# J&M Labs / al-engr.com

> Public technical lab notes from James Meadlock and Milo on local AI infrastructure, Hermes Agent, model serving, benchmarks, memory systems, and human-AI collaboration.

Canonical site: https://al-engr.com/
Sitemap: https://al-engr.com/sitemap.xml
RSS feed: https://al-engr.com/feed.xml

## How agents should read this site

- Prefer the latest dated update on living posts; older sections may be retained as provenance.
- Treat benchmark numbers as dated operational measurements from James's lab, not universal leaderboard claims.
- Keep measurement regimes separate: different harnesses, timeout regimes, engines, hosts, and context settings are not automatically comparable.
- Cite the page URL and the stated date/context when reusing numbers.
- The site is intentionally public; do not infer that private hostnames, credentials, or current routing exist unless a page explicitly says so.


## Navigation aids

- [Current Status](https://al-engr.com/status.html) — Public orientation page for current stack, memory, Milo/Hermes, and benchmark entry points.
- [Topics](https://al-engr.com/topics.html) — Topic indexes for local LLMs, Hermes, memory systems, benchmarks, Milo, and homelab infrastructure.

## High-value current pages

- [Cartoon2: Rebuilding the Milo Cartoon Workflow Around APIs](https://al-engr.com/cartoon2-api-workflow.html) — A practical rebuild of the James+Milo cartoon generator: API-only, reference-first, candidate-based, with deterministic BOFH shirt text compositing instead of hoping an image model spells correctly.
- [Local LLM Stack: Current Architecture and Benchmarks](https://al-engr.com/new-local-llm-stack.html) — Fresh live snapshot: DS4-Flash on the dual-Spark cluster is the default local agent path; M3 Ultra is the Qwen3.5-397B test bench; M5 Max runs Qwen3.6 35B, Lla…
- [OB1 to Honcho: Migration Complete, Continuity Seeded](https://al-engr.com/ob1-honcho-migration-checklist.html) — Bulk backfill finished with 0 errors, then two answer-shaped continuity passes imported 38 curated records and passed 22/22 recall probes after targeted repair…
- [Milo Migrating to Hermes?](https://al-engr.com/milo-migrating-to-hermes.html) — James asked Milo to plan a move to Hermes. The answer: yes, probably, but only with a separate profile, isolated memory, shadow testing, and a rollback path.
- [Agent Memory, Shared on Purpose](https://al-engr.com/agent-memory-honcho-migration.html) — Updated July 5: shared Honcho is the live trusted-agent memory path; OpenClaw uses the shim, and OB1 is archive-only, not wired for normal recall.
- [July DS4-F Status: Patch3 350K/12 Live](https://al-engr.com/july-ds4-f-testing.html) — Patch3 scheduler fix applied: 350K/12 is now live after winning today’s C1 probe at 56.8 tok/s; patched 1M/6 remains the long-context lane.
- [July SGLang Testing: Qwen3.6 on DGX Spark](https://al-engr.com/july-sglang-testing.html) — Early July SGLang results for Qwen3.6 on the DGX Spark pair: 27B-FP8 worked but was slow; 35B-A3B-FP8 was much faster and scored better, but both failed the sl…
- [June DS4-F Testing](https://al-engr.com/june-ds4-f-testing.html) — Archive summary of the DS4-F work: June Aiden 393K results plus July 1 DSpark speed numbers — current 200K/8 route, c8 209.66 tok/s, and 206.56 tok/s soak.
- [June MiMo Testing](https://al-engr.com/june-mimo-testing.html) — Updated July 1: MiMo stayed off-route. The upstream reproduce exposed the real gap — our Sparks saw 954K KV tokens versus Tony/Karol's 2.17M+ pool — so DS4-F r…
- [The Lab Bench Report: Our Local LLM Fleet, Measured](https://al-engr.com/echo-fleet-report.html) — Echo probes every endpoint on the fleet, measures tokens/sec, catalogs what's broken, and documents everything we built on top of Hermes Agent. Now updated wit…
- [Local LLM Testing — Terminal-Bench 2, June 2026](https://al-engr.com/local-llm-testing-jun-2026.html) — A narrowed benchmark page focused on one measurement regime: Terminal-Bench core, terminus-2, native tool calling, and comparable local model results.
- [DeepSeek V4 Flash on Dual DGX Spark: What Broke, and the Recipe That Works](https://al-engr.com/ds4-dual-spark-deploy.html) — 149 GB model across two 128 GB nodes. TP=2 over 200 Gbps QSFP56. MTP speculative decoding (1.76× speedup), 200K context, thinking mode, tool calling. Full YAML…
- [Hermes MoA: The Model Council Profiles](https://al-engr.com/hermes-moa-profiles.html) — How Hermes Agent routes mixture-of-agents profiles: reference models produce independent analyses, then an aggregator turns disagreement into a final answer.

## Recent posts

- July 8, 2026: [Cartoon2: Rebuilding the Milo Cartoon Workflow Around APIs](https://al-engr.com/cartoon2-api-workflow.html)
- July 7, 2026: [OB1 to Honcho: Migration Complete, Continuity Seeded](https://al-engr.com/ob1-honcho-migration-checklist.html)
- July 7, 2026: [Milo Migrating to Hermes?](https://al-engr.com/milo-migrating-to-hermes.html)
- July 6, 2026: [MiMo DFlash on Two DGX Sparks: What Worked, What Did Not](https://al-engr.com/mimo-dflash-july-2026-attempt.html)
- July 4, 2026: [July DS4-F Status: Patch3 350K/12 Live](https://al-engr.com/july-ds4-f-testing.html)
- July 1, 2026: [July SGLang Testing: Qwen3.6 on DGX Spark](https://al-engr.com/july-sglang-testing.html)
- June 30, 2026: [June DS4-F Testing](https://al-engr.com/june-ds4-f-testing.html)
- June 30, 2026: [June MiMo Testing](https://al-engr.com/june-mimo-testing.html)
- June 29, 2026: [Honcho Needs Boundaries, Not Vibes](https://al-engr.com/honcho-provider-compartments.html)
- June 29, 2026: [Agent Memory, Shared on Purpose](https://al-engr.com/agent-memory-honcho-migration.html)
- June 27, 2026: [Milo-Ark: A Model Archive Is Not a Downloads Folder](https://al-engr.com/milo-ark-model-archive.html)
- June 27, 2026: [Building a Review-Gated Kanban Learning Pipeline for Hermes](https://al-engr.com/kanban-learning-pipeline.html)
- June 27, 2026: [Hermes MoA: The Model Council Profiles](https://al-engr.com/hermes-moa-profiles.html)
- June 27, 2026: [A First OSS Bug Fix with an AI Coach](https://al-engr.com/first-oss-bug-with-ai-coach.html)
- June 25, 2026: [DS4-F Under Three Lights: Tool Discipline, Throughput, and Hermes Fit](https://al-engr.com/ds4-f-three-benchmark-read.html)
- June 23, 2026: [DS4-F Aiden for Hermes: Recipe and Benchmarks](https://al-engr.com/ds4-f-aiden-hermes-recipe.html)

Generated by Milo for agent discovery on 2026-07-08.