# Decision: 1TB local NAS + strategic capability reserve

**Date:** 2026-07-24  
**Status:** accepted  
**Affects:** `docs/backup-storage-policy.md`, `inventory/collection-policy.md`,
`docs/hardware-envelope.md`, collection tiers, FI-WP-0001 / 0003

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## Decision

1. **Storage backend** for the open-weight reserve is a **1 TB minimal local NAS**
   attached to the lab (operator facility). Weights live there; git keeps catalog only.

2. **Reserve intent** is explicitly **not limited to currently runnable models**.
   We capture the **most capable open-weight models** that license allows us to
   retain, even when they exceed today’s inference/training hardware (T4 and beyond).

3. **Runnability** and **reservability** are separate axes:
   - *Run envelope* → what we can serve or fine-tune now (T0–T3)
   - *Reserve envelope* → what we store for future ops, training facility, or access loss

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## Capacity reality check (1 TB)

| Use | Guidance |
| --- | -------- |
| Raw device | ~1 TB |
| Soft quota for model reserve | **850 GiB** (leave ~15% for FS overhead, staging, other lab bulk) |
| Hard stop | **920 GiB** used on the NAS model tree — stop new pulls |
| Growth review | At **70% of soft quota (~595 GiB)** re-prioritize; prefer drop easily re-obtained quants over unique SOTA bases |

Full-precision 600B-class MoE weights can be **multi-hundreds of GiB to >1 TB each**.
On a 1 TB NAS we therefore:

* Prefer **official or well-provenance compressed** distributions (FP8, INT4/GGUF,
  published quant) when the card supports them for the *strategic* tier  
* Still catalog the **base model id + revision** as the capability identity  
* Accept that only a **small number of top-tier giants** fit at once — quality over quantity  
* Keep the **runnable spine** (P0) always resident so local work does not depend on giants

Rough fit examples (order-of-magnitude; re-measure at download):

| Portfolio sketch | Est. total |
| ---------------- | ---------- |
| P0 quant spine only | ~25–55 GiB |
| P0 + mid P1 | ~80–150 GiB |
| P0 + **one** SOTA open MoE quant (~300–400 GiB) | ~350–450 GiB |
| P0 + two large MoE quants | can approach or exceed soft quota — choose carefully |

---

## Collection tiering (updated)

| Tier | Name | Rule |
| ---- | ---- | ---- |
| **R** | Runnable spine | Fits current/near hardware; always keep |
| **S** | Strategic capability | Best open SOTA / near-SOTA; **may be unrunnable today**; high retention |
| **W** | Watch / optional | Nice-to-have; only if soft quota headroom |

Supersedes the earlier “do not collect full DeepSeek MoE without a separate
decision” posture: **strategic collection of top open giants is in scope** for
this NAS, subject to license + soft quota.

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## Non-goals (unchanged)

* Public model CDN or Hugging Face mirror  
* Collecting closed weights  
* Guaranteeing inference of every reserved model on current hosts  

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## Follow-ups

- [x] Operator: pin storage path and create `freedom-intelligence/{models,staging,companions}/`
  - **2026-07-28 interim:** `D:\vault\coulomb\freedom-intelligence\` on workstation VAULT HD (~1.86 TB)
  - Soft quota **850 GiB** retained (self-imposed; disk larger than original 1 TB sketch)
- [x] Update pin log in `docs/backup-storage-policy.md` with exact mount path
- [x] Seed/update catalog entries for strategic tier (S)
- [ ] FI-WP-0003: prioritize R spine + top S giants under 850 GiB soft quota
- [x] WSL: `D:` available as `/mnt/d` (verified 2026-07-28)