Step 2 of the Responses rollout: native `/v1/responses` endpoint on
neuron that consumes the same InferenceEvent stream as
`/v1/chat/completions` but emits it as the Responses API's named
SSE event family. No gateway-side translation.
## Surface
- `cortex-core::responses` envelope types: `ResponsesRequest`,
`ResponsesInput` (text | items), `ResponsesInputItem` (message |
function_call | function_call_output | reasoning),
`ResponsesContentPart` (input_text | input_image | output_text),
`ResponsesResponse`, `ResponsesOutputItem`, `ResponsesUsage`. Plus
a `events::*` constant module so the projector and the wire shape
stay in sync without string-typos.
- `neuron::wire::openai_responses`:
- `request_to_chat(req)` flattens Responses input + instructions
into a `ChatCompletionRequest` the candle harness already
understands. Text-only Parts collapse to a string; mixed
text+image Parts go to chat's content-array shape; reasoning
items drop; function_call / function_call_output round-trip
via tool_calls / tool_call_id metadata so the surface is
consistent for the day the harness emits tool calls.
- `project_responses_stream(rx, meta)` reads InferenceEvents
and emits the eight named events that compose a Responses
stream: response.created → output_item.added → content_part.added
→ output_text.delta×N → output_text.done → content_part.done
→ output_item.done → response.completed. Synthesises start
frames if the producer skips Start (poisoned model, early
disconnect) so the stream stays coherent.
- `build_response(meta, text, reason, usage)` for the
non-streaming path.
- `CandleHarness::inference_stream(req)` extracted from
`chat_completion_stream`, returning a typed `InferenceStream`
(event receiver + id/created/model_id metadata). Both
`chat_completion_stream` and the new `responses_stream` are now
thin wrappers that pick their wire projection. TP path got the
same treatment (`chat_completion_tp_stream` → `inference_tp_stream`).
- `POST /v1/responses` route on neuron. Non-streaming returns one
buffered `ResponsesResponse`; streaming returns axum SSE with
both event names and JSON data per frame (Responses, unlike
chat completions, uses named `event:` lines). Reused
`inference_error_response` helper hoisted out so the chat and
responses handlers share the InferenceError → HTTP mapping.
## CI
Also bundles the `cuda-check` runner-label fix from feedback on
commit 1859777: `runs-on: rpm` doesn't ship the CUDA toolkit so
cudarc's nvcc-version build script blew up. Switched to
`runs-on: cuda-13.0` per the existing labels.
## Scope cuts (documented in the modules)
- `previous_response_id` rejected at translate time with 400
(`code: chained_conversation_not_supported`) — stateful chained
conversations need a persistence layer we haven't built.
- Reasoning items dropped (no Qwen3 `<think>` routing yet).
- Single output item per response (one `"message"` carrying text);
`function_call` items reserved but not synthesised.
- Streaming events cover the core set; `response.in_progress`
and the web_search / image_generation event families are
out-of-scope.
22 new tests: 5 in cortex-core (envelope round-trips), 13 in
neuron::wire (request translator + projector + non-streaming
builder), 4 in neuron's tests/api.rs (route surface — 503 when no
candle, 400 on previous_response_id, 404 on missing model for
both stream and non-stream).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Two coupled changes addressing the 2026-05-26 validate-neuron failure
where a fresh deploy of beast had /health unreachable for ~5 minutes
while Qwen3.6-27B q5k materialised, even though systemd reported the
unit as active.
1. main.rs no longer awaits load_default_models before binding axum.
The listener binds first; pre-warm runs in a spawned background
task that holds a read lock on the harness registry for the
duration of its sequential load loop. Concurrent on-demand
/models/load and /v1/chat/completions traffic still flow.
2. /health gains an `activation` field carrying:
state pre_warming | ready
pending model ids queued but not started
in_progress model id currently loading (Option)
completed model ids loaded successfully this activation
failed [{model_id, error}] for failed entries
The field is `#[serde(default)]` so a pre-change cortex polling a
new neuron — or vice versa — keeps working.
`ActivationTracker` (new module `neuron::activation`) owns the
RwLock-wrapped state; load_default_models takes a tracker reference
and updates it per-model. NeuronState holds an Arc clone for the
/health handler.
Tests updated to construct trackers and assert state transitions
(empty noop, two failures → ready with both in `failed`).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Stage 4 of the candle-native pivot. /v1/chat/completions now switches
to text/event-stream when the request sets stream: true, emitting one
chat.completion.chunk per generated token followed by the OpenAI
[DONE] terminator.
Pipeline:
- chat_completion_stream creates a bounded mpsc::channel<ChatCompletionChunk>(32),
sends the leading role chunk, then spawns a blocking task that
acquires the per-model arch lock and runs the streaming generation
loop.
- run_inference_streaming tracks a cumulative decoded prefix so each
chunk's delta.content is the substring added since the last chunk —
safe across BPE byte-fallback boundaries that would otherwise split
multi-byte UTF-8 chars.
- The blocking task aborts cleanly if blocking_send fails (client
disconnected), so generation stops when the SSE consumer hangs up.
- Final chunk carries finish_reason ("stop" on EOS, "length" on
max_tokens). The handler appends data: [DONE] after the channel
closes.
The Stage 3 streaming 501 placeholder test is repurposed: with the
streaming path live, an unloaded model now hits the same 404 surface
as the non-streaming path (the model lookup happens first).
cortex-gateway's existing proxy is unchanged — it already forwards
SSE bytes verbatim from Phase 2 work, so the candle SSE format passes
through unmodified.
Neuron Cargo.toml gains futures + tokio-stream (both already in
workspace deps) for ReceiverStream and stream combinators.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Stage 3 of the candle-native pivot. neuron now serves
POST /v1/chat/completions backed by candle's quantized_qwen3 forward
pass on a per-model serialised generation loop, returning the standard
OpenAI ChatCompletionResponse envelope.
Pipeline per request:
- Look up the LoadedModel by request.model (404 if absent).
- Apply the Qwen3 chat template across all messages.
- Tokenize, then spawn_blocking onto tokio's blocking pool to acquire
the per-model arch lock and run prefill + greedy/temperature/top-p
sampling via LogitsProcessor.
- Stop on <|im_end|>/<|endoftext|> EOS or max_tokens (finish_reason
"stop" vs "length").
- Decode with skip_special_tokens=true, build OpenAI response with
prompt/completion/total usage counts.
Supporting changes:
- HarnessRegistry now stores Arc<dyn Harness> and caches a typed
Arc<CandleHarness> so inference routes bypass dyn-Trait dispatch.
- LoadedModel.arch becomes Arc<Mutex<ModelArch>> so the lock guard
can be moved into spawn_blocking.
- NeuronState gains an Option<Arc<CandleHarness>> field for the new
inference route.
- Typed InferenceError lets the handler map ModelNotLoaded → 404 and
other failures → 500 without string-matching anyhow messages.
- stream=true returns 501 until Stage 4 wires up SSE.
- Two leftover mistral.rs string references in proxy.rs and cortex-cli
(missed during the Stage 1 sweep) are corrected here.
Three new default-feature tests cover the no-candle 503, model-not-
loaded 404, and stream=true 501 paths. The cuda-integration test from
Stage 2 still covers real load/unload; a streaming-feature gated test
exercising actual generation will arrive with Stage 4.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Stage 2 of the candle-native pivot. Fleshes out CandleHarness with a
LoadedModel registry keyed by model_id, hf-hub-backed GGUF download,
and Qwen3 quantized weight construction via candle-transformers'
quantized_qwen3 module. unload_model drops the entry; Drop on the
candle ModelWeights frees device memory.
Device selection prefers CUDA (gated behind the new `cuda` feature),
falling back to CPU when CUDA is unavailable so default builds work
on non-GPU hosts. The candle CUDA toolchain isn't pulled in unless
`--features cuda` is passed, keeping CI green on CPU runners.
Config gains a [harness.candle] block with an optional hf_cache path.
HarnessRegistry::from_configs now takes HarnessSettings so per-harness
config flows through.
A gated tests/candle_lifecycle.rs exercises real load → list → unload
→ list-empty when run with `--features cuda-integration` against a
host with HF network access. The default-feature test in tests/api.rs
covers the wrong-harness rejection path without needing the network.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Stage 1 of the candle-native pivot. Replaces the external-process
harness model (mistralrs over HTTP, llamacpp placeholder) with an
in-process Harness trait whose sole implementation is candle. The
trait keeps its shape so future engines slot in additively, but
start/stop default to no-ops and HarnessConfig drops endpoint and
systemd_unit since no harness needs external supervision.
Behaviour is unchanged on the wire: load_model returns a "not
implemented yet (Stage 2)" error and list_models is empty. The
gateway-side proxy, poller, and router are untouched.
CLAUDE.md Phase 11 (llama.cpp) and Phase 12 (mistral.rs COPR) are
marked superseded; the staged plan lives in
~/.claude/plans/create-a-more-aggressive-calm-naur.md.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Package name, lib name, and binary all now just "neuron" without
the cortex- prefix.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- MistralRsHarness: Harness trait impl wrapping mistral.rs HTTP API
(list/load/unload models, health check, start/stop via systemd)
- HarnessRegistry: maps harness name -> Box<dyn Harness>, built from
neuron.toml config
- Neuron API endpoints: GET /models, POST /models/load,
POST /models/unload, GET /models/:id/endpoint
- NeuronConfig: figment-based config loading from neuron.toml
- Integration test: full model lifecycle through mock mistral.rs
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>