diff --git a/crates/neuron/src/harness/candle.rs b/crates/neuron/src/harness/candle.rs
index ac12e95..ea860ac 100644
--- a/crates/neuron/src/harness/candle.rs
+++ b/crates/neuron/src/harness/candle.rs
@@ -128,6 +128,62 @@ const REPEAT_PENALTY: f32 = 1.1;
 /// penalty. Matches the candle quantized-qwen3 example default.
 const REPEAT_LAST_N: usize = 64;
 
+/// Architectures the dense safetensors path can construct. Keep
+/// alphabetical; one entry per supported `config.json#/model_type`
+/// value. New entries land alongside a new `ModelArch` variant + a new
+/// dispatch branch in `load_arch_dense` / `run_inference` /
+/// `run_inference_streaming` (plus, for TP, a parallel pattern in
+/// `tp_qwen3.rs`).
+const DENSE_SUPPORTED_MODEL_TYPES: &[&str] = &["qwen3"];
+
+/// Pre-flight check the operator's `config.json` against the set of
+/// architectures the dense path actually knows how to build. Surfaces
+/// architecture mismatches as a single clean error before the serde
+/// deserializer trips on missing fields — the latter happens because
+/// every architecture has different hyperparameter names, so when the
+/// JSON is e.g. Qwen3.6 wrapped under `text_config: {...}`, candle's
+/// `qwen3::Config` finds none of its expected top-level fields and
+/// fails with a cryptic `missing field 'vocab_size' at line N col 1`.
+///
+/// The result message names the model_type we saw, the supported set,
+/// and points at the files an operator (or future contributor) needs
+/// to touch to grow the supported set.
+fn check_dense_config_supported(config_json: &str, model_id: &str) -> Result<()> {
+    let v: serde_json::Value = serde_json::from_str(config_json)
+        .with_context(|| format!("parse config.json for '{model_id}' as JSON"))?;
+    let model_type = v.get("model_type").and_then(|x| x.as_str()).unwrap_or("");
+    if model_type.is_empty() {
+        anyhow::bail!(
+            "config.json for '{model_id}' is missing `model_type`; the dense \
+             path needs it to gate architecture support (supported: {:?})",
+            DENSE_SUPPORTED_MODEL_TYPES
+        );
+    }
+    if DENSE_SUPPORTED_MODEL_TYPES.contains(&model_type) {
+        return Ok(());
+    }
+    // Bonus context: the model usually also lists architectures, which
+    // is what `transformers` keys on. Including it makes the error
+    // self-contained.
+    let architectures = v
+        .get("architectures")
+        .and_then(|x| x.as_array())
+        .map(|a| {
+            a.iter()
+                .filter_map(|v| v.as_str().map(String::from))
+                .collect::<Vec<_>>()
+        })
+        .unwrap_or_default();
+    anyhow::bail!(
+        "unsupported model_type '{model_type}' for '{model_id}' \
+         (architectures={architectures:?}); the dense path supports {:?}. \
+         Add a `ModelArch` variant + load/forward branches in \
+         crates/neuron/src/harness/candle.rs (and the TP analogue in \
+         tp_qwen3.rs) to extend coverage.",
+        DENSE_SUPPORTED_MODEL_TYPES
+    );
+}
+
 /// Resolve the effective HuggingFace cache directory for the candle
 /// harness. Precedence (first hit wins):
 ///
@@ -346,6 +402,7 @@ impl CandleHarness {
                 "loading dense Qwen3 from safetensors"
             );
             let cfg_text = std::fs::read_to_string(&config_path).context("read config.json")?;
+            check_dense_config_supported(&cfg_text, &model_id_for_log)?;
             let cfg: qwen3_dense::Config =
                 serde_json::from_str(&cfg_text).context("parse Qwen3 config.json")?;
 
@@ -820,6 +877,11 @@ impl CandleHarness {
         let (config_path, tokenizer_path, safetensors_paths) =
             self.resolve_dense_files(spec).await?;
         let config_json = std::fs::read_to_string(&config_path).context("read config.json")?;
+        // Reject unsupported architectures *before* spawning the worker
+        // pool and fanning out NCCL — otherwise we'd burn the pool
+        // lifecycle on a load that's guaranteed to fail at deserialise
+        // time inside every rank.
+        check_dense_config_supported(&config_json, &spec.model_id)?;
 
         // 2. Spawn the worker pool. Rank 0 stays in-process; ranks
         //    1..tp_size are subprocesses, one per device after the
@@ -1518,3 +1580,64 @@ fn unix_subsec_nanos() -> u64 {
         .map(|d| d.as_nanos() as u64)
         .unwrap_or(0)
 }
+
+#[cfg(test)]
+mod tests {
+    use super::*;
+
+    #[test]
+    fn check_dense_config_accepts_qwen3() {
+        let cfg = r#"{
+            "model_type": "qwen3",
+            "vocab_size": 151936,
+            "architectures": ["Qwen3ForCausalLM"]
+        }"#;
+        check_dense_config_supported(cfg, "Qwen/Qwen3-1.7B").expect("qwen3 should pass");
+    }
+
+    #[test]
+    fn check_dense_config_rejects_qwen3_5_with_clear_message() {
+        let cfg = r#"{
+            "model_type": "qwen3_5",
+            "architectures": ["Qwen3_5ForConditionalGeneration"],
+            "image_token_id": 248056,
+            "text_config": {"hidden_size": 5120}
+        }"#;
+        let err = check_dense_config_supported(cfg, "Qwen/Qwen3.6-27B")
+            .expect_err("qwen3_5 should be rejected");
+        let msg = format!("{err}");
+        assert!(
+            msg.contains("unsupported model_type 'qwen3_5'"),
+            "message should name the rejected type: {msg}"
+        );
+        assert!(
+            msg.contains("Qwen/Qwen3.6-27B"),
+            "message should echo the model id: {msg}"
+        );
+        assert!(
+            msg.contains("qwen3"),
+            "message should list the supported set: {msg}"
+        );
+    }
+
+    #[test]
+    fn check_dense_config_rejects_missing_model_type() {
+        let cfg = r#"{ "vocab_size": 1234 }"#;
+        let err = check_dense_config_supported(cfg, "anon/no-type")
+            .expect_err("missing model_type should be rejected");
+        assert!(
+            format!("{err}").contains("missing `model_type`"),
+            "message should call out the missing field"
+        );
+    }
+
+    #[test]
+    fn check_dense_config_rejects_invalid_json() {
+        let err = check_dense_config_supported("not json", "anon/bad-json")
+            .expect_err("malformed JSON should be rejected");
+        assert!(
+            format!("{err:#}").contains("config.json"),
+            "message should mention config.json"
+        );
+    }
+}