# gemma-4-E4B on the phrasing and talk fixtures

Date: 2026-08-09. Box: workpc up, E4B loaded on 8080.
`MAVEN_LLM_URL=http://192.168.1.105:8080 make eval-phrasing`.

This was the one unmeasured risk of the 2026-08-09 model swap. Routing was
measured the same day and E4B lost four destination cases to the 12B. Phrasing
was not measured at all, and phrasing is the half the owner hears.

## Result

| fixture | E4B | resident Qwen3-1.7B, 2026-08-05 |
|---|---|---|
| nudges | 15/15 (100%) | 15/15 (100%) |
| talk, passes every check | **29/36 (80.6%)** | 25/36 (69.4%) |
| lang | 36/36 | — |
| feminine | 36/36 | 36/36 |
| address | **36/36** | 33/36 |
| ontopic | 29/36 | 28/36 |
| p50 latency | **516ms** | 2.97s |
| p95 latency | 921ms | — |
| failed generations | 0 | 0 |

E4B beats the homesrv floor by four cases and answers about six times faster.
Persona is clean: `lang`, `feminine` and `address` are perfect, and `address`
is where the resident model still loses three. The 2026-08-05 measurement of the
resident model is the comparison, since both ran the same 36-case fixture.

Every failure is `ontopic`. Nothing failed on persona, nothing failed to parse.

## The score is at the ceiling, not below it

The 2026-08-05 temperature sweep found two cases that fail at every temperature
in every run: `reply-note-router` and `reply-fact-weight`. It named a defect in
the reply phrasing path rather than sampling noise. It put the fixture's ceiling
at 30/36 before persona is scored. Both cases are in E4B's failure list.

So 29/36 is one case off a ceiling nothing about the model can move. The swap is
safe on phrasing. Read this next to the routing result, not instead of it. There
E4B costs four destination cases and buys 50ms. Here it costs nothing.

## Two findings no check caught

**She says she wrote something down when she did not.** Asked what to do this
evening, E4B writes "Я записала несколько идей!". Asked for a joke, it writes
"Я записала одну забавную ситуацию!". Nothing was stored. No check scores it,
because `ontopic` reads the subject and `cringe` reads pet names. A claim to
have saved something is a claim about state, and it is wrong.

**Two `ontopic` failures look like check defects.** `know-dont-know` wants
"не зна" or "не мог". It got "Я не умею знать личную информацию о твоих
соседях", which declines correctly in words the check does not list.
`know-hiccups` is the same shape. Neither is a model failure and both count
against the score.

## Not measured here

A 12B control on the same fixture, which would need the card reloaded and is the
owner's call. The talk fixture through the daemon rather than through the
phraser directly. The CPT'd Qwen3-1.7B, which does not exist yet and is the
reason `address` is a check at all.