neuron-tai/.scratch/distributed-gguf-runtime/issues/20-pass-real-distributed-glm-5-2-max-alpha.md

20 — Pass real distributed GLM-5.2 Max alpha acceptance

Status: blocked (2026-07-14) — waiting on DGR-018/DGR-019

Blocked: Depends on DGR-018 and DGR-019, both blocked on the 256-GiB-class oracle host (≥ 224 GiB runtime-accessible memory), plus enough physical consumer nodes that no single node admits the whole recipe. See evidence/DGR-018/BLOCKED.md.

Mandatory fresh-session context

• Read RALPH-CONTEXT.md, GLM-5.2-MAX-ALPHA-ROADMAP.md, and this issue completely before changing code.
• This issue is DGR-020 in prd.json.
• Read and verify every dependency evidence README and the immutable DGR-017 contract.
• Inspect live source, hardware, network, storage, and git status; synthetic or layer-reduced evidence cannot satisfy this story.

Description

As an alpha user, I need the exact lowest-quant GLM-5.2 model to run in Max reasoning mode across consumer machines through Meshnet so that the project has proven its end goal on real hardware.

Expected durable outputs

• Exact multi-node hardware/network/storage/runtime manifest
• Signed target identity, ownership, parity, quality, performance, and reliability reports
• Raw worker/tracker/API logs, metrics, prompts, outputs, and cleanup evidence
• Explicit immutable alpha or stop verdict
• evidence/DGR-020/README.md

Acceptance criteria

• Use the exact DGR-017 UD-IQ1_S artifact and certified DGR-018/DGR-019 runtime recipe with all source and patch hashes verified.
• Use at least two physical consumer machines; each reserves at least max(20% of physically usable memory, 8 GiB) outside weight-plus-Q8-KV placement, no node can place the complete recipe, unified memory is counted once, and measured peak use stays within physical memory without swap/overcommit.
• Treat 5×64 GiB or 3×96/128 GiB as the recommended topology; arithmetic-minimum 4×64 or 2×128 qualifies only with exact contiguous placement and measured reserve evidence.
• Use a same-switch wired network with at least 2.5 GbE; record 10 GbE as recommended and measure hop RTT/serialization/queue latency.
• Tracker selects disjoint contiguous Shards whose exact required tensor inventory has complete union and no unintended overlap.
• Every stage reports real CPU/GPU compute, owned tensor bytes/layers, local KV, backend, queue, and seam telemetry; synthetic, passthrough, or zero-layer workers fail acceptance.
• Runtime evidence proves native GLM MoE/shared expert, DSA lightning indexer/sparse attention, and IndexShare Full/Shared paths are active; dense fallback fails acceptance.
• OpenAI-compatible API applies and records reasoning_effort=max, stable model ID, finish reason, and token usage.
• Configure 16,384 context, concurrency 1, and Q8_0 MLA/indexer KV; complete the fixed 4,096-token prefill lane and generate at least 512 output tokens or valid natural EOS after at least 128 tokens.
• Production seam meets at least 0.90 greedy token agreement and 0.999 mean compared-state/logit cosine similarity against DGR-018 on the fixed corpus, with no non-finite or malformed tensors.
• Fixed coding, structured tool-call/JSON, and multi-step reasoning sentinels produce parseable relevant outputs retained for human review.
• After warm-up, fixed Max lane median decode is at least 0.5 token/s, 4,096-token-prompt TTFT is at most 10 minutes, and no unexplained stall exceeds 60 seconds without progress telemetry.
• Record per-stage/seam p50/p95 latency, bytes, compute time, peak RSS/VRAM, KV pressure, network properties, errors, and total energy when available.
• Two consecutive cold starts load, generate, release, and exit without leaked processes, mapped weights, queues, or KV leases.
• Cancellation in prefill and decode releases all stages; one worker loss aborts the route; retry starts from token zero on a newly compatible route; stale epochs and duplicate steps fail closed.
• Model artifacts/caches remain on configured mounted-drive storage and never under /home; secret scan passes.
• Run targeted/full deterministic tests and clean native rebuild in addition to target execution; git diff --check passes.
• Preserve all raw failures and do not weaken DGR-017 thresholds after results.
• Write a signed alpha verdict only if every criterion passes; otherwise write stop with the measured bottleneck and next narrow action.
• Write evidence/DGR-020/README.md with exact commands, manifests, raw-result paths, outputs, limitations, and post-alpha handoff.
• Update only this story issue to Status: done after the immutable verdict and all evidence exist.

Dependency handoff

• DGR-007, DGR-008, DGR-009, DGR-011, DGR-013, DGR-017, DGR-018, and DGR-019 must have passes: true; read and verify their evidence READMEs.
• DGR-012 continuous batching and DGR-014 final comparative release gate are post-alpha and do not block one target session.

Finish contract

• If required physical nodes/storage are unavailable, write evidence/DGR-020/BLOCKED.md; do not substitute a smaller model, API, synthetic worker, or single host.
• Preserve real failures and blockers; never fabricate target output or telemetry.
• Emit <promise>COMPLETE</promise> only after the signed verdict exists.

References

• GLM-5.2 Max alpha roadmap
• Ralph execution context