vllm-project / vllm-project/agentic-api
Upstream exact Responses prefix routing through llm-d
@franciscojavierarceo is already working on this.
Since Sep 15, 2026.
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- Rust
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Description
Parent tracker: #69
Design and measured evidence: #65
Summary
Deliver the first and highest-impact milestone: exact Responses-aware KV-affine placement through llm-d after agentic-api has rehydrated previous_response_id state.
Scope
- Upstream vLLM support for accepting
ResponsesRequestinput at/tokenizeand delegating to the same renderer used by inference. - Upstream llm-d-router support for dispatching Responses token production to vLLM
/tokenize, preservingcache_salt, and rejecting unresolved or incomplete cache identities. - Propagate file-discovery
rankIndexinto endpoint metadata so multiple replicas on one host subscribe to distinct KV-event ports. - Configure agentic-api's execution LLM URL to point at llm-d after rehydration rather than routing only on marginal client input.
- Keep llm-d canonical request keys distinct from vLLM engine block hashes while preserving their event-derived mapping.
- Verify model, tokenizer, template/parser, salt, LoRA, multimodal identity, block size, and key-format compatibility.
- Add metrics for matched blocks, selected endpoint, queue/load tradeoff, wrong-pod outcome, and vLLM cached input tokens.
Current evidence
The patched two-replica GPT-OSS-20B proof in #65 produced 12/12 warm returns and 99.08% mean continuation cache hits for both approximate and precise routing, versus 6/12 and 49.54% for load-only. Precise routing reduced mean continuation latency from 811.0 ms to 316.5 ms.
The proof used patched branch images. The vLLM and llm-d-router changes are not yet available in their upstream main branches.
Acceptance criteria
- Upstream-supported vLLM and llm-d-router images reproduce exact Responses token parity and KV-aware placement without benchmark-only patches.
- Precise routing materially improves cached tokens and continuation latency over load-only routing under concurrent agent/tool traffic and cache pressure.
- Different tenant salts cannot share KV blocks; identical permitted salts retain reuse.
- Wrong-pod selection, event lag, eviction, restart, and
AllBlocksClearedare correctness-safe and observable. - Same-host and multi-host replica discovery subscribe to the correct KV-event source for every endpoint.
- Agentic-api does not implement model tokenization or llm-d's canonical hash algorithm.
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Assessment
This issue has not been assessed yet.