STATUS.md

Project Status & Hackathon Alignment

Hugging Face "Build Small" hackathon submission. Last updated: 2026-06-14.

Hackathon rules we're targeting

• Model under 32B params, open weights ✅ (Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct)
• Gradio app Space ✅
• Demo video ❌ (TODO)
• Social-media link in README ❌ (TODO)
• Zero GPU limit ✅ (all inference via HF Inference API — no local GPU)
• README track/badge tags ✅ (added)
• Sponsor prize for MiniCPM builds — dropped (see decision below)

Key decisions (2026-06-14)

1. Model: Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct, not MiniCPM. MiniCPM4.1-8B is not reliably served on the HF serverless Inference API, and we chose not to run it locally on a ZeroGPU Space. We therefore drop the MiniCPM sponsor-prize claim and compete on the core Build Small tracks. Qwen2.5-7B is open weights and well under the 32B cap, so the submission stays valid.
2. Gradio 5 (pinned >=5,<6). The original Gradio 4.44 pin broke against the current dependency stack; Gradio 5.50 is verified working. README sdk_version pinned to 5.50.0 to match.
3. Dropped generated-image artifacts; render HTML cards instead. Diffusion models render gibberish "text" inside newspaper/document artifacts, which looked broken. Both tabs now render the structured JSON the model already returns as legible HTML timeline/world cards. image_client.py is retained but unused.

Architecture

• One shared text client (model_client.py, HF chat_completion) with per-tab prompt shaping (prompts.py).
• Image artifacts via HF text_to_image (image_client.py), FLUX.1-schnell → SDXL fallback.
• Graceful fallbacks everywhere — the app never crashes without a token.

Track mapping

Tab	Track	What it does
🪞 Elsewhere	Backyard AI	Personal counterfactual + safety gate + return-to-reality
🌍 Reality Divergence	Thousand Token Wood	Speculative alternate history, ripple reasoning

Phase status

Phase	Status
1 Foundation	✅ Done & verified (boots, HTTP 200)
2 Model integration	✅ Done (Qwen via InferenceClient)
3 UI & flow	✅ Done & verified
4 Safety & guardrails	✅ Present (risk gate + strengths/return)
5 Robust fallback	✅ Verified (401 → graceful fallback)
6 Testing & optimization	❌ Not started (timings, cold start, concurrency)
7 Submission prep	⏳ README done; demo video + social link + deploy TODO
VoxCPM2 narration (optional)	❌ ENABLE_NARRATION=False, not implemented

Remaining work

• Test live inference end-to-end with a real HF token
• Phase 6: measure startup/inference times, cold start, concurrency
• Record demo video (both tabs, model responses, safety gate)
• Add demo video + social-media links to README
• Deploy to HF Space and confirm clean build