Synapse workspace

This workspace contains the Synapse SubC module, supervised inference workers, and benchmark lanes described in STRUCTURE.md and ARCHITECTURE.md.

Synapse crates

Production crates live under crates/:

• synapse-core: shared protocol, error, cache, fingerprint, scheduler, and tokenizer types.
• synapse-engine-ort: in-process ONNX Runtime embedding engine.
• synapse-module: SubC management surface, model cache, durable jobs, and worker host. Builds the ck-synapse binary (fleet ck-* naming convention for Activity Monitor grouping; module_id stays synapse).
• synapse-worker-llama, synapse-worker-mlx, synapse-worker-ane: supervised worker binaries (ck-synapse-worker-*) that speak the Synapse worker protocol over Unix sockets (named pipes on Windows).

MLX / Metal build requirement

synapse-worker-mlx depends on mlx-rs/mlx-sys, which need the full Xcode Metal toolchain on macOS. Command Line Tools alone can make xcrun fail to find metal or metallib, producing noisy CMake output from dependencies.

Use an explicit developer directory when building the worker or full workspace on affected hosts:

DEVELOPER_DIR=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer cargo build -p synapse-worker-mlx

Do not auto-set DEVELOPER_DIR in scripts; configure the host or invocation so Cargo uses the intended Xcode installation.

Module config (synapse.jsonc)

Example user-tier ~/.config/synapse/synapse.jsonc (project configs must omit the user-only chain setting):

{
  // performance | balanced | quiet
  "knob": "balanced",
  "microllm_max_tokens": 512,
  "grammar_enabled": false,
  // Free-text chain span (1..=16); grammar stays at K=1. Values above 1
  // change free-text execution shape only after certification covers the span.
  "decode_chain_k": 1,
  "cache_max_bytes": 34359738368,
  "alias_admin_enabled": false,
  "worker": {
    "load_timeout_ms": 180000
  },
  "preload_models": [],
  "inline": {
    "max_items": 64,
    "max_tokens": 8192,
    "byte_budget": 67108864,
    "max_queue_ms": 5000,
    "deadline_ms": 30000,
    "estimated_execution_ms": 25,
    "max_concurrent_workers": 2
  },
  "jobs": {
    "ttl_ms": 86400000,
    "result_page_bytes": 524288,
    "bulk_quantum_tokens": 3072
  },
  "probe": {
    "mean_cosine_threshold": 0.999,
    "worst_decile_rank_overlap_threshold": 0.9,
    "ane_placement_threshold": 0.9
  }
}

Tests can point at a file with SYNAPSE_CONFIG_PATH. Only one synapse module per machine (singleton lease); a second instance refuses to start.