The remote model cannot be a llama-server that is simply left running: a
resident 7-14B holds 16GB against the CPT runs the card is for. So what
is always up on the workstation is a supervisor, and llama-server is
loaded while the card is free.
Still not a scheduler. It arbitrates nothing between callers, and Maven
never asks it to start anything.
Seven cases. The load-bearing ones are the constraint from 483: an
unconfigured deploy never probes and always reaches the floor, a busy
card degrades silently with the remote untouched, and a remote that dies
between probes still completes the turn and corrects the cached answer on
its way out.
CompleteRemote is pinned not to fall back, because a named gap that
quietly became a 1.7B guess is the failure this whole split exists to
prevent. And 1000 Available calls are pinned to make zero probes.
Pair holds both models and decides which answers. A prober asks the
remote whether it will take work and caches the answer, so a request
reads an atomic bool rather than paying for a health check. Routing sits
at p50 825ms on the hot path and must never wait on a machine that may be
asleep.
The two methods are the two halves of the degradation rule in
docs/offload.md. Complete falls back silently, for routing, replies and
nudge phrasing, where the big model is only better. CompleteRemote
returns ErrRemoteUnavailable instead, for a world question, where the
1.7B does not answer worse but invents.
A nil remote is the unconfigured deploy: nothing probes, everything goes
to the floor, and the box behaves exactly as it does today.
claude