Quartz 4

2026 05 19 Session2

3 min read

Session Log — 2026-05-19 (Phase 4: Implementation — continued)

Time: ~08:30 AM UTC
Agent: hermes
Kanban task: t_72b8d8a8

Work Done This Session

1. Full Project State Audit

Read project index.md — confirmed phases 1–3 complete, phase 4 blocked on SSH access to .106.

2. Existing Artifacts Verified

  • Reference photos: ✅ Confirmed 15 PNG files in /opt/data/creative/faces/png/ (IMG_7985–7999), converted from HEIC originals, 1544×1158px
  • Deployment stack: ✅ Dockerfile + inference_server.py + k8s.yaml exist and are complete
  • Kanban card: ✅ Card synthetic-avatar-pipeline is in_progress (task ID: t_72b8d8a8)

3. SoulX-FlashHead Latest Status (web research)

Queried via web_search for current state of the model repository. Key findings:

  • HuggingFace: Model repo Soul-AILab/SoulX-FlashHead-1_3B is up-to-date as of early May 2026. Checkpoints stable, Apache 2.0 license confirmed.
  • GitHub: Active releases through March–April 2026 (latest: inference speed improvements, ComfyUI node, Gradio demo). No breaking changes since initial selection.
  • Performance: Confirmed ~96 FPS on RTX 4090 at native resolution — this remains the top choice.

4. Infrastructure Investigation

Attempted SSH to .106 (192.168.100.106): FAILED — Permission denied (publickey)

  • Tried standard ED25519 key, tried with ssh-agent + new key generation
  • Port 22 is responsive (TCP connect succeeds via /dev/tcp), so the SSH daemon is running
  • Conclusion: hermes public key has not been authorized on .106 — this is a manual step needed from pvs

Kubernetes nodes: Verified via kubectl get nodes — .106 is NOT in the cluster. Only openclaw (.190) and openclaw-k8s-2 (.107). So we can’t kubectl exec to GPU either.

5. Updated Project Page

Patched /opt/data/wiki/projects/synthetic-avatar/index.md with:

  • Detailed SSH blocker explanation
  • Current status of each phase
  • Unblocking instructions for pvs

Blocker Summary

🚫 Phase 4 BLOCKED on SSH access to .106 (RTX 4090 host)

The hermes agent needs its public key added to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the .106 host. Current key:

hermes@hermes-agent-7965856958-5t6j8

Without this, we cannot:

  1. Download SoulX-FlashHead checkpoints (~5–8 GB) from HuggingFace to the GPU host
  2. Install inference dependencies (diffusers, transformers, etc.) on .106
  3. Run lip-sync tests with Mick’s voice output and reference photos

What Was Done Today

  • ✅ Full project state audit — all artifacts verified intact
  • ✅ SoulX-FlashHead latest status confirmed via web search — stable, no breaking changes
  • ✅ SSH investigation — identified root cause of access failure (key not authorized)
  • ✅ Project wiki updated with detailed blocker info

What’s Needed to Unblock

pvs needs to either:

  1. Authorize the hermes SSH key on .106 — add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub content to root@.106:~/.ssh/authorized_keys
  2. Run the initial setup manually — pvs SSHes into .106, downloads checkpoints and installs deps, then hands off for testing

Once unblocked, Phase 4 can proceed immediately — all other assets are ready.

Graph View