2026-04-28 - CoreML Stream-Level Bridge Operation Handles Recovered

Intent: Advance the unsupported CoreML stream-level investigation from program-library discovery toward operation-level chaining, following the validation-first notes Dragon Book call-hoisting/strength-reduction discipline to remove host materialization between validated shards.

Setup: Added local inspection artifacts to map the CoreML stream lifecycle for Phi layer30_32 and layer16_24 shards.

Result: The inspection recovered enough operation and port identity to reason about x input, hidden output, masks, and KV state on both tested shards.

Surprise / hurdle: The useful bridge surface is partly CoreML (CoreML stream operation pool / CoreML stream execution operation) and partly stream-level pointers, so object introspection alone misses the operation contract.

Lesson: Public CoreML-loaded stream-level models expose enough live operation and port handles to make ANE-side shard binding a concrete next experiment.

Next: Construct or borrow an CoreML stream execution stream containing two operations and bind stage A hidden output directly to stage B x input without MLMultiArray host materialization; keep public residency and golden gates as acceptance checks before any performance claim.

Refs: research/ANE_CHAIN_SCHEMA.md