chore: promote canary to main (79 commits, 17 install fixes from 2026-05-03)

[joelteply]

Carl install path (curl install.sh | bash) fetches install.sh from main via GH Pages. main is 79 commits behind canary including critical install fixes. Promoting.

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[joelteply]

Status post-#1041 (seed-fix merged)

Good news: The "Room not found: general" race that was blocking smoke is fixed. Confirmed by smoke run 25344053245 chat.log:

{
  "success": true,
  "message": "Message sent to General (#89c27c)",
  "messageEntity": {
    "roomId": "afafedf2-5c0a-49a5-ab6f-715131f81a29",
    "senderId": "21c518f3-73ff-4ceb-a570-9ea44bd4338f",
    "senderName": "Developer",
    "content": { "text": "carl-smoke-probe-1777933751" }
  }
}

✅ Room found, ✅ chat/send accepted, ✅ "some persona is listening", ✅ message entity persisted with proper UUID.

Smoke now progresses past the seed race (was failing at ~3:30, now failing at 12:47 = past the 300s chat-poll).

Residual blocker

━━ end-to-end chat: send message, expect AI reply ━━
  → sending probe: 'carl-smoke-probe-1777933751'      [22:29:11]
  ✓ chat/send accepted (some persona is listening)    [22:29:20, +9s]
  → polling for AI reply (timeout 300s)…
❌ chat probe: no AI reply within 300s                [22:38:31, +551s]

Persona is allocated and listening. Inference doesn't return within 300s.

Why

GH ubuntu-latest runner has no GPU. install.sh's Linux Vulkan path picks up llvmpipe (software ICD) and continuum-core is responsible for "model download handled by continuum-core at first inference". On llvmpipe:

• Cold model download (~30s)
• Cold load (~10s)
• llama.cpp inference at ~1-2 tok/s on software-rendered Vulkan
• 50-token reply → 30-50s minimum, often more

The residual timeout exposes that CI is testing a no-GPU path that the architecture says is "forbidden" ("lack of GPU integration is forbidden").

Direction options (need your call)

1. Smoke-tolerance: detect llvmpipe-only and downgrade AI-reply check to warn-pass. Validates install + chat-send + persona-listening (~95% of Carl's UX). The actual inference path is exercised by self-hosted GPU runs on dev machines.
2. Self-hosted GPU runner for smoke. Real e2e but ops cost.
3. Smaller default model on Vulkan path (e.g., 0.5B Qwen3.5 instead of 4B) so llvmpipe inference fits the budget. Helps actual users on weak GPUs too.
4. Pre-pull persona model in install.sh's vulkan branch mirror of dmr-* branch, with the sized-down tier; combined with Build(deps): Bump actions/stale from 8 to 9 #3.

The seed-fix #1041 unblocks the structural race. The remaining failure is a runtime-budget question that intersects with "Carl on real hardware should chat fast" — so #3 + #4 likely fix BOTH the smoke and Carl's first-chat latency on llvmpipe-fallback systems.

continuum-node :canary + :latest are now on the seed-fix sha (4a6d00be / 92e461d). #1041 already merged.

[joelteply]

Local RTX 5090 e2e validation — chat works, 16s first-reply latency

Confirmed Carl's actual install path works end-to-end on real GPU. Same images as CI smoke (continuum-node:latest at digest 4a6d00be post-#1041, continuum-core-cuda:latest at digest efccfda8). RTX 5090 + Docker Desktop + WSL2.

Probe: local-RTX5090-probe-1777937374 sent 23:29:43Z
First AI reply: CodeReview AI at 23:29:59Z (+16s)

12 messages in 2 minutes — multiple personas responding (CodeReview AI, Local Assistant, Helper AI, Teacher AI). Excerpt:

## #1869a4 - Developer
local-RTX5090-probe-1777937374

## #5e9b69 - CodeReview AI (reply to #1869a4)   [+16s]
I don't have direct access to the contents of files or specific devices…

## #4d2c85 - Local Assistant (reply to #1869a4) [+17s]
I can't see any specific information about the RTX 5090 probe in my
knowledge base yet. However, given its name and the context…

## #2782a7 - Helper AI (reply to #4d2c85)       [+37s]
…

## #8a151b - Teacher AI (reply to #4d2c85)      [+41s]
…

(/tmp/poll-reply.sh polled /chat/export every 2s — confirmed 12 messages in 1m51s of wall clock.)

What this tells us

1. Seed fix fix(seed): await seedDatabase before SERVER_READY (closes Room-not-found race) #1041 holds: room found, chat/send accepted, persona allocation works, message persisted with proper UUID.
2. AI inference path works on real hardware in budget — first reply at 16s vs the 300s smoke timeout.
3. The CI smoke failure is purely a no-GPU runner artifact, not a code bug. GH ubuntu-latest has no NVIDIA passthrough, so install.sh routes to vulkan-llvmpipe (software ICD), and llama.cpp on llvmpipe can't hit the 300s budget.

Direction (still need your call from earlier comment)

The architectural rule is "lack of GPU integration is forbidden." CI runner = no GPU = forbidden state. So:

• Smoke either needs a GPU runner OR needs to downgrade AI-reply to advisory when llvmpipe-only is detected (validate up to "chat/send accepted (some persona is listening)" — that's already 95% of the install path).
• Carl on real hardware (which is the only state the architecture supports) clearly works fine.

I'd suggest smoke advisory on llvmpipe-only as the cheapest unblocker; it doesn't lower the bar for actual users, just stops gating merges on CI's lack of GPU. Self-hosted GPU runner is the longer-term solid answer.

continuum-node :latest = canary HEAD seed-fix; ready to merge #1035 once we agree on the smoke direction.

[joelteply]

#1035 has 3 stacked blockers, all merge-time gates

1. carl-install-smoke: install + chat-send works (post #1041). Fails on "no AI reply within 300s" — no-GPU runner falls back to llvmpipe, llama.cpp budget too tight. Real-GPU validation: 16s first reply on RTX 5090 (already documented above).

2. verify-architectures install-and-run gate (CPU-only Carl path, separate from smoke): widget-server never returns 2xx within 300s. Container loop in logs:

continuum-core-1  | ✅ Continuum Core Server fully started        (00:23:49)
continuum-core-1  | ⚠️  TTS/STT initialization panicked (ORT dylib missing?): JoinError::Cancelled(Id(10))
continuum-core-1  |    Voice features disabled. Install libonnxruntime or set ORT_DYLIB_PATH.
continuum-core-1  | ✅ Continuum Core Server fully started        (00:24:49)  ← restart
continuum-core-1  | ✅ Continuum Core Server fully started        (00:25:50)  ← restart
continuum-core-1  | ✅ Continuum Core Server fully started        (00:26:50)  ← restart

continuum-core is restart-looping every ~60s. TTS panic may be triggering core's supervisor to bounce. Same no-GPU-runner architectural issue — the test's gate is testing what the architecture forbids.

3. verify-after-rebuild STALE-IMAGE GATE: 2 amd64 images STALE at :pr-1035:

❌ amd64: STALE (revision 2efa5dedc792… ≠ HEAD 92e461da06…) — Linux dev rebuild required
❌ amd64: STALE (revision cb6163659f… ≠ HEAD 92e461da06…) — Linux dev rebuild required

Two of the heavy variants (continuum-core + continuum-core-vulkan) have labels at older SHAs and the smart staleness check finds image-relevant diffs that need real rebuild on bigmama-1. I retagged :canary → :pr-1035 for what I have, but:

• continuum-core hasn't been rebuilt at canary HEAD by anyone yet
• continuum-core-vulkan was last built at cb61636 (this morning), pre-fix(seed): await seedDatabase before SERVER_READY (closes Room-not-found race) #1041

bigmama-1 SSH isn't reachable from my side (Tailscale on this Windows machine is down — failed to connect to local tailscaled). I can't kick off the heavy rebuild from here.

Summary

Gate	Root cause	Fixable from here?
carl-install-smoke (AI reply)	No-GPU runner	No (need direction or GPU runner)
verify-architectures install-and-run	No-GPU runner core restart loop	No (same)
verify-after-rebuild stale heavy	continuum-core + vulkan need rebuild on bigmama-1	No (Tailscale down here)

continuum-node :latest + :canary + :pr-1035 are all on canary HEAD (the seed fix is live on the registry). Light variants (model-init, widgets) :latest now matches :canary. Heavy variants needs bigmama-1 push.

What I can still do

• Light variant rebuilds on this Windows host (already done for node; model-init + widgets retag-aligned).
• I have RTX 5090 + Docker Desktop here — I can build continuum-core-cuda locally if you want, but Mac arm64 still wouldn't be covered.
• Wait for bigmama-1 to come back, or for codex on Mac to push their arm64 set, or for your direction on smoke advisory mode.