Stage-Replay Divergence Follows the KV Cache: Fixed-Prefix Precision Controls and Bidirectional Cache Transplantation
Stage-replay diagnostics reconstruct intermediate token prefixes and treat fresh-prefill continuation as continuation from the decoder state that originally reached the prefix. We audit that assumption at a whole reasoning-stage boundary in a Qwen2.5-derived system. A matched 200-item experiment compares retained live cache with one-shot prefill of identical integer tokens and places an exact replica on both sides. In BF16, replicas remain exact while the constructions differ on 166 suffixes and 20 correctness labels; the accuracy difference is only one point (paired 95% CI [-3.5, +5.5]). A fixed-prefix 2x2 holds all 200 token states constant while crossing construction and precision. The...
| Authors | Alexander Boesgaard Lorup |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.LG |
| Published | 30 July 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 30 July 2026 |
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