Restore the truncated intro of Notes_AI-Design.md

A partial write at 11:41 left the status paragraphs cut off mid-line, and the
previous commit swept it up. Content recovered from e02dc1b.

Notes_AI-Design.md

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 # Varaverk AI Integration — Design Notes
 
-**Status
+**Status: retrieval is built; integration is not.** As of 2026-08-02 the `AI_*` and
+`HOST*_OLLAMA_*` variables exist in both confs and both templates, and `AI/` holds a working
+index and query path — see the RAG section at the end of this document and `AI/README-AI.md`.
+
+Everything else below remains design only. **No Varaverk script consults AI.** Every
+`AI_ASSIST_*` toggle is false, `AI_CONF_WRITE_ENABLED` is false with an empty whitelist, and
+host resolution across the mesh is specified but not implemented. Originally captured
+2026-08-01 so the reasoning survives.
+
+Ollama itself *is* installed, tuned and verified on HOST1 — `qwen2.5-coder:14b` for
+generation, `nomic-embed-text` for embeddings, 16k context, pinned to the RTX 3080. See
+Hardware Budget for measured numbers. That is the substrate, not the integration.
+
+**Origin:** the RTX 3080 was freed when the Windows gaming VM was retired. It is bound to the
+`nvidia` driver, not `vfio` — not reserved for passthrough, so there is no VM contention to
+design around. Two goals at once: somewhere to learn local LLMs, and something Varaverk can
+genuinely use.
+
+**Build order** — deliberately lowest-risk first. Each stage must be boring before the next
+one starts:
+
 1. Chat assistant / settings helper / onboarding assistant — a wrong answer costs nothing
 2. Watchdog and discovery context — a wrong answer costs a bad suggestion, still gated
 3. Cleanup and sync decision aid — closest to destructive, last to be trusted