crit 0.2.1

Overview

crit 0.2.1 makes Eval catch engines that go wrong only after a long prompt: decode after
1K to 32K prompt tokens is now scored against the reference, long-context retrieval and
repeated requests are gates, and AGENTS.md treats unexplained output differences as bugs.
Serving accepts per-request sampling and tool calls, and crit serve loads the model
right away instead of hashing the whole checkpoint first. Eval data prepared for 0.2.0
(crit-eval-v3) must be prepared again, and Eval adapters need the new prefill_decode
score path. The Python distribution and the Core SDK share version 0.2.1.

Added

• Serving passes validated per-request sampling overrides to opt-in resident adapters,
  including native Core penalties and logit bias. Model cards list supported sampling
  parameters and package capabilities.
• chat-tools-v1 carries function definitions, choice policies, correlated tool-result
  history and validated calls in JSON and SSE responses. chat-tools-strict-v1 compiles
  argument schemas with Core and verifies replies; chat-tool-stream-v1 carries live,
  indexed argument fragments with append-only and strict-prefix validation.
  Model-specific adapters supply prompting, parsing and constrained decoding.
• Eval protocol crit-eval-v4 adds three gates. The required prefill_decode quality
  path prefills 1,024-, 4,096- and 32,768-token prompts and scores the reference
  continuation through ordinary decode steps against the drift budget, per prompt length.
  The retrieval gate asks for facts placed at the start, middle and end of prompts up to
  the required context and checks the answers verbatim. The request-history gate requires
  the same greedy tokens on a fresh engine and after every other request it served, in
  every exactness mode. With --baseline, status notes a drop in plain-greedy equality.
• crit serve --verify-model reads and SHA-256s every model file against the run's frozen
  manifest before loading, and gives engines without chat-model-file-v1 a private copy.

Changed

• crit serve checks each model file's size against the frozen manifest and maps it in
  place by default, so the engine starts loading at once instead of after a full read and
  hash of the checkpoint. A checkpoint with the same sizes but other bytes is served
  unnoticed unless --verify-model is given. The default load timeout assumes 200 MB/s
  (50 MB/s with --verify-model), and Windows no longer re-hashes copied model files on
  every read.
• AGENTS.md lays out the build loop (recon, plan, build, evaluate, revisit recon, repeat)
  with its commands and stop conditions, and treats a drop in plain-greedy equality or a
  difference between repeated identical requests as a bug until a root cause is shown.
• README case study 02 shows the corrected Flash-Next candidate 6; candidate 5 is marked
  superseded (it used prefetched experts before their scales were set).
• Data prepared for crit-eval-v3 must be prepared again, with a new reference and pin:
  prepared.json now holds the long prompts and the token strings retrieval matches with.
  An Eval adapter must declare and implement the prefill_decode score path.
• Unsupported sampling controls and unknown request parameters now return HTTP 400
  instead of being ignored. Existing sealed packages continue to serve plain chat;
  clients must omit unsupported overrides or use a newly built capable adapter.

Fixed

• Windows resident startup no longer treats a transient permission denial during
  ownership-record replacement as owner death: the guardian uses the supervisor's
  bounded retry. Changed ownership and persistent failures still stop execution.
  Unexpected resident exits report their exit code and diagnostic log location.