# glm53-kindling — vendored kindlingai/glm-5.3-flash-gx10 (B-mode)

Upstream: <https://github.com/kindlingai/glm-5.3-flash-gx10> @ `c748079d45e6`
(re-vendored from `27cf839c2133`; carries the TP3/TP6 DFlash block-drop fix
+ the optional dispram display-RAM overlay).
(our fork name for their tree; original mmastrac/glm-5.3-flash-4x-gx10).
GLM-5.3-Flash NVFP4 on 2/4/6 GB10 boxes: stock vLLM nightly + 15 anchored
patches + the `experimental/` overlay stack (arx RDMA collectives, weight
snapshots, adaptive-k scheduling, fp8 dense, megamoe, profiling fixes,
sequence parallelism, RecoverSSM), DFlash2 drafter, mentat instead of Ray.

## Status: integration mode B (2026-10-01)

Operator decision: **image + patches under sm121 rendezvous first**, mode A
(their full entrypoint + resident `mentatd` daemons) only if B proves out.

What B keeps vs skips:

| kept (baked/transcribed) | skipped (mode A territory) |
|---|---|
| their image build (all 15 patches, FlashKDA rebuild, chat template) | `/entrypoint.sh` orchestration + `discover.sh` |
| all nine overlay file sets — **baked** by `build.sh`, not mounted | resident `mentatd` host daemons (`ray` shim, 6379-6382) |
| every measured knob: args + env transcribed 1:1 per TP | preflight / fabric-check / status server / self-test |
| DFlash2 spec, AdaptiveK scheduler, per-TP KV pin + limits | `MODEL_HOST_DIR` local-disk rule (NAS, operator call) |

Recipes: `recipes/glm53-kindling-{2x,4x,6x}/recipe.toml`. The overlay
`environment:` blocks from `experimental/compose/*.yaml` live in recipe
`[env]`, the `entrypoint.sh` `exec vllm serve …` construction in `[args]`.
`glm53-kindling` == `entrypoint` defaults == "the order the numbers at the
top [of the upstream README] were measured".

## Deviations (each in the recipe headers too)

- **Executor**: `mp` + sm121 rank flags instead of mentat's Ray surface.
- **Weights on NFS**: upstream requires each box's local disk (boot-time NFS
  races — upstream README). We serve from the NAS HF cache (operator call;
  download `nvidia/GLM-5.3-Flash-NVFP4` + `incoai/GLM-5.3-Flash-DFlash2`
  land there). Freeing ~181 GiB local per node ×4 was not an option.
- **Snapshot tags are TP-scoped** (`fp8w4c-tp4-…`): upstream snapshots are
  per TP rank; its single shared tag is safe only on a fixed-topology box
  set. TP2/TP4 recipes must never share the dir.
- **Port 30000** (`API_PORT` upstream default 8002), served name `glm53`
  (upstream default, already simple).
- Chat template stays upstream's (`thinking:false` → low reasoning effort;
  GLM-5.3-Flash has no true non-thinking mode).

Full upstream documentation (their README for mode A reference) is kept
verbatim as `README.upstream.md`. KNOBS.md / NOTES.md / AGENTS.md are
theirs and unmodified.

Note on `27cf839c2133` (#64): upstream moved spec-config assembly into
the entrypoint (overlays now pass `SPEC_EXTRA`, a second
`--speculative-config` is refused — adaptive-k's EXTRA_ARGS used to
silently win the same way our first transcription predated the fix).
B-mode recipes keep the effective merged config inline in `[args]`,
matching the pre/post-fix TP4 result upstream live-checked — no change
needed, but re-transcribe from the new EXTRA/SPEC_EXTRA shape if a
recipe ever grows a mode-A switch.

## Build

```
sm121 build                        # build.sh, tag spark-glm53:v9 (default)
TAG=spark-glm53:v10 ./build.sh      # or directly on a node
```

Context = this directory (repo root upstream; `.dockerignore` from upstream
applies). `Dockerfile.bake`/`Dockerfile.sm121` are generated at build time
(node-side, not committed).

## Vendoring an upstream update

```
git clone --recursive --depth 1 https://github.com/kindlingai/glm-5.3-flash-gx10 /tmp/new
rsync -a --delete --exclude build.sh --exclude README.md … /tmp/new/ ./
```

then re-check: `image/entrypoint.sh` (knob construction — recipes mirror
it), `experimental/compose/*.yaml` (overlays/env), `KNOBS.md`.

## Model contract

- `nvidia/GLM-5.3-Flash-NVFP4` rev `da920bb0b9f…` (181 GiB, ModelOpt NVFP4
  — NOT the local-inference-lab/-Spark cuts; their MoE kernels read the
  checkpoint's own per-projection input scales).
- `incoai/GLM-5.3-Flash-DFlash2` rev `bf582e4eacc…` (2.2 GiB, **CC-BY-NC-ND
  4.0 non-commercial** — upstream flags this; same family we already serve).
- TP3/TP6 only: a zero-padded checkpoint from
  `experimental/tp3/make_padded.py` (66/66/2304 heads don't split by 3/6).