Chunked prefill can revisit a sub-page CP HiCache tail while a per-layer backup is still in flight. The old insert path split the radix node first and only then tried to prune the stale tail, so an unprunable pending backup raised after tree mutation and propagated to the scheduler.
This makes split/prune atomic from the radix-tree perspective: drain completed write acks only on the conflict path, preflight pending/unprunable state before split, and return a deferred insert result when the backup is still in flight. Unfinished requests keep their KV ownership for transfer/release instead of rematching or freeing pages under a stale tree state.
Constraint: CP HiCache backup metadata is node/page owned and cannot be repartitioned while per-layer D2H is pending
Rejected: Split the pending backup node | would require repartitioning in-flight backup metadata and host reservations
Rejected: Delete the stale tail unconditionally | risks freeing device/host pages still owned by pending backup
Confidence: high
Scope-risk: moderate
Directive: Do not move stale-tail prune after split without a preflight; pending backup split conflicts must remain non-mutating
Tested: remote g0034 container py_compile for mem_cache files
Tested: remote g0034 PYTHONPATH=python pytest -q test/registered/unit/mem_cache/test_cp_hicache_metadata.py test/registered/unit/mem_cache/test_cp_hicache_load_back_owner_lanes.py => 115 passed
Tested: local git diff --check
Not-tested: full chunked prefill ETE after service restart
Co-authored-by: OmX <omx@oh-my-codex.dev>
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