diff --git a/hw/straylight/default.nix b/hw/straylight/default.nix
index c1849fd..83aaf03 100644
--- a/hw/straylight/default.nix
+++ b/hw/straylight/default.nix
@@ -71,6 +71,13 @@ let
     [ornith-1.5-9b-uncensored]
     hf-repo = mradermacher/Ornith-1.5-9B-uncensored-GGUF:Q4_K_M
     dedup-cache-models = true
+    ; Runaway guard (2026-09-21): as Hermes' auxiliary model (approval, title, web
+    ; extract) it got requests with no max_tokens, never converged, and one generation
+    ; ran to 46k tokens (~70 min at 11 t/s) after the client's 60 s timeout, starving the
+    ; 35B. Helper tasks need short answers: cap thinking and total output server-side.
+    ; A client that sends its own smaller max_tokens still wins.
+    reasoning-budget = 2048
+    n-predict = 4096
 
     ; Qwen3-VL-8B Instruct, refusal-ablated (prithivMLmods v2 / mradermacher).
     ; Dedicated VLM in the same size class as Ornith 1.5 9B. Explicit mmproj-url