
Model serving and compatible APIs: one endpoint, several contracts
A serving engine adds a queue, a lifecycle and an API surface to a weights file.

A serving engine adds a queue, a lifecycle and an API surface to a weights file.

The model sees what the envelope builds: template, budget and stopping conditions.

Streaming changes when you know; idempotency decides whether you may ask again.

Asking for JSON and constraining the decoder to JSON are two different guarantees.

Who chooses the next step: the model, the application around it, a workflow or an agent.

The model file, the engine that runs it, the product around it — and what a symptom means.

What a prompt and a system instruction are, and why an instruction is not a control.