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foreman/docs/adr/0007-model-polling.md
2026-05-23 16:41:20 -04:00

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# ADR-0007: Model inventory polling and discovery
**Status:** Accepted — 2026-05-23
## Context
foreman needs a "relatively in-sync" view of which models are installed on its
target so it can (a) advertise them to callers, (b) reject jobs for missing
models early instead of failing mid-execution, and (c) know what is currently
resident to inform scheduling (ADR-0009).
## Decision
A background poller queries the target on a configurable interval (default ~30s):
- `GET /api/tags` → the installed-model inventory. Cached in memory; this cache
backs foreman's own `/api/tags` passthrough (ADR-0003) and `/v1/models` if the
OpenAI-compat surface is enabled.
- `GET /api/ps` → which model(s) are currently loaded, their VRAM/where-resident,
and the unload timer. Used by the scheduler to decide whether the next job
requires a swap.
### Behavior
- **Early validation:** a job naming a model absent from the cached inventory is
rejected at submit time with a clear error (and, for async jobs, the inventory
is recent enough that this is reliable). A small grace path allows a job for a
model that appears between polls by re-checking once on a miss.
- **Degraded mode:** if the target is unreachable, the last-known inventory is
retained and foreman marks itself degraded (surfaced on a health endpoint).
Jobs are not rejected wholesale on a single failed poll — the target is a
laptop that may briefly sleep (ADR-0002). Execution-time unreachability is
handled by job retry (ADR-0004).
## Consequences
- Callers can discover available models through the normal Ollama/OpenAI
endpoints; no foreman-specific discovery API needed.
- Bad-model jobs fail fast and cheaply.
- A health/status endpoint exposing degraded state and last-poll time is required.
## Alternatives considered
- **No caching; proxy `/api/tags` live per request.** Simpler but couples every
discovery call to target availability and adds latency. Rejected; the poller
also feeds the scheduler, so the cache is needed regardless.
- **Push/event-based inventory.** Ollama offers no such mechanism; polling is the
only option.