Strata v0.1.20

Faster new chats for agent clients, a hit-rate column in the Monitor, a PCIe-aware default, and community fixes.

• New chats reuse the system prompt (#62 by @j-luwierski, #65 by @code-martin):
  • A prompt read from the start is now also checkpointed at the end of its system prompt (with the tool list), when that is 2,048 tokens or more.
  • That checkpoint is kept while the others rotate by least recent use, so the next new chat of the same client reads only what comes after it.
  • Measured: a 3,883-token system prompt is reused whole by a new chat, also after more turns than the cache has slots.
  • --prompt-cache-root 0 turns it off. See the details.
• Monitor: expert-cache hit rate per request (#69 by @code-martin): the share of the experts looked up while writing the answer that were already in VRAM.
• A default PCIe share that fits your link (#44 by @pipeob0):
  • The engine measures the PCIe bandwidth at start. On a narrower link (e.g. an x8 card) it lowers the share of the missing experts that the GPU reads over PCIe.
  • x16 links keep the measured default. --calibrate still measures it outright.
• OrcaRouter's Uncensored IQ3_XXS can be packed with iq_pack.py --compat-bf16 (#67 by @acrogenesis); see docs/ORCA.md. It is a manual setup, not an installer option. The official models pack exactly as before.
• Fixed:
  • setup could fail on Windows when an antivirus scanner held a file while llama.cpp was unpacked (#63 by @alfirus);
  • the Monitor showed the version of the BUILD.json next to the engine instead of the engine's own (from #41 by @midhatn).
• The parity tool fails the run on a kernel mismatch instead of only printing it (#64 by @pipeob0).

Updating: get the latest files (git pull, or download and unzip anywhere), then run START-HERE.bat with the model window closed: it updates the engine to 0.1.20 by itself. On Linux, run ./setup.sh: it compiles the new engine.

The ready-made Strata engine for Windows (RTX 30 / 40 / 50: sm_86, sm_89, sm_120 + PTX), CUDA 13.0.

You don't need to download this yourself: START-HERE.bat fetches it (and NVIDIA's cuBLAS from pip), so no compiler or CUDA Toolkit is needed, only an NVIDIA driver 580 or newer.

Contents: strata.exe (the engine), strata-vision.exe (the optional image encoder), BUILD.json.