diff --git a/src/gpu/modal_distill.py b/src/gpu/modal_distill.py
new file mode 100644
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+++ b/src/gpu/modal_distill.py
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+"""Modal app: logit distillation of byte-level seq2seq models (WO07).
+
+Case study (work order): Hebrew ByT5-base s43 (teacher) -> ByT5-small
+(student) on the same hebrew-v4 corpus the teacher was trained on.
+Loss = alpha * T^2 * KL(teacher_soft || student_soft) + (1 - alpha) * CE.
+The student initializes from google/byt5-small pretraining — a pretrained
+backbone is essential (from-scratch ByT5-small plateaus ~13% PER in the
+Thai ablations; mode collapse resists all fixes).
+
+    modal run --detach src/gpu/modal_distill.py::main --spec heb-diac-small
+    until modal run --detach src/gpu/modal_distill.py::main --spec heb-diac-small; do sleep 60; done
+
+Checkpoints on rababa-checkpoints:/rababa_hebrew_distill_small/run-001
+(periodic save + auto-resume from latest — server evictions are expected).
+GPU is A10G; never competes with A100 training runs.
+"""
+
+from __future__ import annotations
+
+from pathlib import Path
+
+import modal
+
+REPO_ROOT = Path(__file__).resolve().parent.parent.parent
+
+IMAGE = (
+    modal.Image.debian_slim(python_version="3.11")
+    .pip_install(
+        "torch==2.12.1",
+        "transformers==5.14.1",
+        "pyyaml>=6.0",
+        "numpy>=1.26",
+    )
+    .add_local_dir(str(REPO_ROOT), "/root/ml-models", copy=True)
+    .workdir("/root/ml-models")
+)
+
+CHECKPOINTS = modal.Volume.from_name("rababa-checkpoints")
+DATASETS = modal.Volume.from_name("rababa-datasets")
+
+SPECS: dict[str, dict[str, str]] = {
+    "heb-diac-small": {
+        "teacher": "rababa_hebrew_byt5_s43/run-001/best",
+        "student_init": "google/byt5-small",
+        "train": "hebrew-v4/train.jsonl",
+        "val": "hebrew-v4/val.jsonl",
+        "out": "rababa_hebrew_distill_small/run-001",
+    },
+}
+
+app = modal.App("interscript-ml-distill", image=IMAGE)
+
+
+@app.function(
+    gpu="A10G",
+    cpu=8,
+    memory=32 * 1024,
+    timeout=6 * 3600,
+    volumes={"/datasets": DATASETS, "/checkpoints": CHECKPOINTS},
+)
+def distill(spec_id: str, epochs: int = 3, alpha: float = 0.5, temperature: float = 2.0) -> dict:
+    import json
+    import math
+
+    import torch
+    import torch.nn.functional as F
+    from torch.utils.data import DataLoader, Dataset
+    from transformers import AutoModelForSeq2SeqLM, AutoTokenizer, get_cosine_schedule_with_warmup
+
+    spec = SPECS[spec_id]
+    device = "cuda"
+    out_root = Path("/checkpoints") / spec["out"]
+    out_root.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
+
+    tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained("google/byt5-small")
+    teacher = AutoModelForSeq2SeqLM.from_pretrained(
+        Path("/checkpoints") / spec["teacher"], attn_implementation="eager"
+    ).to(device, dtype=torch.float16).eval()
+    for p in teacher.parameters():
+        p.requires_grad_(False)
+
+    student = AutoModelForSeq2SeqLM.from_pretrained(spec["student_init"]).to(device)
+    student.train()
+
+    class Pairs(Dataset):
+        def __init__(self, path: Path, max_len: int = 384):
+            self.rows = []
+            for line in path.read_text(encoding="utf-8").splitlines():
+                if not line.strip():
+                    continue
+                try:
+                    row = json.loads(line)
+                except json.JSONDecodeError:
+                    continue
+                s, t = (row.get("src") or "").strip(), (row.get("tgt") or "").strip()
+                if s and t and len(s.encode()) <= max_len and len(t.encode()) <= max_len:
+                    self.rows.append((s, t))
+
+        def __len__(self):
+            return len(self.rows)
+
+        def __getitem__(self, i):
+            s, t = self.rows[i]
+            return s, t
+
+    def collate(batch):
+        src = tokenizer([s for s, _ in batch], padding=True, return_tensors="pt")
+        labels = tokenizer([t for _, t in batch], padding=True, return_tensors="pt").input_ids
+        labels[labels == tokenizer.pad_token_id] = -100
+        return src.input_ids, src.attention_mask, labels
+
+    train_loader = DataLoader(
+        Pairs(Path("/datasets") / spec["train"]),
+        batch_size=8,
+        shuffle=True,
+        collate_fn=collate,
+        num_workers=2,
+        drop_last=True,
+    )
+    steps_per_epoch = len(train_loader)
+    total_steps = steps_per_epoch * epochs
+
+    # resume from the newest periodic checkpoint if present
+    start_step = 0
+    ckpts = sorted(out_root.glob("step-*"), key=lambda p: int(p.name.split("-")[1]))
+    if ckpts:
+        state = torch.load(ckpts[-1] / "student.pt", map_location=device, weights_only=True)
+        student.load_state_dict(state)
+        opt_state = torch.load(ckpts[-1] / "optim.pt", map_location=device, weights_only=True)
+        start_step = int(ckpts[-1].name.split("-")[1])
+        print(f"[resume] from {ckpts[-1].name}", flush=True)
+    optimizer = torch.optim.AdamW(student.parameters(), lr=1e-4)
+    if ckpts:
+        optimizer.load_state_dict(opt_state)
+    scheduler = get_cosine_schedule_with_warmup(optimizer, total_steps // 20, total_steps)
+    for _ in range(start_step):
+        scheduler.step()
+
+    save_every = 500
+    log_every = 50
+    step = start_step
+    best_val = math.inf
+
+    def val_loss() -> float:
+        student.eval()
+        total, n = 0.0, 0
+        with torch.no_grad():
+            for _, (ids, am, labels) in enumerate(
+                DataLoader(
+                    Pairs(Path("/datasets") / spec["val"]),
+                    batch_size=8,
+                    collate_fn=collate,
+                )
+            ):
+                ids, am, labels = ids.to(device), am.to(device), labels.to(device)
+                loss = student(
+                    input_ids=ids, attention_mask=am, labels=labels
+                ).loss
+                total += float(loss)
+                n += 1
+                if n >= 50:  # sample the val split, it is only for model selection
+                    break
+        student.train()
+        return total / max(n, 1)
+
+    while step < total_steps:
+        for ids, am, labels in train_loader:
+            if step >= total_steps:
+                break
+            ids, am, labels = ids.to(device), am.to(device), labels.to(device)
+            with torch.no_grad():
+                t_logits = teacher(input_ids=ids, attention_mask=am, labels=labels).logits
+            s_out = student(input_ids=ids, attention_mask=am, labels=labels)
+            mask = labels != -100
+            kd = F.kl_div(
+                F.log_softmax(s_out.logits[mask] / temperature, dim=-1),
+                F.softmax(t_logits.float()[mask] / temperature, dim=-1),
+                reduction="batchmean",
+            ) * (temperature ** 2)
+            loss = alpha * kd + (1 - alpha) * s_out.loss
+            loss.backward()
+            torch.nn.utils.clip_grad_norm_(student.parameters(), 1.0)
+            optimizer.step()
+            scheduler.step()
+            optimizer.zero_grad()
+            step += 1
+
+            if step % log_every == 0:
+                print(
+                    f"[step {step}/{total_steps}] loss={float(loss):.4f} "
+                    f"ce={float(s_out.loss):.4f} kd={float(kd):.4f}",
+                    flush=True,
+                )
+            if step % save_every == 0:
+                ck = out_root / f"step-{step}"
+                ck.mkdir(exist_ok=True)
+                torch.save(student.state_dict(), ck / "student.pt")
+                torch.save(optimizer.state_dict(), ck / "optim.pt")
+                CHECKPOINTS.commit()
+
+    vl = val_loss()
+    if vl < best_val:
+        best = out_root / "best"
+        best.mkdir(exist_ok=True)
+        student.save_pretrained(str(best))
+        tokenizer.save_pretrained(str(best))
+        with (best / "val_loss.txt").open("w") as fh:
+            fh.write(f"{vl}\n")
+        CHECKPOINTS.commit()
+    return {"spec": spec_id, "steps": step, "val_loss": vl}
+
+
+NIKUD = None
+
+
+def _nikud_only(text: str) -> list[str]:
+    import re
+
+    return re.findall(r"[\u0591-\u05bd\u05bf\u05c1\u05c2\u05c4\u05c5\u05c7]", text)
+
+
+def _edit_distance(a, b) -> int:
+    if a == b:
+        return 0
+    if not a:
+        return len(b)
+    if not b:
+        return len(a)
+    prev = list(range(len(b) + 1))
+    for i, ai in enumerate(a, 1):
+        curr = [i]
+        for j, bj in enumerate(b, 1):
+            curr.append(min(prev[j] + 1, curr[j - 1] + 1, prev[j - 1] + (ai != bj)))
+        prev = curr
+    return prev[-1]
+
+
+@app.function(
+    gpu="A10G",
+    cpu=8,
+    memory=32 * 1024,
+    timeout=2 * 3600,
+    volumes={"/datasets": DATASETS, "/checkpoints": CHECKPOINTS},
+)
+def evaluate(spec_id: str = "heb-diac-small", limit: int = 0) -> dict:
+    """Greedy DER/CER of teacher and student on the same test pairs, one
+    harness — the before/after for RESULTS.md."""
+    import json
+    from pathlib import Path
+
+    import torch
+    from transformers import AutoModelForSeq2SeqLM, AutoTokenizer
+
+    spec = SPECS[spec_id]
+    tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained("google/byt5-small")
+    device = "cuda"
+    teacher = AutoModelForSeq2SeqLM.from_pretrained(
+        Path("/checkpoints") / spec["teacher"], attn_implementation="eager"
+    ).to(device, dtype=torch.float16).eval()
+    student = AutoModelForSeq2SeqLM.from_pretrained(
+        Path("/checkpoints") / spec["out"] / "best"
+    ).to(device, dtype=torch.float16).eval()
+
+    pairs = []
+    for line in (Path("/datasets") / "nakdimon" / "test-imf.jsonl").read_text(
+        encoding="utf-8"
+    ).splitlines():
+        if line.strip():
+            row = json.loads(line)
+            pairs.append((row["src"], row["tgt"]))
+    if limit:
+        pairs = pairs[:limit]
+
+    def greedy(model, text: str, max_len: int = 256) -> str:
+        ids = tokenizer(text, return_tensors="pt").to(device)
+        with torch.no_grad():
+            out = model.generate(**ids, max_new_tokens=max_len, num_beams=1)
+        return tokenizer.batch_decode(out, skip_special_tokens=True)[0].strip()
+
+    def metrics(model) -> dict:
+        der_sum = cer_sum = n = 0.0
+        for src, tgt in pairs:
+            pred = greedy(model, src)
+            gold_n, pred_n = _nikud_only(tgt), _nikud_only(pred)
+            der_sum += _edit_distance(pred_n, gold_n) / max(1, len(gold_n))
+            cer_sum += _edit_distance(list(pred), list(tgt)) / max(1, len(tgt))
+            n += 1
+        return {"der": round(100 * der_sum / n, 2), "cer": round(100 * cer_sum / n, 2), "n": int(n)}
+
+    return {"teacher": metrics(teacher), "student": metrics(student)}
+
+
+@app.local_entrypoint()
+def main(spec: str = "heb-diac-small", epochs: int = 3) -> None:
+    result = distill.remote(spec, epochs=epochs)
+    print(result)
+
+
+@app.local_entrypoint()
+def eval_main(spec: str = "heb-diac-small", limit: int = 0) -> None:
+    print(evaluate.remote(spec, limit))