Fix first token handling in speculative decoding - #2308
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August 25, 2026 11:52
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What changed
max_returned_tokenswhen a speculative round returnsk + 1tokensWhy
The target model samples the first completion token during prefill, but
generate()previouslyinitialized the output accumulator as empty and only appended tokens from later speculative
decoding rounds. This dropped the first token from the generated text and could return one fewer
token than requested. It also skipped stop-token handling for that first sample.
Fixes #2307.
Validation
pytest -q tests/test_generate_speculatively.py: 19 passed, 1 skipped (GPU-only)ruff check litgpt/generate/speculative_decoding.py tests/test_generate_speculatively.pyruff format --check litgpt/generate/speculative_decoding.py tests/test_generate_speculatively.py