neuron-tai/.scratch/distributed-gguf-runtime/issues/18-certify-whole-model-glm-5-2-runtime-semantics.md

18 — Certify whole-model GLM-5.2 runtime semantics

Status: ready-for-agent

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-018 in prd.json.
• Read and verify every dependency evidence README.
• Inspect current upstream behavior and git status; community claims that a model “works” are not correctness evidence.

Description

As a runtime maintainer, I need a certified whole-model oracle for the exact lowest-quant GLM-5.2 artifact so that distributed parity is measured against correct MoE, DSA, IndexShare, cache, and Max-template semantics.

Expected durable outputs

• Verified target artifact on mounted storage
• Stock-pin baseline and warning/tensor inventory
• Focused GLM runtime correctness tests and minimum patch series, if required
• Signed whole-model oracle recipe, deterministic outputs, metrics, and limitations
• evidence/DGR-018/README.md

Acceptance criteria

• Preflight at least 224 GiB usable memory and approximately 250 GB free mounted storage; abort before download if storage would resolve under /home or requirements are unmet.
• Download/resume and verify all six DGR-017 UD-IQ1_S files against exact sizes and LFS SHA-256 values.
• Load the target with the unmodified DGR-004 pin first and retain full logs, tensor warnings, peak memory, context/KV allocation, TTFT, and decode timing.
• Prove from graph/runtime evidence whether 256-expert MoE/top-8/shared expert, DSA lightning indexer/sparse attention, IndexShare Full/Shared reuse, and reasoning_effort=max are active.
• Dense-attention or replicated-indexer compatibility fallback is labeled incomplete and cannot become the oracle solely because it emits plausible text.
• Audit focused upstream/Mesh-LLM donor tests and patches; adopt or rewrite only independently understood minimum changes and record provenance/rejection rationale.
• Handle the trailing NextN/MTP tensors explicitly; MTP may remain disabled for alpha, but ignored tensors and layer-count behavior must be understood and tested.
• Run deterministic prefill/greedy decode and fixed Max-mode coding, structured-output/tool-call, and reasoning sentinels; retain raw prompts, outputs, token IDs, and compared state/logit evidence.
• Bind the oracle to exact artifact, tokenizer/template, adapter, backend class, compute/activation/KV dtypes, context/RoPE, llama.cpp commit, and patch-series hash.
• Produce a signed pass or stop semantic-runtime verdict; no performance threshold is weakened after execution.
• Targeted native/unit tests and clean pinned rebuild pass.
• git diff --check passes.
• Default tests remain model-download-free/GPU-free; full-target execution is opt-in and never runs in default CI.
• Model artifacts and caches remain on configured mounted-drive storage and never under /home.
• Preserve all pre-existing working-tree changes and stage only files belonging to this story.
• Write evidence/DGR-018/README.md with exact hardware, storage, source revisions, files, commands, raw-result paths, real results, limitations, and handoff.
• Update only this story issue to Status: done after every acceptance criterion passes.

Dependency handoff

• DGR-003, DGR-004, and DGR-017 must have passes: true; read and verify their evidence READMEs.

Finish contract

• If 224+ GiB usable reference hardware is unavailable, write evidence/DGR-018/BLOCKED.md with exact preflight output; do not substitute a smaller model.
• Preserve real failures and blockers; never fabricate output.
• Emit <promise>COMPLETE</promise> only after the signed oracle evidence exists.

References

• GLM-5.2 Max alpha roadmap
• llama.cpp GLM-5.2 issue