diff --git a/06-experiments/README.md b/06-experiments/README.md
index 37a5ddd..b5a6724 100644
--- a/06-experiments/README.md
+++ b/06-experiments/README.md
@@ -43,7 +43,25 @@ iteration where it diverged).
 
 ## Tech-spike results (28/10/2026)
 
-See `runs/index.csv`. Pipeline check only: tiny model, 300 steps, small data subset.
+See `runs/index.csv`. Pipeline check only: 4 layers × 256 wide, 300 steps, 4.9M-token
+subset, one seed. **Not evidence for or against any hypothesis.**
+
+| Run | QK-norm | LR | Best val loss | Time |
+|---|---|---|---|---|
+| spike-qkoff-lr1e-3 | off | 1e-3 | 3.459 | 103 s |
+| spike-qkon-lr1e-3 | on | 1e-3 | 3.430 | 105 s |
+| spike-qkoff-lr1e-1 | off | 1e-1 | 5.295 | 103 s |
+| spike-qkon-lr1e-1 | on | 1e-1 | 3.903 | 106 s |
+| test-divergence-stop | off | 1e-1 | (stopped) | 6 s |
+
+What the spike showed:
+- Training runs on MPS at ~0.29 s/step for this size; the whole pipeline works.
+- **Reproducible:** re-running QK-off at 1e-3 gave the identical val loss (3.4590) as a pre-commit test run.
+- At LR 0.1, QK-off was clearly worse but **did not diverge**: grad clipping (1.0) kept loss finite.
+  So "diverged" needs a definition beyond NaN for the pre-registration (e.g. final loss vs a threshold).
+- The divergence stop works (tested with an artificially low threshold; the run was killed and logged).
+- The QK-on vs off direction at high LR matches H2, but this is one seed, 300 steps: a hint for the
+  pilot, nothing more.
 
 ## Known issues / decisions still open
 
diff --git a/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180656_spike-qkoff-lr1e-3/config.json b/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180656_spike-qkoff-lr1e-3/config.json
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a70c812
--- /dev/null
+++ b/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180656_spike-qkoff-lr1e-3/config.json
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+{
+  "out_dir": "/Users/nik/ISE/9.CS6513/thesis/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180656_spike-qkoff-lr1e-3",
+  "eval_interval": 100,
+  "log_interval": 10,
+  "eval_iters": 20,
+  "eval_only": false,
+  "always_save_checkpoint": false,
+  "init_from": "scratch",
+  "wandb_log": false,
+  "wandb_project": "owt",
+  "wandb_run_name": "gpt2",
+  "dataset": "tinystories_spike",
+  "gradient_accumulation_steps": 1,
+  "batch_size": 32,
+  "block_size": 256,
+  "n_layer": 4,
+  "n_head": 4,
+  "n_embd": 256,
+  "dropout": 0.0,
+  "bias": false,
+  "qk_norm": false,
+  "seed": 1337,
+  "data_root": "/Users/nik/ISE/9.CS6513/thesis/06-experiments/data",
+  "learning_rate": 0.001,
+  "max_iters": 300,
+  "weight_decay": 0.1,
+  "beta1": 0.9,
+  "beta2": 0.95,
+  "grad_clip": 1.0,
+  "decay_lr": true,
+  "warmup_iters": 30,
+  "lr_decay_iters": 300,
+  "min_lr": 0.0001,
+  "backend": "nccl",
+  "device": "mps",
+  "dtype": "float32",
+  "compile": false
+}
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180656_spike-qkoff-lr1e-3/metrics.jsonl b/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180656_spike-qkoff-lr1e-3/metrics.jsonl
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..785e7f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180656_spike-qkoff-lr1e-3/metrics.jsonl
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+{"type": "eval", "iter": 0, "train_loss": 10.9141, "val_loss": 10.9167, "t": 5.28}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 0, "loss": 10.9193, "ms": 4306.09, "t": 5.61}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 10, "loss": 9.717, "ms": 277.79, "t": 8.4}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 20, "loss": 7.856, "ms": 278.89, "t": 11.19}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 30, "loss": 5.8282, "ms": 280.65, "t": 13.98}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 40, "loss": 5.188, "ms": 280.42, "t": 16.81}
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+{"type": "train", "iter": 60, "loss": 4.4652, "ms": 279.16, "t": 22.4}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 70, "loss": 4.3047, "ms": 279.57, "t": 25.2}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 80, "loss": 4.1141, "ms": 280.67, "t": 28.0}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 90, "loss": 4.0799, "ms": 279.89, "t": 30.8}
+{"type": "eval", "iter": 100, "train_loss": 4.0112, "val_loss": 4.0447, "t": 37.28}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 100, "loss": 3.9923, "ms": 4480.26, "t": 37.81}
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+{"type": "train", "iter": 120, "loss": 3.802, "ms": 280.13, "t": 43.4}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 130, "loss": 3.8455, "ms": 279.15, "t": 46.2}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 140, "loss": 3.8329, "ms": 278.97, "t": 48.99}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 150, "loss": 3.8187, "ms": 279.6, "t": 51.79}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 160, "loss": 3.683, "ms": 280.52, "t": 54.59}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 170, "loss": 3.7639, "ms": 280.91, "t": 57.39}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 180, "loss": 3.6422, "ms": 280.01, "t": 60.19}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 190, "loss": 3.4959, "ms": 294.68, "t": 63.04}
+{"type": "eval", "iter": 200, "train_loss": 3.5542, "val_loss": 3.5984, "t": 69.66}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 200, "loss": 3.4831, "ms": 4487.24, "t": 70.09}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 210, "loss": 3.5612, "ms": 280.52, "t": 72.91}
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+{"type": "train", "iter": 280, "loss": 3.3884, "ms": 282.78, "t": 92.67}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 290, "loss": 3.3656, "ms": 292.04, "t": 95.52}
+{"type": "eval", "iter": 300, "train_loss": 3.3974, "val_loss": 3.459, "t": 102.13}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 300, "loss": 3.3888, "ms": 4461.83, "t": 102.56}
diff --git a/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180656_spike-qkoff-lr1e-3/run.json b/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180656_spike-qkoff-lr1e-3/run.json
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04a3482
--- /dev/null
+++ b/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180656_spike-qkoff-lr1e-3/run.json
@@ -0,0 +1,86 @@
+{
+  "run_id": "20261028-180656_spike-qkoff-lr1e-3",
+  "name": "spike-qkoff-lr1e-3",
+  "note": "tech spike smoke test (not an experiment)",
+  "status": "completed",
+  "started": "2026-10-28T18:06:56+00:00",
+  "command": "/Users/nik/ISE/9.CS6513/thesis/06-experiments/.venv/bin/python /Users/nik/ISE/9.CS6513/thesis/06-experiments/nanogpt/train.py configs/spike.py --out_dir=/Users/nik/ISE/9.CS6513/thesis/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180656_spike-qkoff-lr1e-3 --data_root=/Users/nik/ISE/9.CS6513/thesis/06-experiments/data --qk_norm=False --learning_rate=1e-3",
+  "config_file": "configs/spike.py",
+  "overrides": [
+    "qk_norm=False",
+    "learning_rate=1e-3"
+  ],
+  "config_requested": {
+    "dataset": "tinystories_spike",
+    "device": "mps",
+    "dtype": "float32",
+    "compile": false,
+    "n_layer": 4,
+    "n_head": 4,
+    "n_embd": 256,
+    "block_size": 256,
+    "bias": false,
+    "dropout": 0.0,
+    "qk_norm": false,
+    "batch_size": 32,
+    "gradient_accumulation_steps": 1,
+    "learning_rate": 0.001,
+    "max_iters": 300,
+    "lr_decay_iters": 300,
+    "min_lr": 0.0001,
+    "warmup_iters": 30,
+    "weight_decay": 0.1,
+    "grad_clip": 1.0,
+    "eval_interval": 100,
+    "eval_iters": 20,
+    "log_interval": 10,
+    "always_save_checkpoint": false,
+    "seed": 1337
+  },
+  "git": {
+    "commit": "55ba128dcca8310f85e99e172fe920a8c53a3a79",
+    "branch": "main",
+    "dirty": false
+  },
+  "nanogpt_upstream_commit": "3adf61e154c3fe3fca428ad6bc3818b27a3b8291",
+  "data": {
+    "dataset": "TinyStories V2 (GPT-4)",
+    "source": "https://huggingface.co/datasets/roneneldan/TinyStories/resolve/main/",
+    "tokenizer": "tiktoken gpt2",
+    "files": {
+      "TinyStoriesV2-GPT4-valid.txt": "6874bae9a4c1a4e7edcf0e53b86c17817e9cf881fc75ff2368da457b80c0585d"
+    },
+    "split": "valid file split 90/10 by story order: 24867 train / 2763 val stories",
+    "tokens": {
+      "train": 4920360,
+      "val": 548664
+    },
+    "train_bin_bytes": 9840720,
+    "val_bin_bytes": 1097328
+  },
+  "environment": {
+    "host": "Cormacs-MacBook-Pro.local",
+    "platform": "macOS-15.7.7-arm64-arm-64bit",
+    "machine": "arm64",
+    "cpu": "Apple M4 Pro",
+    "python": "3.12.14",
+    "torch": "2.15.0",
+    "mps_available": true,
+    "cuda_available": false
+  },
+  "finished": "2026-10-28T18:08:40+00:00",
+  "wall_seconds": 102.9,
+  "summary": {
+    "params_millions_nanogpt_count": 16.03,
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+    "last_train_loss": 3.3888,
+    "last_eval": {
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+      "train_loss": 3.3974,
+      "val_loss": 3.459
+    },
+    "best_val_loss": 3.459,
+    "diverged_at_iter": null,
+    "returncode": 0
+  }
+}
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180840_spike-qkon-lr1e-3/config.json b/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180840_spike-qkon-lr1e-3/config.json
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ec87e9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180840_spike-qkon-lr1e-3/config.json
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+{
+  "out_dir": "/Users/nik/ISE/9.CS6513/thesis/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180840_spike-qkon-lr1e-3",
+  "eval_interval": 100,
+  "log_interval": 10,
+  "eval_iters": 20,
+  "eval_only": false,
+  "always_save_checkpoint": false,
+  "init_from": "scratch",
+  "wandb_log": false,
+  "wandb_project": "owt",
+  "wandb_run_name": "gpt2",
+  "dataset": "tinystories_spike",
+  "gradient_accumulation_steps": 1,
+  "batch_size": 32,
+  "block_size": 256,
+  "n_layer": 4,
+  "n_head": 4,
+  "n_embd": 256,
+  "dropout": 0.0,
+  "bias": false,
+  "qk_norm": true,
+  "seed": 1337,
+  "data_root": "/Users/nik/ISE/9.CS6513/thesis/06-experiments/data",
+  "learning_rate": 0.001,
+  "max_iters": 300,
+  "weight_decay": 0.1,
+  "beta1": 0.9,
+  "beta2": 0.95,
+  "grad_clip": 1.0,
+  "decay_lr": true,
+  "warmup_iters": 30,
+  "lr_decay_iters": 300,
+  "min_lr": 0.0001,
+  "backend": "nccl",
+  "device": "mps",
+  "dtype": "float32",
+  "compile": false
+}
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180840_spike-qkon-lr1e-3/metrics.jsonl b/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180840_spike-qkon-lr1e-3/metrics.jsonl
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c933a91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180840_spike-qkon-lr1e-3/metrics.jsonl
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+{"type": "eval", "iter": 0, "train_loss": 10.9101, "val_loss": 10.9119, "t": 5.5}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 0, "loss": 10.9141, "ms": 4672.21, "t": 5.94}
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+{"type": "eval", "iter": 300, "train_loss": 3.3683, "val_loss": 3.4304, "t": 104.06}
+{"type": "train", "iter": 300, "loss": 3.3557, "ms": 4477.21, "t": 104.51}
diff --git a/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180840_spike-qkon-lr1e-3/run.json b/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180840_spike-qkon-lr1e-3/run.json
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a83c40
--- /dev/null
+++ b/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180840_spike-qkon-lr1e-3/run.json
@@ -0,0 +1,86 @@
+{
+  "run_id": "20261028-180840_spike-qkon-lr1e-3",
+  "name": "spike-qkon-lr1e-3",
+  "note": "tech spike smoke test (not an experiment)",
+  "status": "completed",
+  "started": "2026-10-28T18:08:40+00:00",
+  "command": "/Users/nik/ISE/9.CS6513/thesis/06-experiments/.venv/bin/python /Users/nik/ISE/9.CS6513/thesis/06-experiments/nanogpt/train.py configs/spike.py --out_dir=/Users/nik/ISE/9.CS6513/thesis/06-experiments/runs/20261028-180840_spike-qkon-lr1e-3 --data_root=/Users/nik/ISE/9.CS6513/thesis/06-experiments/data --qk_norm=True --learning_rate=1e-3",
+  "config_file": "configs/spike.py",
+  "overrides": [
+    "qk_norm=True",
+    "learning_rate=1e-3"
+  ],
+  "config_requested": {
+    "dataset": "tinystories_spike",
+    "device": "mps",
+    "dtype": "float32",
+    "compile": false,
+    "n_layer": 4,
+    "n_head": 4,
+    "n_embd": 256,
+    "block_size": 256,
+    "bias": false,
+    "dropout": 0.0,
+    "qk_norm": true,
+    "batch_size": 32,
+    "gradient_accumulation_steps": 1,
+    "learning_rate": 0.001,
+    "max_iters": 300,
+    "lr_decay_iters": 300,
+    "min_lr": 0.0001,
+    "warmup_iters": 30,
+    "weight_decay": 0.1,
+    "grad_clip": 1.0,
+    "eval_interval": 100,
+    "eval_iters": 20,
+    "log_interval": 10,
+    "always_save_checkpoint": false,
+    "seed": 1337
+  },
+  "git": {
+    "commit": "55ba128dcca8310f85e99e172fe920a8c53a3a79",
+    "branch": "main",
+    "dirty": false
+  },
+  "nanogpt_upstream_commit": "3adf61e154c3fe3fca428ad6bc3818b27a3b8291",
+  "data": {
+    "dataset": "TinyStories V2 (GPT-4)",
+    "source": "https://huggingface.co/datasets/roneneldan/TinyStories/resolve/main/",
+    "tokenizer": "tiktoken gpt2",
+    "files": {
+      "TinyStoriesV2-GPT4-valid.txt": "6874bae9a4c1a4e7edcf0e53b86c17817e9cf881fc75ff2368da457b80c0585d"
+    },
+    "split": "valid file split 90/10 by story order: 24867 train / 2763 val stories",
+    "tokens": {
+      "train": 4920360,
+      "val": 548664
+    },
+    "train_bin_bytes": 9840720,
+    "val_bin_bytes": 1097328
+  },
+  "environment": {
+    "host": "Cormacs-MacBook-Pro.local",
+    "platform": "macOS-15.7.7-arm64-arm-64bit",
+    "machine": "arm64",
+    "cpu": "Apple M4 Pro",
+    "python": "3.12.14",
+    "torch": "2.15.0",
+    "mps_available": true,
+    "cuda_available": false
+  },
+  "finished": "2026-10-28T18:10:25+00:00",
+  "wall_seconds": 104.8,
+  "summary": {
+    "params_millions_nanogpt_count": 16.03,
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+    "last_train_loss": 3.3557,
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+      "train_loss": 3.3683,
+      "val_loss": 3.4304
+    },
+    "best_val_loss": 3.4304,
+    "diverged_at_iter": null,
+    "returncode": 0
+  }
+}
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/06-experiments/runs/20261028-181025_spike-qkoff-lr1e-1/config.json b/06-experiments/runs/20261028-181025_spike-qkoff-lr1e-1/config.json
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..431bf8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/06-experiments/runs/20261028-181025_spike-qkoff-lr1e-1/config.json
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+{
+  "out_dir": "/Users/nik/ISE/9.CS6513/thesis/06-experiments/runs/20261028-181025_spike-qkoff-lr1e-1",
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+  "log_interval": 10,
+  "eval_iters": 20,
+  "eval_only": false,
+  "always_save_checkpoint": false,
+  "init_from": "scratch",
+  "wandb_log": false,
+  "wandb_project": "owt",
+  "wandb_run_name": "gpt2",
+  "dataset": "tinystories_spike",
+  "gradient_accumulation_steps": 1,
+  "batch_size": 32,
+  "block_size": 256,
+  "n_layer": 4,
+  "n_head": 4,
+  "n_embd": 256,
+  "dropout": 0.0,
+  "bias": false,
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new file mode 100644
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new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35e700d
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new file mode 100644
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new file mode 100644
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+    "eval_interval=1000"
+  ],
+  "config_requested": {
+    "dataset": "tinystories_spike",
+    "device": "mps",
+    "dtype": "float32",
+    "compile": false,
+    "n_layer": 4,
+    "n_head": 4,
+    "n_embd": 256,
+    "block_size": 256,
+    "bias": false,
+    "dropout": 0.0,
+    "qk_norm": false,
+    "batch_size": 32,
+    "gradient_accumulation_steps": 1,
+    "learning_rate": 0.1,
+    "max_iters": 60,
+    "lr_decay_iters": 60,
+    "min_lr": 0.0001,
+    "warmup_iters": 5,
+    "weight_decay": 0.1,
+    "grad_clip": 1.0,
+    "eval_interval": 1000,
+    "eval_iters": 20,
+    "log_interval": 10,
+    "always_save_checkpoint": false,
+    "seed": 1337
+  },
+  "git": {
+    "commit": "55ba128dcca8310f85e99e172fe920a8c53a3a79",
+    "branch": "main",
+    "dirty": false
+  },
+  "nanogpt_upstream_commit": "3adf61e154c3fe3fca428ad6bc3818b27a3b8291",
+  "data": {
+    "dataset": "TinyStories V2 (GPT-4)",
+    "source": "https://huggingface.co/datasets/roneneldan/TinyStories/resolve/main/",
+    "tokenizer": "tiktoken gpt2",
+    "files": {
+      "TinyStoriesV2-GPT4-valid.txt": "6874bae9a4c1a4e7edcf0e53b86c17817e9cf881fc75ff2368da457b80c0585d"
+    },
+    "split": "valid file split 90/10 by story order: 24867 train / 2763 val stories",
+    "tokens": {
+      "train": 4920360,
+      "val": 548664
+    },
+    "train_bin_bytes": 9840720,
+    "val_bin_bytes": 1097328
+  },
+  "environment": {
+    "host": "Cormacs-MacBook-Pro.local",
+    "platform": "macOS-15.7.7-arm64-arm-64bit",
+    "machine": "arm64",
+    "cpu": "Apple M4 Pro",
+    "python": "3.12.14",
+    "torch": "2.15.0",
+    "mps_available": true,
+    "cuda_available": false
+  },
+  "finished": "2026-10-28T18:14:15+00:00",
+  "wall_seconds": 5.8,
+  "summary": {
+    "params_millions_nanogpt_count": 16.03,
+    "first_train_loss": 10.9193,
+    "last_train_loss": 10.9193,
+    "last_eval": {
+      "iter": 0,
+      "train_loss": 10.9141,
+      "val_loss": 10.9167
+    },
+    "best_val_loss": 10.9167,
+    "diverged_at_iter": 0,
+    "returncode": -15
+  }
+}
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/06-experiments/runs/index.csv b/06-experiments/runs/index.csv
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dbcde73
--- /dev/null
+++ b/06-experiments/runs/index.csv
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+run_id,status,qk_norm,learning_rate,n_layer,n_embd,seed,max_iters,params_M,best_val_loss,diverged_at,wall_s,git_commit,dirty,note
+20261028-180656_spike-qkoff-lr1e-3,completed,False,0.001,4,256,1337,300,16.03,3.459,,102.9,55ba128dcc,False,tech spike smoke test (not an experiment)
+20261028-180840_spike-qkon-lr1e-3,completed,True,0.001,4,256,1337,300,16.03,3.4304,,104.8,55ba128dcc,False,tech spike smoke test (not an experiment)
+20261028-181025_spike-qkoff-lr1e-1,completed,False,0.1,4,256,1337,300,16.03,5.2948,,103.4,55ba128dcc,False,tech spike smoke test (not an experiment); divergence-detection check
+20261028-181209_spike-qkon-lr1e-1,completed,True,0.1,4,256,1337,300,16.03,3.9026,,105.7,55ba128dcc,False,tech spike smoke test (not an experiment); divergence-detection check
+20261028-181408_test-divergence-stop,diverged,False,0.1,4,256,1337,60,16.03,10.9167,0,5.8,55ba128dcc,False,plumbing test of the divergence stop (threshold set artificially low); not an experiment