core practice · system design prompt
Design exercise: Speculative Decoding
Draft models, token verification, acceptance rates, tree speculation, latency, and quality preservation. Implement designOutline() returning non-empty values for: draftStrategy, verification, acceptanceRate. Each value must name a concrete mechanism or decision.
The mechanism
A cheap draft proposes several tokens and the target model verifies them in parallel. Speedup depends on acceptance rate and verification cost while preserving the target distribution.
Expected evidence
A design outline with draftStrategy, verification, acceptanceRate plus an explicit failure mode or trade-off.
Try this drill in the practice workspace →
Hints when you need them
- Name the failure mode before selecting the mechanism.