---
name: project-status
description: Current state of neuron-tai development as of 2026-07-02
metadata:
  node_type: memory
  type: project
---

# Project Status (2026-07-13)

## Selected-node model placement (2026-07-14)

- Admin Model placement now opens a node selector for load and release; the control-plane accepts optional `node_id` and targets only that registry assignment. Multi-model serving remains supported through `ADD_SHARD` and `max_loaded_shards`.
- Total node pool resource values are rendered from `/v1/network/map`'s `node.capacity` contract. Route selection remains assignment/capability/throughput/queue based; capacity is used for placement and falls back to tracker defaults only if a node truly omits it.

## Distributed inference performance (2026-07-14)

`DIP-001` is done in `.scratch/distributed-inference-performance/`: the deterministic two-node Route Session stub benchmark covers direct/relay plus cached/stateless prefill and decode. Its JSON and concise summary explicitly attribute model execution, activation encode/decode, compression, connection setup, relay queueing, local HTTP forwarding, and end-to-end seam latency. `PYTHONPATH=packages/node pytest -q tests/test_route_session_benchmark.py` passed (7); the fixture assertion checks output-token identity and connection attempts.

> Doc reconciliation 2026-07-13: `docs/prd.json` tracks US-001…US-050 (048 memory budget, 049 mainnet pilot, 050 Qwen demand placement). ADRs 0025–0026 added (TAI phase B/C, assignment ownership).

All 35 user stories in docs/prd.json are done (35/35), including the reward-system arc US-030…US-035 completed 2026-07-02:

- **BillingLedger** (packages/tracker/meshnet_tracker/billing.py): event-sourced USDT ledger, gossip-replicated across the hive (id-deduped events), SQLite-persisted. 90/10 split by work units, per-model per-1K-token pricing, 402 before routing.
- **Solana custodial adapter** (packages/contracts/meshnet_contracts/solana_adapter.py): urllib JSON-RPC + solders signing. NOTE: installed solana-py 0.40 has NO sync client — don't import solana.rpc.api / spl.token.client.
- **scripts/devnet_setup.py**: creates mock-USDT mint + treasury, writes .env.devnet; --mint-to funds test clients.
- **TrackerServer threads**: deposit watcher (exactly-once via deposit-<sig> event ids) + leader-only settlement loop (threshold OR max-period, dust floor, resend-by-settlement-id → no double-pay).
- **Forfeiture penalty**: validator forfeits pending balance + strike; 3 strikes ban; probation redirects shares to protocol cut. Math in packages/validator/README.md.
- **Web dashboard**: GET /dashboard on any tracker, embedded dashboard.html, 4s polling.
- **Observed routing throughput**: tracker records rolling observed tokens/sec per `(node_id, model)` from completed proxied inference requests, exposes it via `/v1/stats` and `/v1/network/map`, shows it on the dashboard, and prefers observed per-model TPS over startup benchmark for routing when samples exist.

Suite: 222 passed, 3 skipped (openai/langchain packages missing in .venv — pre-existing).

**Why:** design locked in ADR-0015 (USDT custodial settlement; TAI deferred, protocol cut = future TAI liquidity).
**How to apply:** next steps are live devnet verification (run devnet_setup.py, start tracker with --solana-rpc-url/--usdt-mint/--treasury-keypair --billing-db), then the TAI mint when volume justifies it. Work not yet committed to git as of session end — check git status.

## Alpha hardening (2026-07-05)

Implementation complete for alpha-scoped blockers in `.scratch/alpha-hardening/`: 16/22 issues are `done`, including auth/gossip/service-token, persisted strike/ban/reputation, zero starting credit + spend cap, tracker-authoritative accounting, wallet binding proof, TOPLOC audit primitive, hop bisection, reputation scoring/routing, adaptive audits, and penalty wiring. Remaining 6/22 are `ready-for-human` / post-alpha or ops-gated: 12–15 multi-tracker money/Raft ordering hardening, 17 duplicate US-020 renumbering approval, and 21 honest-noise calibration corpus before production audit thresholds. Current verification: `uv run pytest -k 'not test_legacy_start_without_port_uses_next_available_port'` passes 316, skips 3; full `uv run pytest` has one environmental failure while local `meshnet-node` PID 1263451 occupies port 7000.

Historical handoff note: `/mnt/c/Users/popov/Downloads/neuron-tai-alpha-handoff-2026-07-04.md` is useful for navigation and original audit context, but it predates the completed `.scratch/alpha-hardening/` planning artifacts. Treat its "missing ADR/issues/README" statements as stale; prefer `.scratch/alpha-hardening/README.md` and `.scratch/alpha-hardening/handoff.md` for current task order.

## Node capability admission P0 (2026-07-09)

Planning is ready at `.scratch/node-capability-admission/` with five sequential Ralph stories and ADR-0023. The design is model-agnostic: a Node must validate its selected Model Artifact/shard with a bounded real forward before Tracker routing; Qwen3.6 is only an optional development fixture. P0 adds a versioned local recipe-manifest/report contract, `meshnet-node doctor`, fail-closed startup admission, and tracker route gating. It intentionally excludes dynamic recipe/dependency installation and the future signed Node updater.

## Gitea DGR sync (2026-07-17)

Gitea is ahead of the local Markdown backlog with open DGR-022..DGR-071. The first executable P0 dependency frontier is DGR-022 (Shard lifecycle and structured status RPCs), DGR-023 (reproducible protobuf generation), DGR-025 (artifact/runtime recipe identity), and DGR-027 (llama.cpp provenance manifest). DGR-021, the named-tensor stream envelope prerequisite for DGR-022/023/025, is closed. DGR-022 is the next dependency-ordered issue and blocks DGR-024, DGR-033, and DGR-037.

## Windows CUDA node (working as of 2026-07-01)
- miniforge3 base env, torch 2.7.1+cu118, torchvision 0.22.x+cu118
- RTX 4060 Laptop GPU, 8 GB VRAM, benchmark index ~11,200
- Run: `meshnet-node start --tracker https://ai.neuron.d-popov.com --model Qwen/Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct`
- Known: tracker registration fails with `http://` — must use `https://`
- pynvml deprecation warning is harmless (use nvidia-ml-py to silence it)

## Model cache layout (2026-07-07)
- Node downloads now cache files directly under `<download_dir>/<model>/`, not `<model>/layers_<start>-<end>/`, so a wider cached layer assignment can satisfy a later narrower assignment without duplicate shard folders.
- Downloader checks tracker-advertised `files` + `file_sizes` before peer/HF download; complete local files return immediately and preserve any extra files already in the model folder.
- Verification: downloader/startup targeted subset passes (`pytest tests/test_node_startup.py -k "download_shard or same_shard"`). Full `tests/test_node_startup.py` has 46 passed and 4 unrelated Windows chmod/path separator failures.
- Live Windows confirmation: `meshnet-node start --tracker http://192.168.0.179:8080 --model Qwen3.6-35B-A3B` reuses `F:\_STORAGE\models\qwen3.6-35b-a3b`, prints `Cached at`, registers, and reaches ready as node `5gMLrmyB-26b1f8a4204a`.
- Follow-up fix: preset-model startup now starts the heartbeat thread after registration; without this, the node appeared briefly on the dashboard and was purged on first inference/route after heartbeat expiry. Tracker dashboard now has a "Console output" panel backed by `/v1/console` for node register/expiry, routing failures, and proxy events.
- Qwen3.6-35B-A3B CPU runtime cap (2026-07-08): the old reserve-based split could assign an 79 GB CPU node layers 0-36, but real partial loading can exceed that budget and die without a Python traceback. Node startup now clips oversized CPU auto-assignments before loading, and tracker CPU assignment uses a stricter runtime headroom factor; do not revert this to the old 20% reserve-only policy.
- Route hardening: tracker chat proxy and `/v1/route` diagnostics now use alias-aware preset node matching for split Qwen3.6 routes; dashboard derives grouped inference history from proxy route/complete console events and shows observed TPS after completion.
- Live proxy hardening: model lookup trims outer whitespace before alias matching (`qwen3.6-35b-a3b ` resolves), and tracker route logs/dashboard queue depth combine heartbeat queue with tracker-local proxy in-flight counts so Postman-style bursts no longer show every selected route as queue `0`.
- Split-shard streaming hardening: Qwen3.6-style distributed generation now emits SSE chunks token-by-token from the head node instead of buffering all generated text until completion. Tracker direct/relay stream proxy logs `proxy progress` with live tokens/TPS, dashboard Inference history shows currently processing requests with live TPS/tokens/queue, and relay stream completion no longer references an undefined `session_id`.
- Native Windows Qwen3.6-MoE import fix: `flash-linear-attention` imports `triton`; without `triton-windows`, startup fails with misleading `Could not import module 'Qwen3_5MoeForCausalLM'`. Installed `triton-windows` in `C:\Users\popov\miniforge3` and added it as a Windows-only node dependency.
