33f0b89124
The owner's decision, applied: a vendor energy counter (RAPL, NVML, IOReport) is a real reading, and what separates one such reading from another is provenance, not accuracy. This crate gave RAPL and NVML `HwShunt` and gave the IOReport counter `ModelBased`, on the reasoning that Apple's Energy Model is a vendor model. That reasoning grades accuracy. What the counter could not establish was provenance: on macOS 27.0.1 its CPU rails are frozen for an unprivileged reader, and that is now caught by the liveness probe. A counter that has passed it is as much a reading as RAPL is. The grade. `AppleIoReportCounter` declares `HwShunt`, and stamps it on every reading through one constant, `READING_GRADE`, shared by `provenance()` and `read()`. It earns the grade by being live: the counter exists to read only where `admits()` let it through (CPU rail `Live`), and a declined counter produces no reading to carry any grade, so a frozen host still meters through the load-average estimator at `Estimator`. The rule, written once and shared (jouleclaw SPEC §1.3, §9.4; JCR-1 §2.3; the crate docs; vendor-energy PROTOCOL/README): a vendor counter's reading MAY be graded as a hardware reading only while the counter is demonstrably live for the domain the figure claims; the implementation MUST have observed the counter covering that domain advance under load (for IOReport: the CPU rail itself, in at least 5 intervals, 4 of every 5, over at least 300 ms while the probing thread burns CPU). A counter present but not live MUST NOT produce a hardware-graded figure; the implementation falls back to its estimator or reports the work unmetered, and SHOULD record why. A figure MUST NOT claim coverage of a domain its counter does not read; where the format has a coverage field, such a figure is Partial. No partial reading from the GPU rail. Where the CPU rail is frozen but `GPU Energy` still advances (the M5 Max), the counter stays declined. The GPU rail is machine-wide: every GPU client on the host moves it, display compositing included, with nothing of the metered work running. It does not cover part of the work; it covers other work, so no coverage field makes it honest. The rationale is in the module docs and SPEC §1.3. Docs and data that said otherwise: - SPEC §1.3 table and floors, §9.4; JCR-1 §2.3 and the crate README (toy vectors become measurements only off counters that were live). - JCR-1 vector 6's description said "measured on Apple IOReport". Its joules are toy values like every vector's. Only the `description` changed; it sits outside the signed core, which `verify.py` builds from `receipt` alone. Both verifiers pass 10/10 after the edit: `verify.py` (cbor2 6.1.4, cryptography 50.0.2, exit 0) and the independent `verify.go` (exit 0). `git diff` of the file is that one line; a field-by-field JSON diff finds only (6, description). The conformance README's slot 6 line follows. - vendor-energy conformance: README row 27 names `AppleIoReportCounter` and the `HwShunt` grade, with the liveness condition a filled fixture must meet; `apple-silicon-ioreport.json` is an unsigned, empty stub (`signed_by` null, every workload not run, no hash of it anywhere), so its `impl` and `provenance` are corrected in place. - MEASURED_ENERGY.md: a dated note that the 74.1 J / 25.5 W row was committed 2026-06-12, predates macOS 27, and recorded neither chip nor OS. The "reads CPU/GPU/ANE/DRAM with no sudo" claim is replaced by what macOS 27.0.1 does: the counter opens without sudo, but the CPU rails are frozen (all 645 rails on the M3 Ultra), so those hosts are estimated. - local-index / rerank tier SHOULDs, the CLI's `meter` help, meter.rs, apple.rs, energy_probe, Cargo feature comments, harness-econ docs. - l3-jouleclaw README: it claimed `HwShunt` on RAPL/NVML hosts, but the binding builds jouleclaw-energy with `ioreport` only, so off Apple Silicon the receipt is the token estimate. It now says what happens on each host. - mesh-schema's `HwShunt` definition includes vendor counters subject to liveness; mesh-meter, the mesh README and mesh-engine-gguf no longer say real silicon alone yields `HwShunt`. - The Live-branch assertions in mesh-meter, l3-jouleclaw and jouledesk-github expected `ModelBased` for IOReport; they expect `HwShunt`. jouledesk-github's fixtures that paired `apple-ioreport` with `ModelBased` now pair it with `HwShunt`, and keep a `ModelBased` case under a neutral meter name. Tests. `a_live_counters_readings_are_graded_as_hardware_readings` builds a counter on `Live` directly. That opens the real all-channel subscription, which opens here even though the gate declines this host. It reads it twice and asserts each reading is `HwShunt` over `SocTotal`. On this M5 Max (macOS 27.0.1): "an admitted IOReport counter: opens=true, 2 readings, each graded HwShunt", so the read path is covered on a frozen host. With `--features "ioreport rapl"`, `a_live_ioreport_reading_has_the_grade_of_a_rapl_reading` compares the grade with `RaplCounter`'s own. The used/declined tests assert `HwShunt` in their live branch. This host still takes the declined branch: "ioreport declined (CpuRailFrozen): 154 ms of CPU work metered by `apple-silicon` as 6200000 µJ, provenance estimator". Run on this M5 Max: jouleclaw-energy 24+1+1 (default), 76 lib + 1 + 1 (`ioreport`), 79 lib (`ioreport rapl`); jouleclaw-jcr1 50; harness-econ 14; local-index 41; rerank 37; cli 10; mesh-meter (`hw-meter-apple`) 10; mesh-engine-gguf 1; l3-jouleclaw 2 + 4 (2 ignored, need a model); jouledesk-github 12. All pass. Falsified, each mutant restored with `git checkout` and the tree confirmed clean: - `READING_GRADE` set back to `ModelBased`: the new test fails at the declared grade (left: ModelBased, right: HwShunt), 75 passed / 1 failed. - Only `read()`'s stamp set back to `ModelBased` (the declared grade left at `HwShunt`): the new test fails on the reading itself, "a live counter's reading is not graded as a hardware reading" (ModelBased, SocTotal) vs (HwShunt, SocTotal), 75 / 1. The read path is what the test pins. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <[email protected]>
4.9 KiB
Mesh
Energy-accounted inference serving & routing. One of the Transaction Science open standards.
Mesh treats every inference as a metered transaction. A request declares a joule ceiling and a fidelity floor; the mesh routes it to the cheapest-sufficient model on the cheapest-sufficient backend, serves it under an energy meter, and seals a receipt whose headline figure is microjoules per accepted output token — measured at the meter, not estimated from a price list.
The serving shelf reports dollars per token and tokens per second. Mesh reports the number that is physical, comparable across hardware, and impossible to inflate: the joule.
- Spec:
SPEC.md(CC-BY-4.0) - Reference code:
mesh-rs/(Apache-2.0) - Conformance vectors:
conformance/v1/
The shape
ServeRequest ──▶ authorise (JCP grant) ──▶ route (cheapest-sufficient)
│
▼
meter ◀── serve (engine) ──▶ tokens
│
▼
sealed JCR-1 receipt: µJ / accepted token
Four roles — caller, router, engine, steward — and four phases
per serve: authorise, route, meter, seal. See SPEC.md §2.
The reference workspace
mesh-rs/ is a pure-Rust reference implementation:
| Crate | What it is |
|---|---|
mesh-schema |
wire types — ServeRequest, Fidelity, two-part Energy, RouteDecision, ServeOutcome |
mesh-router |
energy-weighted cheapest-sufficient routing with a full candidate audit |
mesh-engine |
the ServingEngine interface + a deterministic, weights-free ReferenceEngine |
mesh-engine-gguf |
a real backend (behind gguf): wraps the family's pure-Rust GGUF/Metal inference substrate so the mesh routes and meters actual model tokens |
mesh-meter |
the meter window; an always-available estimator + an optional bridge to the family hardware meter (RAPL / NVML / Apple) behind hw-meter |
mesh-receipt |
the mesh/1 receipt, JCR-1 sealing (det-CBOR + COSE_Sign1), and a hash-chained log |
mesh-core |
the orchestration that ties authorise → route → meter → seal together |
mesh-conformance |
the deterministic reference scenario, its checks, and the gen-vectors bin |
Mesh rides on JCP (a serve request is authorised by a JCP grant;
receipts seal in JCR-1), dispatches to runtimes such as
JouleClaw, and routes across compute described by
EOC and isolated by Sandbox. It introduces no new
cryptography (see SPEC.md §9).
Run it
cd mesh-rs
# all crates green
cargo test --workspace
cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets
# end-to-end: mint a JCP grant, serve, print the sealed receipt
cargo run -p mesh-core --example demo
# on Linux/RAPL or a CUDA/NVML box, meter real silicon (HwShunt provenance, where
# the counter is live; a counter that is not live falls back to the estimator)
cargo run -p mesh-core --example demo --features hw-meter-rapl
# regenerate the published conformance vectors
cargo run -p mesh-conformance --bin gen-vectors -- ../conformance/v1
# serve a REAL model end-to-end through Mesh (Falcon-H1 0.5B), seal the receipt
cargo run --release -p mesh-engine-gguf --features gguf --bin serve_falcon -- \
/path/to/falcon-h1-0.5b-instruct 12 "The capital of France is"
The serve_falcon run demonstrates the whole standard on real model tokens:
a JCP grant authorises each request (an underfunded grant is refused before any
decode runs), the cheapest-sufficient backend is chosen, the decode is metered,
and a mesh/1 receipt is sealed and hash-chained across the session — e.g.
prompt "The capital of France is" → " Paris. It is known for its historical landmarks", prompt "Photosynthesis is the process by which" → " plants convert sunlight into chemical energy in the form of", with both seals verifying
and the chain's prev-links intact.
The demo prints the route (every backend weighed, with the reason each was kept or rejected), the honest energy provenance, and the wedge metric — then verifies the sealed envelope under the steward key.
Status
v0.1.0-draft.1. Reference workspace builds and tests green (mesh-schema,
mesh-router, mesh-engine, mesh-meter, mesh-receipt, mesh-core,
mesh-conformance); cargo clippy --all-targets warning-free; published vectors
in conformance/v1/. The reference engine is deterministic and
weights-free; production backends implement the same ServingEngine interface —
mesh-engine-gguf (behind gguf) is a real one over the family's pure-Rust
GGUF/Metal substrate, kept out of the default build so it needs no weights.