# Ornith Q8 best practices

How to get real work out of Ornith 1.5-9B (Qwen3.5-based, 8-bit / Bfp8) on one Tenstorrent p150 through Pantheon + Argus. From the 2026-10-25 runs (social-media doc, K80 MTP Phase 1).

## What it's good at
- Mechanical engineering work: git merges (incl. a real conflict), detached remote jobs + polling, reading results, pushes.
- Following written rules that are still in its context.
- Writing careful commands with small outputs.

## What to expect
- **Work is more reliable than its reports.** It mixes up similar events and states them confidently. Never trust its summary or the notes it writes into a plan; check against git and logs.
- **It doesn't explore on its own.** A plain ask gets generic output; "read X first" gets accurate output.
- **It doesn't know when it's done**, and doesn't push back on a task that makes no sense (an hour on an already-finished phase; 42 min re-verifying finished work).
- **Thinking is the cost, not tools.** Reasoning blocks run 4–10k chars. Decode is fast at short context (~50 tok/s greedy with MTP, ~21.5 plain) but ~8 tok/s at 51k context.
- **Big reads fill its context fastest.** Given a function name in a 12,000-line file, it read 2,000 lines to find four functions; two reads added more context than all its reasoning.
- **It skips saving its progress.** It treats "I understand it now" as done and moves to the next step without writing the result down.

## How to brief it
- [ ] Name the exact files to read, in order.
- [ ] **Give line ranges, not just names**: exact start–end lines for each function the step needs (e.g. `file.c:11966-12019`), and cap each read at ~150 lines. `grep -n` only finds where a function starts, so a name alone leads to huge reads.
- [ ] **Small files are part of the brief.** If a step's target file is over ~1,000 lines, split it first (behaviour-preserving, gated) or hand over exact ranges.
- [ ] Write every rule down; it misses rules that were only said in conversation.
- [ ] Every step ends in a check that is a command with the exact expected output, not "looks right".
- [ ] Include the stop rules: "if your task is already marked done, say so and stop"; "two failed checks → write `BLOCKED:` and stop".
- [ ] Say where scratch files go (in the repo, never `/tmp`).

## How to run it
- [ ] **One task card per session; fresh session per card.** Don't keep saying "continue" into a long session.
- [ ] **A card isn't done until its output is saved**: the written result in the plan/spec, the box checked, a commit. Only then start the next card (in a new session).
- [ ] **Keep context small** (well under ~50k tokens): decode slows a lot past that, and when the agent compacts a long context the model can lose its place.
- [ ] **The plan file is the memory**: every step leaves a one-line note in the plan, so a fresh session can resume.
- [ ] For long remote jobs, expect sleep/poll loops that look like a hang; check `argus.log` before assuming it's stuck.
- [ ] Double-check the files you hand it are the right ones (two similarly named plans cost an hour).

## Before anything lands
- [ ] Verify its claims against git, the logs and the real files: the step that caught every bad note in Phase 1.
- [ ] Only a human (or a stronger model on the human's go) merges or deploys.

## Split of labour
Ornith executes the long, mechanical, hardware-bound work on our own machines; something stronger verifies before merge.