Stream chat responses in the dashboard with live progress and unified styles

Chat now sends stream=true and renders SSE tokens incrementally with live
tok/s status, a stop button (AbortController), and a blinking cursor; because
streamed requests emit tracker 'proxy progress' events, the Call wall now
shows in-flight requests with live TPS too. Chat colors route through :root
tokens instead of hardcoded hex values.

ADR-0020 documents the changes and the mixed-topology routing flaw: a partial
GPU head (0-21) + full CPU node (0-39) gets downstream start_layer=0 instead
of 22, corrupting activations into 1-token generations that were billed and
polluted throughput stats. Fix steps recorded, not yet implemented.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Dobromir Popov
2026-07-07 19:48:43 +02:00
parent 481ce6c6f5
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# ADR-0020: Dashboard chat streaming, live request progress, and the mixed-topology routing flaw
## Status: Accepted (chat/streaming/styles implemented); routing flaw documented, fix pending
## Context
Live alpha testing (2026-07-07) with `Qwen3.6-35B-A3B` split across two LAN nodes surfaced
three UX gaps and one routing correctness flaw:
1. **No visibility while a request is processing.** The Call wall showed
"no in-flight requests" during a 52-second generation. Cause: the dashboard chat sent
`stream: false`, and the tracker only emits `proxy progress` console events (the Call
wall's live-status source, `_tracker_log_proxy_progress`, `server.py` ~2199) for
**streamed** requests. Non-streamed proxying produces only
`route selected → connected → complete`, and short requests complete inside the
dashboard's 4-second poll window.
2. **Chat did not stream.** The nodes support SSE token-by-token generation
(`generate_text_streaming`, hardened earlier for split shards), and the tracker proxy
passes `text/event-stream` through (`server.py` ~3256), but the chat panel blocked on
full JSON and showed nothing until completion.
3. **Chat panel styles drifted.** The "new chat layout" redesign left hardcoded one-off
colors (`#1f4788`, `#2563b8`, `#10151d`, `#1a1012`, `#5c2020`, `#ffb4b4`) mixed with
the CSS custom-property palette.
## Decisions
### 1. Chat streams by default (SSE)
`dashboard.html` `sendChat()` now sends `stream: true` and consumes the SSE body with a
`ReadableStream` reader:
- Assistant tokens render incrementally into the last bubble (direct DOM update, full
re-render only at boundaries), with a blinking `▍` cursor while streaming.
- Chat status shows live progress: `generating… N tokens · X tok/s`.
- The send button becomes a stop button (`■`) during generation, backed by an
`AbortController`; a stopped generation keeps the partial text.
- Non-SSE responses (JSON fallback, errors) are still handled; `data: {"error": ...}`
stream events surface as error bubbles.
- `streaming` flags are stripped when loading persisted sessions so an interrupted
generation never leaves a stuck cursor.
### 2. Live in-flight visibility rides on streaming
No tracker change was needed: because chat now streams, the tracker emits `proxy progress`
events (throttled to stdout, updated in place in the console ring via
`update_console_key`), and the existing Call wall state machine
(`buildCallWallStates`) renders processing rows with live tokens/TPS/queue.
**Known limitation (accepted):** non-streamed API requests still show no progress between
`proxy connected` and `proxy complete` — there is nothing to report until the node
returns. Callers wanting live visibility should use `stream: true`.
### 3. Chat style tokens
All chat colors route through `:root` custom properties (`--hover-bg`, `--chat-user-bg`
`#1f6feb`, `--chat-user-border`, `--chat-error-bg/border/fg`). No hardcoded hex values
remain in chat rules, so future palette changes are single-line edits.
## Documented flaw: mixed-topology routing (partial GPU head + full CPU node)
### Observed (2026-07-07, tracker 192.168.0.179:8080)
Two nodes registered for `qwen3.6-35b-a3b`:
| node | hardware | shard | benchmark |
|---|---|---|---|
| `5gMLrmyB-ec3afe6f1a03` (192.168.0.20) | RTX 4060, CUDA | 021 (partial, fast) | 11,164 |
| `7j77FsPY-55249b0583e5` (192.168.0.179) | CPU | 039 (full, slow) | 425 |
When the tracker selected the GPU node as head, it injected:
```
downstream=[{"endpoint": "http://192.168.0.179:7000", "start_layer": 0}]
```
`start_layer: 0` — not 22. The downstream full node re-ran **all 40 layers from layer 0
on hidden states that had already passed through the head's layers 021**, producing
garbage logits. Evidence from the logs:
- GPU-headed requests: `generation complete tokens=1` and billed `out=0`/`out=1`/`out=3`
— near-instant EOS from corrupt activations.
- The same prompt routed directly to the CPU full node: 209 tokens over 52 s (healthy).
- Observed TPS for GPU-headed requests was meaningless (2.519.0 "tok/s" on 03 token
outputs), and those samples now pollute the rolling per-`(node, model)` throughput
stats used for routing preference.
- Clients were **billed** for these broken 1-token responses.
### Root cause
The route planner treats the full-coverage node as a standalone complete route
(`route=7j77FsPY…[0-39]`) but still injects it as the head's downstream with the
downstream node's own `shard_start` (0) instead of `head.shard_end + 1` (22). A partial
head + full-model downstream is a topology the planner never had to handle before —
prior split tests used disjoint shards (011 + 1223) where `shard_start` happened to
equal the correct continuation layer.
### Required fix (not yet implemented)
1. **Correct continuation layer:** when hop N ends at layer `e`, hop N+1 must execute
from `start_layer = e + 1` regardless of the downstream node's own `shard_start`
(the `X-Meshnet-Start-Layer` overlapping-shard mechanism from ADR-0012 exists for
exactly this; the planner must set it for full-model downstream nodes too).
2. **Route preference sanity:** with a healthy single-node full route available, prefer
it over a multi-hop route unless the pipeline is estimated faster; a fast head that
forces a slow full-model tail wins nothing (every token still crosses the CPU node).
3. **Stat hygiene:** exclude or flag throughput samples from responses with ≤ a few
output tokens, so broken routes don't skew routing preference.
4. **Billing guard (consider):** suspiciously short completions from multi-hop routes
during this window were billed; a minimum-viability check (or refund path) may be
warranted once audits land.
### Verification for the fix
Reproduce with a partial GPU head (021) + full CPU node (039): a chat request routed
through the GPU head must produce output equivalent to the direct CPU route, with
`downstream start_layer=22` visible in `proxy route selected`, and multi-token streamed
output on the Call wall.
## Verification of this ADR's implemented changes
- `pytest tests/test_dashboard.py` — 5 passed (stale "Chat / inference" panel assertion
updated to the tabbed layout).
- Embedded dashboard JS parses (`new Function(script)` under Node 22).
- Live check: open `/dashboard` → Chat, send a prompt to `qwen3.6-35b-a3b` — tokens
must appear incrementally with live tok/s in the status line, the Call wall must show
the request as `processing` with live TPS, and the send button must stop generation
mid-stream keeping partial text.