xai-dissect

Static structural analysis of Grok-family open-weight checkpoints.

xai-dissect is a read-only checkpoint dissector. It parses raw xAI shard files, builds a normalized tensor inventory, and emits structural reports for experts, routing, and future SAAQ-oriented profiling. It does not run the model, mutate weights, or act as an inference runtime.

Current focus:

• Grok-1: supported now — full inventory, experts, routing, stats, SAAQ readiness, conversion-manifest, quant-plan, pilot-plan, and route-preservation. This is the path that matters for slice-by-slice / pilot quantization (block/expert/attention policies, routers+norms protected). Downstream packing/runtime lives in sibling grok-ozempic.
• Grok-2: public weights exist, but this CLI does not support Grok-2 yet. No parser/family profile, no inventory guarantees. Tracked as a separate follow-on only after Grok-1 pilot quant is proven; see docs/grok2-future-support.md.

Only open/public weights are in scope. This repo analyzes weights you already have lawful access to and does not redistribute them.

What It Does

• Parses raw Grok shard files without a Python unpickler
• Builds a stable tensor inventory with dtype, shape, role, offsets, and shard provenance
• Maps MoE expert structure and block-to-expert organization
• Identifies likely routing tensors and routing-critical regions
• Profiles offline tensor statistics for future SAAQ experimentation
• Writes predictable Markdown, JSON, and manifest artifacts for downstream tooling

What It Does Not Do

• No forward pass, logits, decode loop, or runtime inference
• No quantization runtime, checkpoint mutation, or format conversion
• No projector logic, dashboard UI, or orchestration layer
• No redistribution of model weights

See docs/non_goals.md for the full non-goals list.

Quick Start

cargo build --release
cargo test

# Show the available commands
./target/release/xai-dissect --help

Main commands:

• dissect: raw per-shard byte-table view (parser output only; no classification or grouping)
• inventory: full checkpoint inventory and architecture-oriented summary
• experts: expert atlas for MoE block structure
• routing-report: routing/gating structure inspection
• stats: offline tensor-statistics profiling
• saaq-readiness: candidate scouting for future SAAQ work
• pilot-plan: planning-side Grok-1 representative block pilot selection artifact
• route-preservation: planning-side Grok-1 route-preservation gate report
• quant-plan: deterministic Grok-1 conversion and policy-planning artifacts
• docs/GO_NO_GO.md: explicit Grok-1 quantization decision gate checklist

Usage Examples

All examples assume a checkpoint directory such as /path/to/grok-1/ckpt-0.

Inventory

./target/release/xai-dissect inventory /path/to/grok-1/ckpt-0 \
  --json out/inventory.json \
  --md out/inventory.md

Experts

./target/release/xai-dissect experts /path/to/grok-1/ckpt-0 \
  --json out/experts.json \
  --md out/experts.md

Routing Report

./target/release/xai-dissect routing-report /path/to/grok-1/ckpt-0 \
  --json out/routing-report.json \
  --md out/routing-report.md

Stats

./target/release/xai-dissect stats /path/to/grok-1/ckpt-0 \
  --sample-values 65536 \
  --json out/stats.json \
  --md out/stats.md

SAAQ Readiness

./target/release/xai-dissect saaq-readiness /path/to/grok-1/ckpt-0 \
  --sample-values 65536 \
  --json out/saaq-readiness.json \
  --md out/saaq-readiness.md \
  --manifest out/candidate-saaq-targets.json

Quant Plan

./target/release/xai-dissect quant-plan /path/to/grok-1/ckpt-0 \
  --sample-values 65536 \
  --json out/quant-plan.json \
  --md out/quant-plan.md \
  --conversion-manifest out/conversion-manifest.json

This command requires the clean Grok-1 structural baseline and emits:

• a named baseline gate via grok1-coverage.json with profile grok1-map-v1-clean
• a per-tensor conversion-manifest.json for downstream conversion / packing work
• a family-level quant-plan.json for pilot quantization policy selection

Unified Output Tree

./target/release/xai-dissect routing-report /path/to/grok-1/ckpt-0 \
  --output-root out

That produces a predictable artifact layout such as:

out/
  reports/<checkpoint_slug>/
  exports/<checkpoint_slug>/
  manifests/<checkpoint_slug>/

See docs/output-conventions.md for the full artifact naming convention, and docs/export-contracts.md for the stable schema types behind those files.

Outputs

The repo writes three artifact families:

• reports/: human-readable Markdown for inspection and review
• exports/: full JSON plus compact findings summaries
• manifests/: focused machine-readable lists for downstream selection and orchestration

Examples:

• inventory writes a checkpoint inventory plus an inventory snapshot manifest
• routing-report writes a routing report plus a routing-critical tensor list
• saaq-readiness writes a grouped readiness report plus a ranked candidate manifest
• quant-plan writes a conversion manifest plus a deterministic family-level quant plan

Stability Notes

This milestone is intended to feel like a coherent tool, not a runtime:

• CLI-first workflow
• parser/analysis orientation
• stable export schema favored over a broad in-process Rust API
• current checkpoint support centered on Grok-1 f32 and int8 shard layouts

Release notes live in CHANGELOG.md.

CI

Pull requests and main run fmt, tests, clippy (-D warnings), and CLI help smokes. Optional Codecov, Qodana, and Sentry hooks are documented in docs/ci.md.

Grok-2 (available weights; not in this CLI yet)

Grok-2 open weights are out in the world, but xai-dissect still only implements Grok-1 layouts. Do not assume Grok-2 shards parse or classify.

Priority for this project remains Grok-1 cartography → conversion-manifest → pilot quant in grok-ozempic (slice-by-slice / mode-limited pilots with route preservation). Grok-2 is a bounded follow-on after that loop is solid:

• Checklist: docs/grok2-future-support.md
• Issue template: .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/grok2-support.md

Relationship To Sibling Repos

corinth-canal

corinth-canal owns orchestration and hybrid-runtime glue: it wires models, projectors, and downstream consumers together. xai-dissect is strictly upstream of that: it produces structural descriptions of a frozen checkpoint. If corinth-canal needs "what is the shape of expert 3's down-projection in layer 17", it consumes an xai-dissect export. It does not call into this repo at runtime.

snn-projector

snn-projector owns projector logic, including any spiking / neuromorphic projection of activations. xai-dissect does not implement, test, or depend on projector math. It may describe the shape of tensors that a projector would later consume (e.g. embedding width, expert output dimension), but it never projects anything itself.

SAAQ-latent

SAAQ-latent owns SAAQ latent calibration and latent-space analysis. xai-dissect does not compute SAAQ scores and does not calibrate latents. Its role is upstream reconnaissance: sampled tensor statistics, routing-risk flags, and candidate-target manifests that help decide where future SAAQ work should focus.

grok-ozempic

grok-ozempic is where compression, packing, and runtime ideas actually get applied once the checkpoint structure is understood. xai-dissect stays upstream of that work: it tells you what you are touching before any compression-oriented repo starts changing representation or execution. grok-ozempic is still under construction for further upgrades, and the "ozempic" part of the name is meant to make that repo's purpose obvious. The current Grok-1 downstream handoff contract is documented in docs/export-contracts.md and intentionally keeps the required ingest surface smaller than the full export tree.

Surrogate_Viz.jl

Surrogate_Viz.jl owns visualization and dashboarding. xai-dissect emits structured, exportable findings (JSON / CSV / Markdown). It does not render plots, does not ship a UI, and does not embed a plotting stack. Surrogate_Viz.jl is a downstream consumer of xai-dissect exports.

Architecture

See:

• docs/architecture.md
• docs/export-contracts.md
• docs/tensor-schema.md
• docs/output-conventions.md

Legal / Ethical Scope

• Analyze only weights you have lawful access to under the original license
• This repository does not contain or mirror model weights
• This repository is not a circumvention or scraping tool

License

Licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.

Grok model weights remain the property of their respective rights holders and are not covered by this repository's license.