neuron-tai/.scratch/distributed-gguf-runtime/issues/019-lock-alpha-and-beta-performance-contracts.md

DGR-019: Lock alpha and beta performance contracts

• Status / triage: specification only; ready-for-human; passes: false
• Execution mode: HITL
• Milestone: M0
• Dependencies: DGR-017
• Blocks (derived): DGR-020, DGR-044, DGR-054
• Labels: area:performance, type:contract, priority:p0, gate:hitl, ready-for-human
• Evidence class: release
• Hardware: required
• Model: generic+deepseek-v4
• Upstream: no

Objective / description

Fresh Ralph session: read .scratch/distributed-gguf-runtime/RALPH-CONTEXT.md, source issue .scratch/distributed-gguf-runtime/issues/019-lock-alpha-and-beta-performance-contracts.md, and evidence READMEs for dependencies (DGR-017) before changing code. Inspect live source/tests rather than trusting legacy pass states. Objective: Freeze useful speed, correctness, memory-fit, and stop/go thresholds before implementation results are visible.

Acceptance criteria

• Define controlled safetensors, whole-model GGUF, dense distributed GGUF, and V4 Flash distributed lanes with fixed prompts, context/output lengths, sampling, concurrency, hardware, and metrics.
• Alpha requires correctness plus a human-approved useful-speed threshold; beta adds concurrency, long-context, failure, and sustained-throughput thresholds.
• Separate quantization/model-fit gains from runtime, transport, batching, and kernel gains.
• Treat quants and 2–4/10+ stage counts only as named certification scenarios; no product logic may hardcode them.
• Lock thresholds and stop conditions in versioned machine-readable data before benchmark result ingestion.
• Applicable shared quality gates in prd.json pass, and the evidence handoff records exact commands/results, changed files, limitations, and dependency handoff.

Shared quality gates

• Targeted deterministic tests pass; Python changes also pass python -m compileall packages tests.
• git diff --check passes.
• Default tests are model-download-free, API-credit-free, and GPU-free.
• Evidence README records exact changed files, commands/results, limitations, and dependency handoff; no fabricated evidence or inherited completion credit.
• Native changes pass focused out-of-tree CMake build and CTest; patch changes verify clean apply/check/reverse against the exact llama.cpp pin.
• Runs are opt-in and record exact artifact/split hashes, runtime/upstream pin, backend/driver, hardware, network, commands, and raw metrics. Model artifacts use configured mounted-drive storage and never /home.
• Preserve existing Transformers behavior and backend-agnostic Tracker routing/load balancing/billing/relay semantics unless an explicit versioned contract says otherwise. One scoped story commit is expected during execution, but this specification-materialization change is not committed.

Evidence handoff

Write and verify .scratch/distributed-gguf-runtime/evidence/DGR-019/README.md. Until every criterion and applicable gate has real evidence, this story remains passes: false. Legacy evidence is provenance only, not completion credit.