One conditioning delta is 586x3584 floats — several megabytes of base64 inside
a document that is parsed and rewritten IN FULL on every generation. That is
the cost that grows with everything ever learned, and it is paid whether or not
any of those tensors are used.
Tensors now go to <key>.json.tensors.pt and the JSON keeps a named reference
whose id is the tensor's path in the tree ("state.global.liked_dir.direction"),
so the key stays readable and a reader can see what a reference points at.
No migration: a key written before this carries inline blobs, is read exactly
as it stands, and moves to the sidecar on its next save. If the sidecar cannot
be written the tensors stay inline — a slow key is fine, a JSON pointing at a
sidecar that does not exist is not. A reference the sidecar has lost reads as
no tensor, so a direction goes unapplied rather than breaking the run.
Deletion already sweeps it: delete_refinement_key globs every <key>.* sidecar
for exactly this reason. Session Reset removes it explicitly.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
