift cut over the same evening while this deploy sat blocked at the whole-tree docs gate | `/home/dank/models/Ornith-Q8/`; revert to `380aafa`'s tree |
| 2026-10-05 → 10-07 | Swift-1.5-27B-Uncensored RCO-IQ3_XXS-mtp 10,442,827,392 B `e13d3e74…` + publisher `mmproj-BF16.gguf` 931,145,888 B | llama.cpp master CUDA | 2 × 114,688, q8_0 K+V, `draft-mtp` depth 3, ubatch 2048; 23,120 / 1,005 settled (489 MiB at the 2 × 131,072 shape — the tightest fit ever here), 63.3 t/s at the recipe temp, 72.9 at temp 0, 48.0 with the drafter off | the 9B Q6_K rung returned the 200k window and exact KV | `/home/dank/models/Swift15-UncIQ3XXS/`; the IQ3_S-mtp rung at `/home/dank/models/Swift15-IQ3S/`; commits `da36fa3` → `f2575a1` → `d8da7a9` |
| 2026-10-02 → 10-03 | MiMo Q5_K_M 6,876,124,704 B `04cf46f2…` + the same f16 mmproj (hardlinked) | llama.cpp master CUDA | 2 × 200,704, f16 K+V, batch 2048 / ubatch 1024; 20,530 used / 4,046 apparent (true `free` 3,571), 104.84 t/s decode | the ~3.5 GiB it left free bought the Q6_K rung | `/home/dank/models/MiMo-Q5KM/` |
| 2026-10-01 → 10-02 | MiMo Q6_K (same file as above) | llama.cpp master CUDA | 2 × 262,144, f16 K + q8_0 V | one night: the Q5 rung bought the 2–3 GiB headroom band back | `/home/dank/models/MiMo-Q6K/` (same dir) |
| 2026-10-01 (hours) | MiMo-V2.6 INT8-W8A16-AutoRound, 8 shards 12,891,718,440 B | SGLang in venv `~/GitPackages/sglang-cu128` (torch cu130 + an in-venv CUDA 13.0 nvcc) | 2 × 262,144 over a pinned 606,208 pool, `fp8_e4m3` KV, NEXTN off; 83.9 t/s decode, ~2,050–3,370 t/s eager prefill, ~60 s boot warm | llama.cpp was the only runtime exposing asymmetric per-tensor KV | payload purged — re-fetch `old/download-frank-zealot-sglang-int8.sh`; the venv is still on disk |
| 2026-09-17 → 10-01 | Gemma4-12B-QAT-Uncensored Q4_K_M 6.87 GiB + BF16 mmproj (it carried an **audio** encoder) + `mtp-gemma-4-12B-it.gguf` sidecar 0.24 GiB | llama.cpp master `37b53fd` CUDA with `-DGGML_CUDA_FA_ALL_QUANTS=ON` (`~/GitPackages/llama.cpp-mainline/build-cuda/`) | 4 × 262,144, q8_0 K+V, `draft-mtp,ngram-mod` depth 3 / poll 50; idle 22,346–23,300 MiB, ~965 t/s prefill and 257–302 t/s decode at 254k depth; each extra full-context slot costs 3,450 MiB so 4 is the max | the MiMo GGUF path (qwen35 hybrid, asymmetric KV) took the card | re-fetch `HauhauCS/Gemma4-12B-QAT-Uncensored-HauhauCS-Balanced`; era trio in `git show 374041c:scripts/frank-small.service` / `.env` / `serve-frank-small.sh` |
| 2026-09-19 (same-day revert) | `gemma-4-12B-it-qat-w4a16-ct` 10,264,229,896 B + **bf16** assistant 845,719,296 B | vLLM dev image `localhost/vllm/vllm-openai:frank-small` (`8dad46d79c46`, still in rootless storage), rootless Quadlet | 262,144 window, bf16 KV pool 289,647 tokens, 2 concurrent sessions (the 3rd queues), image + audio; 1,293 t/s prefill @67k falling to 608 @213k, ~13.6 t/s decode @213k depth, MTP acceptance 2.80–3.56, boot 135 s | reverted to llama.cpp the same day | both payloads purged; `git show 374041c^:dankclaw/frank-small/Dockerfile` and `…:dankclaw/frank-small/quadlet/frank-small.container` |
| 2026-09-16 → 09-17 | ISTA-DASLab Qwen3.8-27B-GSQ-RCO IQ3_S + BF16 projector, in-file MTP drafted | mainline llama.cpp | single-slot 3090 shape | superseded by the Gemma4-12B payload | re-download from ISTA-DASLab — no payload and no fetch script survive |
| 2026-09-02 → 09-15 (**Dankserver**, `:7770`, the card's previous host) | `batsclamp/Huihui-Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-abliterated-FP8` ~35 GB (before it official `Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-FP8`) | FreeToken v0.1.2 (`ft`), venv `~/freetoken/.venv` | MoE cache 2,048 slots + KV 453,005 tokens + 24 mamba-state slots; ~30 t/s single-stream decode, ~87 t/s at batch 4, ~1,130 t/s prefill at 4k | the 3090 left Dankserver and `frank-medium-rocmfpx` took the endpoint and port | host units `~/.AGENTTRASH/20260915-frank-zealot-retire/host-units/`, repo trio in `scripts/.AGENTTRASH/` |
| ~2026-08 (Dankserver 3090, pre-FreeToken) | Qwen3.6-35B-A3B Q6_K_P, then Tiel-Coder-35B-A3B UD-Q6_K_XL, with an Ornith Q6_K rung | llama.cpp `555881ebc` (b10121) CUDA | `--n-cpu-moe 38` deployed (36 recommended), batch 4096 / ubatch 2048, 700,416-token f16 K+V pool (800,768 cells did not fit); ~45.5 t/s decode and 1,188 t/s prefill at `ncmoe 35` | FreeToken kept experts in host RAM instead of CPU-offloading layers | re-download; nothing from this rung survives on disk |

## Laws learned here

- **Addressable ≠ advertised.** The card is 24,576 MiB but leaves **24,123 MiB**: quote `nvidia-smi`'s `free` field, never `total − used` — the driver's reservation is the difference.
- **Exact KV and a 786,432 pool cannot coexist here**: 32,768 B/token ⇒ 24,576 MiB before a single weight loads (the retired "26,112 MiB" note doubled q8_0's scale overhead); the 27B analogue died at **25,088 MiB** with `cudaMalloc failed: out of memory`. Halving the pool funds exact KV; the per-slot window stops at the trained 262,144 (no YaRN here), so a third conversation is a KV-dtype decision, never more context.
  The wall's own figures: `cudaMalloc` failed on a **25,088.00 MiB** KV request when the engine's fit projection
  asked for **33,198 MiB** against **23,558 MiB** free. It booted f16 at all because the arm env's invented
  `KV_CACHE_TYPE` was swallowed by the serve script's `:=f16` default — so a failed window became the measurement.
- **Exact KV reads 1.882× the bytes per generated token, not 2×** (32,768 vs 17,408 B/token, 2026-10-18): a decode drop of that order is EXPECTED and must be measured, while prefill should hold — and this service can afford the dtype precisely because its load is the compaction hub's ~170k-token prefill, which is weight-bandwidth bound and never re-reads the cache per generated token. The dtype is paid in decode and concurrency.
- Never `--fit` with `parallel > 1` — it maximizes the *total* pool and shrinks each slot: set `CTX_SIZE` explicitly and keep it divisible by `PARALLEL` (the seam enforces it).
- **KV rate law.** `full_layers × 4 KV heads × 256 dim` = **8,192 elements per token per cache** on this arch (the engine prints `n_embd_k_gqa = n_embd_v_gqa = 1024`), ×2 B (f16), ×1.0625 (q8_0 — 32 codes plus one 2-byte scale
  per 32-block), ×0.625 (q4_0): **32,768 / 17,408 / 10,240 B/token** on this 8-full-layer 9B, and 34,816 for a
  16-full-layer 27B at q8_0. Everything else bills separately: DeltaNet recurrent state per **slot** (150.75 MiB for
  3 cells, and an armed depth-2 drafter triples it to 452.25), compute buffers at graph capture, the mmproj after the
  fit. On gemma4-class hybrids `attention_k_eq_v` does **not** shrink the allocation — the cache reserves the K/V pair
  twice, 6.125 B/elem at f16 K + q8_0 V.
- **`--flash-attn on` is pinned, not decorative**: a quantized V exists only on the FA path and the engine falls back silently without it. llama.cpp has **no true fp8 KV dtype** — q8_0 is the 8-bit class (1.0625 B/elem, ~8.5 effective bits). `GGML_CUDA_FA_ALL_QUANTS` is vestigial and build-specific: the PrismML fork carries it ON (since 2026-09-17) while the master build had it OFF and still dispatched Q4/Q5 KV unconditionally (`ggml-cuda/fattn.cu` has no guard), so quantized KV never required it.
- **Prices come from boots, not formulas, and an arm belongs to the payload it was measured on**: 3 × 180,224 +
  q8_0 V fits with Q5_K_M (21,684 used / 2,441 free) and does **not** fit with Q6_K inside the 2–3 GiB band. The
  mmproj worst case (~870 MiB) is printed before fitting but never billed by the engine's own fit check. Only
  `tests/frank_zealot_unit.bats`'s fit gate can see a boot that would die at `cudaMalloc`, so every retune keeps it
  green — and the first verbosity-4 ledger plus settled `nvidia-smi` of a new dtype belongs on this page, because
  projections drift.
  The two boots that priced non-KV: 2 × 262,144 **without** the projector — 20,190 used, KV 12,800 ⇒ non-KV
  **7,390 MiB**; 3 × 196,608 **with** it — 22,972 used, KV 14,113 ⇒ non-KV **8,859 MiB**. The difference prices the
  vision tower at **~1.4 GiB for a 918 MB file**, because the encoder's activation and compute buffers ride with it.
  The first 3-slot deploy (3 × 196,608) booted healthy and left only **1,153 MiB** free — that is how the 2–3 GiB
  band got violated in practice, and why the seam prices non-KV at the measured 9 GiB and refuses that shape.
- **Ubatch is a prefill knob.** Decode never moves with it and the logical `--batch-size` is neutral; prefill climbs monotonically to **2048** on this CUDA card (+4.6 % at 8.9k depth; 710 → 1,188 t/s), a prompt shorter than the ubatch cannot see the knob at all (the control row), and a verdict never crosses backends — the 2× R9700 split peaks at 512. Each rung costs ~0.6–0.75 GiB of compute buffers; 2048 is the ceiling for a 27B-on-3090 shape.
- **A quant rung is paid in decode**: Q5_K_M → Q6_K is +875 MiB of weights and **−10 %** rate on this bandwidth-bound card, and the byte-bandwidth law predicts a rung's rate within 1 %.
- **Speculation pays only with room on the card.** The 2026-10-18 arm census (all q8_0 K+V at the 786,432 pool): 3 × 262,144 spec-OFF ubatch 2048 → 17,876 / 6,249 free, 167.2 t/s; spec-ON ubatch 2048 → 22,706 / 1,419, 109.2 t/s; spec-ON ubatch 1024 → 21,400 / 2,725, 213.5 t/s; 2 × 262,144 spec-ON → 213.2; 1 × 262,144 spec-ON → 214.2. That is **+28 % decode whenever the card has room**, and the doors back are one window per conversation, or q8_0 KV with ubatch 1024. The draft's own bill at that shape was 3,072.00 MiB of KV plus ~1,758 MiB of buffers.
- Draft KV is built against the target's **whole** pool (~2.4 GiB measured on the 27B Swift boot, not the ~0.4 GiB a proposal-depth estimate suggests). Spec flags move as a SET — `SPEC_TYPE=none` strips all of them and half a set has segfaulted at load. Two context-backed drafters cannot share a process, so `draft-mtp,ngram-mod` is the only legal pair, and on a qwen35 hybrid ngram-mod disables recurrent-state rollback so rejected drafts degrade silently.
- Acceptance alone never justifies speculation: 2026-08-25 measured 26.8–35.2 t/s drafting against 53.7 no-spec.
- A checkpoint declaring `*_num_hidden_layers` MTP while carrying zero `mtp.*`/`nextn.*` tensors boots a 4.24 GiB ghost drafter at `accept rate: 0.00` — read the safetensors index, not the config.
- MTP is a property of the **file**: the plain PQ2_0 sibling could not draft at any flag value; only the `-MTP` export carries `blk.N.nextn.*`.
- **The format is the runtime lock.** PQ2_0 is `general.file_type 141` over 202 tensors of custom GGML type **142** plus `prism.hadamard.*` metadata: stock llama.cpp refuses the type, and a loader ignoring the Hadamard transform would dequant **wrong, silently** (same lock class as ROCmFPX). Build ≥ b10776 is additionally the floor that pairs MTP with a quantized V cache.
- Check arch support in the source tree: `grep -c` on the packed binary returns 0 for every arch, including the one it serves.
- **Base alignment.** Bonsai-2 is the censored base lineage. `/home/dank/models/Bonsai2-CRACK/` matches the **27B** geometry (a one-line `MODEL_FILE` swap there, identical tensor census); no dealigned 9B exists, so for this payload the refusal escape hatch is a fetch, not a revert.
- **A stale bench drop-in hijacks the production boot and no health check sees it.** An `Environment=FRANK_ZEALOT_ENV_FILE=/tmp/<arm>.env` in `frank-zealot.service.d/` booted a 27B PTQ1_0 payload while `/health` answered 200, `/v1/models` echoed the alias flag and the e2e gate passed 33/33 — none of them read the payload.
- After any bench window: `systemctl show -p DropInPaths` → `tr '\0' ' ' </proc/$pid/cmdline` → ledger, in that order; drop-ins retire to `~/.AGENTTRASH/<date>-<topic>/`, and payload decisions land on this page the moment they are made, or an approved arm becomes indistinguishable from a rogue one a day later.
- **An arm env must use the serve script's own variable names** (`CACHE_TYPE_K`/`CACHE_TYPE_V`, `BIND_ADDR`, `NGL`): an invented `KV_CACHE_TYPE` is swallowed by `: "${CACHE_TYPE_K:=f16}"` and the arm boots f16 — an OOM that reads like a model fault.
- **Stop, shebang, GPU node.** llama.cpp rides out the default stop timeout (`TimeoutStopSec=180` is on the unit for that reason) and a hand-booted arm keeps answering 7771 behind a `failed` unit — kill it **by PID**, never `pkill -f llama-server`.
- `serve-frank-zealot.sh` is a direct `ExecStart`, so a missing shebang is a `203/EXEC` boot loop at `Mem peak: 1.9M` with the GPU untouched: `head -1` is a deploy check.
- `No CUDA GPUs are available` ⇒ `nvidia-modprobe -u -c=0`; KV spilled into unified memory halves decode silently, so re-read `nvidia-smi` after any shape change.

## Contract

- `/health` → `{"status":"ok"}`; `/props` reports `n_ctx` and `presence_penalty`; `/slots` shows occupancy; a fourth
  concurrent conversation **waits** for a slot — the slot count is the concurrency contract.
- `/metrics` answers 200 with 15 `llamacpp:*` families **only with `--metrics`**; without it llama.cpp answers **501**, which Prometheus reads as DOWN while `/health` stays 200. The scrape target is `host.containers.internal:7771/metrics` and the oldest retained sample of `up{job="frank-zealot"}` (2026-10-11) is already 0 — this target was never successfully scraped, across every payload era. `METRICS=0` is the documented opt-out and re-breaks it; the counters cost nothing on the request path.
- Reasoning arrives in **`reasoning_content`** (`--reasoning-format deepseek`) and **counts against `max_tokens`**: a short budget yields empty `content` with `finish_reason: "length"`, which reads as a broken model, not a mid-thought one. The slot prefix cache is live (`cached_tokens` in `usage`).
- A client that sends no sampler is **not** greedy — the engine applies the payload's own `general.sampling.*`
  (1.0 / 0.95 / 20). `presence_penalty` is the one recipe value with no GGUF metadata key, so it must reach argv;
  the serve script uses `${PRESENCE_PENALTY=1.0}`, deliberately **not** `:=`, because `""` is the documented opt-out.
- Vision: only the OpenAI **`image_url`** content part reaches the model — the legacy top-level `images` field bumps `usage.prompt_tokens` while the model invents an answer. Probe with a **≥ 256 px** solid color (a postage stamp answers "video") and budget **≥ 512** tokens; a 512 px image bills ~280 prompt tokens.
- **Q8_0 mmproj, not BF16**: the publisher warns the BF16 tower "can crash llama-server when several image requests run at once", which is exactly the `--parallel 3` shape. `MMPROJ_FILE=` (explicitly empty) is the text-only opt-out and returns ~1.4 GiB; a path at a missing file is a boot **refusal**, never silent blindness.
- Tools: native via `--jinja`; `finish_reason: tool_calls` with valid JSON arguments.
- Two non-faults: a `400` naming 200,704 is one conversation outgrowing its **slot**, not pool exhaustion; and
  the raw `/completion` path is a **dead instrument on this fork build** — a greedy `ignore_eos` run answers
  **500 "The model produced output that does not match the expected Content-only format"**, because build 10777
  guards the raw path the moment reasoning markup leaks (older builds only logged `failed to parse reasoning
  content` and answered anyway). The honest per-request instrument here is **`/v1/chat/completions`**, whose
  non-stream response carries the same `timings` object (`prompt_n`, `prompt_per_second`, `predicted_n`,
  `predicted_per_second`). Keep `VERBOSITY=4` — 3 is the engine default and cannot prove the KV or draft sizes,
  while levels above 4 flood the journal.
- llama.cpp does **not** validate the requested model id: it answers and echoes the served `ALIAS`, so a rename breaks id-keyed consumers (the OpenWebUI `model` row, its `access_grant`, `openai.api_configs`) and nothing server-side. Alias history: `frank-small` → `frank-secondary` (2026-10-06) → `frank-zealot` (`7c77326`, 2026-10-09); the service and unit took the name 2026-10-10 (`55f87fc`).
- The first request after a boot is a warmup artifact (37 t/s class) and is never a measurement; never time a wall-clock aggregate on a generation that stops on its own (use `ignore_eos`).

## Files

- `scripts/frank-zealot.env` — **the authority for the values above** and nothing else: as of 2026-10-18 it carries
  the knobs plus the one-line reason a reader editing that line cannot recover here. The arm table, the reference
  boot ledger and the KV derivation all live on this page now; the header used to hold them, and two of its
  rung figures were wrong (`CACHE_TYPE_V=q8_0` and `CTX_SIZE=401408` both free **3,840 MiB** at the 524,288 pool,
  not 8,192 and not ~6.7 GiB — the Fallback rungs table above is the corrected statement).
- `scripts/serve-frank-zealot.sh` — the exec line and its rationale comments; honors `FRANK_ZEALOT_ENV_FILE` for arm boots; exits 1 naming a missing binary, GGUF or projector rather than half-loading (a restart policy would turn an unfinished download into a crash loop that reads like a runtime fault).
- `scripts/frank-zealot.service` — root unit, relinked into `/etc/systemd/system/`.
- `scripts/download-frank-zealot-bonsai9.sh` (active) · `…-bonsai2.sh` · `…-bonsai2-ptq1.sh` ·
  `scripts/download-frank-zealot.sh` (master-era GGUFs) · `old/download-frank-zealot-sglang-int8.sh` (SGLang).
- `tests/frank_zealot_unit.bats` — stub-argv seam plus the VRAM fit gate.
- `scripts/deploy-remote.sh` — `deploy_llm_zealot` (payload-path gates, MainPID-hardened health); see [[deployment]].
- `shared/prometheus/prometheus.yml`, `shared/prometheus/rules/llm-fleet.yml`,
  `shared/grafana/provisioning/dashboards/llm-fleet.json` — the scrape, the alert, the dashboard.
- Live state, not repo files: the OpenWebUI picker row (back up `webui.db` before re-keying) and `~/.omp/agent/models.yml`.