Compressed history of v0.1.4 → v0.3.2 in one alpha-ship commit so the
framework is testable end-to-end by friends. Detailed per-version
discussion lives in refract/CHANGELOG.md.
What ships
----------
Four scoring axes vs the model's own fp16-KV reference:
- Axis A (Trajectory, v0.1.4) — decode-time token IDs via patched
llama-completion, no detokenize round-trip. Replaces the buggy
v0.1.x GTM as the default.
- Axis B (KLD@D) — corpus KL divergence, bit-exact zero on Metal
when ref==cand. Native MLX implementation in addition to the
llama-perplexity subprocess path.
- Axis C (R-NIAH, v0.2.0) — long-context retrieval at multiple
(length, position) cells. Confidence guard for low base_acc.
- Axis D (PLAD, v0.2.0) — perturbation-locality drift across
typo/case/punct/paraphrase. Skipped-perturbation handling.
Composite = harmonic mean. Bands EXCELLENT/PASS/DEGRADED/FAIL.
Four CLI subcommands:
- score — run REFRACT on a candidate KV config
- selftest — 30s preflight: binaries, flags, model probe
- compare — multi-report side-by-side
- repeatability — run N times, report stdev/range health verdict
Three backends:
- llamacpp (production) subprocess wrappers around llama.cpp
- mlx (production) native via mlx-lm; verified end-to-end
on Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct-4bit
- vllm (skeleton) interface defined; plug-in pointers
in module docstring
Reporting
---------
- Text (ANSI colour, terminal)
- JSON schema refract.report.v0.3.1 with framework_version +
environment metadata (backend, llama_cpp_commit, mlx_lm_version)
- HTML (self-contained single file) with hardware info, model
params, repro command, R-NIAH heatmap, PLAD per-perturbation bars
Discoveries from the matrix runs (all logged in CHANGELOG):
- "secret password" needle wording triggers safety refusals on
instruct models. v0.2.1 switched to neutral "rare paint color"
- Thinking-mode models burn n_predict before answering. v0.3.0 added
-rea off + auto-detect at startup
- Symmetric turbo4/turbo4 is the canonical FAIL config; framework
correctly identifies (composite ~19) on gemma-4-26B-A4B-Q8
Documentation
-------------
- README.md what + alpha banner + "where do I go" navigator
- QUICKSTART.md 0 to first PASS in 30 minutes
- INTERPRETATION.md per-axis "what to do if low" guide
- LEADERBOARD.md cross-model rankings + "ranks the quant, not the
model" disclaimer
- PITFALLS.md known traps from today's matrix runs
- LIMITATIONS.md what v0.3 explicitly does not do
- CHANGELOG.md version history with discovery stories
- MATRIX-RESULTS.md the 7-model matrix log
- examples/ 4 sample JSONs + HTML reports + README
Tests
-----
80 → 82 unit tests, all green:
- 17 trajectory tests (incl. R-NIAH/PLAD impls + 4-axis composite)
- 5 strip-noise pinning tests
- 14 unit tests (math + KVConfig)
- 8 JSON schema tests (incl. v0.3.1 framework_version field)
- 6 KLD regex tests
- 5 corpus-identity tests
- 5 tokenize-to-ids tests
- 4 command-construction tests
Verified
--------
- 7-model v0.3.0 matrix end-to-end (~2h on M5 Max 128GB)
- Llama-4 Scout extras + symmetric-turbo negative control
- MLX backend on Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct-4bit
- selftest on llamacpp (no model) and mlx (with model)
- 2-run repeatability on qwen2.5-1.5b: composite stdev = 0.00 on
Trajectory + KLD (bit-exact reproducibility on cheap axes)
Open follow-ups (v0.4)
----------------------
- vLLM backend implementation (skeleton today)
- T-Call axis (tool-call fidelity) building on v0.3 chat-template
- Bundled corpus + prompts distribution
- `refract leaderboard --in dir/ --out LEADERBOARD.md` auto-gen
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
