Month 6 — Serving papers, prompt cache, sampling postmortem ×2, RSP + constitution, Why Anthropic, take-home path, public artifact

Roadmap late P2 / early P3. This month is the first time the company-shaped reading is Deep 1, not leftover evenings. Kernels do not stop.

Month goals

Serving papers: Orca, Sarathi-Serve, DistServe. Whiteboard each: what problem, what invariant, what kernel implication.
Prompt caching implemented mentally (and a tiny simulator): prefix key, hit/miss, invalidation, TTFT vs decode, what KV pages you keep.
Sampling postmortem twice (read, write, re-read): https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/a-postmortem-of-three-recent-issues
RSP v3.4 + 2026 constitution. Specific, dated.
Why Anthropic draft (200–400 words) that could not be pasted onto OpenAI.
Take-home sport aiming at the < 1,487 path (you may not hit it; you must see the next 2×).
One public artifact good enough to put at the top of a resume (even if you will not apply for a year).

Week 21 — Serving papers

Day	Deep 1	Deep 2	Paper / book
Mon	Orca (OSDI '22). Iteration-level batching. Draw vs static batching.	Tiny continuous batcher (drill #3 in `05-interview/drills.md`).	https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi22/presentation/yu
Tue	Sarathi-Serve (chunked prefill). Stall-free.	Extend the batcher with a token budget + chunked prefill.	https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.02310
Wed	Debug the batcher.	Take-home.	None.
Thu	DistServe (prefill/decode disaggregation). When it wins.	Inference design #5: disagg vs colocated.	https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.09670
Fri	Take-home sport. Start the 1487-path list: remaining bottlenecks, ranked.
Sat	Long build: `notes/serving-three-papers.md` — one page each, kernel implications in bullets.
Sun	Off-ish.

Week 22 — Prompt cache + postmortem pass 1

Day	Deep 1	Deep 2	Paper / book
Mon	Prompt caching post (Aug 2024). https://www.anthropic.com/news/prompt-caching	Simulator: system+tools prefix frozen; user turns miss. Hit rate vs TTFT.	Context engineering essay (SHOULD): https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/effective-context-engineering-for-ai-agents
Tue	Postmortem pass 1: timeline, three bugs, platforms. Hand notes only.	Write `notes/postmortem-p1.md`: what you would have monitored.	Postmortem.
Wed	Debug cache simulator.	Take-home.	None.
Thu	Many-shot jailbreaking (Anil Apr 2024) as a context-length / product paper, not an attack recipe.	Design #6: cache keying + tenancy + invalidation on weights publish.	https://www.anthropic.com/research/many-shot-jailbreaking
Fri	Take-home.
Sat	Long build: cache simulator in the public repo.
Sun	Off-ish.

Week 23 — Postmortem pass 2 + RSP + constitution

Day	Deep 1	Deep 2	Paper / book
Mon	Postmortem pass 2: XLA top-k deep dive. bf16 vs fp32, `xla_allow_excess_precision`, approximate vs exact top-k.	Recite the three bugs to a camera, 12 min.	Postmortem again.
Tue	RSP v3.4 current page + changelog (Jul 8, 2026 items). https://www.anthropic.com/responsible-scaling-policy	Write: what changed from "ASL as a model label" to thresholds + Risk Reports, in your words.	Aug 2026 Risk Report (SHOULD) if you can get the redacted PDF.
Wed	Constitution (Jan 22, 2026). Priority order + hard constraints idea.	Culture drill: one real disagreement.	https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-new-constitution
Thu	Why Anthropic v1 (200–400 words). Specific. Include a platform (TPU/Trainium/NVIDIA) and a first-six-months artifact.	Take-home (shorter).	Core Views, 2h BG if never read.
Fri	Take-home sport. Hunt 1487-path item #1.
Sat	Long build: Why Anthropic v2 after sleeping on v1. Throw v1 if generic.
Sun	Off-ish.

Week 24 — Public artifact + close first 6 months

Day	Deep 1	Deep 2	Paper / book
Mon	Pick one public artifact to make unmistakable: FA1/FA2 writeup or pager or GEMM worklog. Polish numbers.	Greenhouse paragraph (one para + URL).	None.
Tue	Blank-page exam (6h energy, split): attention+FA, KV, TP, CAI, postmortem three bugs, RSP one change, constitution order.	Fix whatever failed.	None.
Wed	Debug / polish the artifact.	Take-home.	None.
Thu	Design #7 (full 45 min, as if onsite).	Timed 90 min incremental system.	None.
Fri	Take-home. Write the honest number and the 1487-path (what is left). Email door is not this month unless you are actually under 1487.
Sat	Month 6 / half-year artifact. Tag `month-6`.
Sun	Off. Plan months 7–12 from `months-07-18.md`.

Month 6 exit criteria

Orca, Sarathi, DistServe: one page each, kernel implications.
Prompt-cache simulator + mental model (key, hit, invalidate, TTFT).
Postmortem read twice; 12 min recitation exists.
RSP v3.4: one written "what changed."
2026 constitution priority order from memory.
Why Anthropic draft that is specific (kept, not necessarily submitted).
Take-home: number + ranked 1487-path.
Public artifact with numbers and a postmortem of your work.

Artifact

The half-year repo should contain: take-home changelog, Triton FA, pager, TP notes, serving notes, postmortem notes, Why Anthropic, Greenhouse paragraph. If a stranger cannot find a number in 60 seconds, the artifact failed.

You are not ready to apply. Roadmap apply-gate is 00-the-job/roadmap.md. Burning the 12-month clock now is how people stay out.