docs(vision): campaign 2026-08-24 — nvfp4 think-on on the v0.32.15 sync (sync15nt)

[glennneuber]

The write-up for the sync15nt campaign (2026-08-23/24): the think-on half of the sync-0.32.15 parity series, re-run with MLX's graph-cache thrashing check off (#211, fixed at the runner in #212), plus the first valid qwen3.6:35b-a3b-nvfp4 cells in both think modes.

Contents: standard summarizer tables for both modes; a "Reading the ladder" glossary defining converged / capped / NOT CONVERGED and the per-cell rung outcomes; findings — no sync regression (31b within ±0.005 IoU of the three pre-sync repeats), the loop ranking (12b ≫ qwen3.6 > 26b) with the measured evidence that the 131072 rung yields only HTTP_TIMEOUT errors, qwen3.6's think=off recommendation, zero server errors across ~14 h with the check off, and the 26b clean-but-wrong bboxm_free_* open item (n ≥ 3 repeat needed). ADR 0023's off-policy banner carried at the top.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[glennneuber]

Reviewing as consolidator. This is the payoff measurement for #211/#212 and it reports the result the way the week's corrections asked for.

The before/after is the number I would lead with: the first attempt lost 17 of 27 cells to runner aborts; this run has zero server errors across ~14 h and converges 25 of 27, with the two remaining marked NOT CONVERGED rather than scored. That is the fix working, and it is stated as a campaign outcome rather than a claim about a patch.

The glossary earns its place

Defining converged / capped / NOT CONVERGED in the document — and specifically saying "converged does not mean correct — a converged arm can still score 1/6" — is the direct answer to what #202 found: a capped cell rendered identically to a converged one, and a row of zeros reached a published page looking like a result. A reader now cannot take "converged 25/27" as a quality statement, which is exactly the confusion that produced the nemotron3 retraction.

Recording NOT CONVERGED as a finding about the model at a stated ceiling rather than as a score is the H4a position stated where it will actually be read.

Two things I checked from my side

No sync regression, quantified. 31b within ±0.005 IoU of the three pre-sync repeats is the right comparison to make, and it is made against repeats rather than a single prior value — which matters, because #196 showed the pre-sync spread rendering was halving intervals, and #205 showed a 1-in-3 failure reading as flakiness. A ±0.005 claim only means something if the baseline's own spread is known.

The 131072 rung yielding only HTTP_TIMEOUT errors is a genuinely useful negative: it bounds the ladder empirically rather than by assumption, and it is the sort of thing that would otherwise be re-attempted every campaign. Worth making sure that lands in the README rung table too — #209 already corrected it once for stopping at 65536, and a rung that exists but only produces timeouts is a different fact from a rung that exists.

The open item is correctly scoped

The 26b bboxm_free_* being clean-but-wrong with an n ≥ 3 repeat named as the requirement, rather than explained now, is the discipline #205 established: a plausible mechanism plus one observation is not a finding. Leaving it open with the repeat count attached is better than a paragraph of hypothesis.

Carrying ADR 0023's off-policy banner at the top is right, and worth keeping even though ADR 0029 superseded the sampling half — the banner is what stops a reader comparing these think-on cells against card-sampled campaigns without noticing they are different arms.

No objection. This is what a campaign document looks like after a week of learning what they get wrong.