fix(benchmark): don't block submission when the AI host is this machine (#1166)

The #1157 gate blocks leaderboard submission whenever ai.remoteOllamaUrl is
set, using bare truthiness with no exemption for addresses that point back at
this same box. Someone running Ollama natively on the host while NOMAD runs in
Docker is measuring THIS hardware, yet is permanently blocked from submitting
with no in-app indication of why.

That configuration is not exotic: it is how the AI assistant is expected to
work on macOS, so under the current gate a Mac could never submit at all.

Exempts host.docker.internal (and gateway.docker.internal) plus the loopback
forms. host.docker.internal is the meaningful one — from inside the admin
container it resolves to the host, and it is what a native host install uses.

A LAN address is deliberately NOT exempt. 192.168.1.50 is indistinguishable
from another machine on the same network, and wrongly exempting it would let a
genuinely remote GPU's throughput be attributed to this hardware. A false block
is recoverable by clearing the setting; a false pass silently corrupts the
board.

Unparseable values fall through to blocked rather than allowed, so a malformed
setting cannot be used to slip past the gate.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

admin/app/services/benchmark_service.ts

@@ -151,6 +151,41 @@ const MEMORY_BENCHMARK_THREADS = 4
 // AI is measured as the median of N runs (W7) to damp per-run inference jitter.
 const AI_BENCHMARK_RUNS = 3
 
+/**
+ * Does `ai.remoteOllamaUrl` point back at the machine NOMAD itself runs on?
+ *
+ * The submission gate exists because a remote AI host makes the AI channel
+ * describe someone else's hardware. That reasoning does not apply when the
+ * "remote" host is this same box — the commonest case being Ollama installed
+ * natively on the host while NOMAD runs in Docker, which is how the AI
+ * assistant is expected to work on macOS.
+ *
+ * `host.docker.internal` is the meaningful entry: from inside the admin
+ * container it resolves to the host, and it is the form the setup flow accepts
+ * for a native host install. Loopback is included for completeness (it only
+ * reaches the container itself, so it is unlikely to have been saved, but it
+ * unambiguously is not another machine).
+ *
+ * A LAN address is DELIBERATELY NOT exempt. `192.168.1.50` is indistinguishable
+ * from another box on the same network, and wrongly exempting one would let a
+ * genuinely remote GPU's throughput be attributed to this hardware. False
+ * blocks are recoverable by clearing the setting; a false pass silently
+ * corrupts the leaderboard.
+ */
+function isSelfHostedOllamaUrl(rawUrl: string): boolean {
+  let host: string
+  try {
+    host = new URL(rawUrl.trim()).hostname.toLowerCase()
+  } catch {
+    return false
+  }
+  if (host === 'host.docker.internal' || host === 'gateway.docker.internal') return true
+  if (host === 'localhost' || host === '::1' || host === '[::1]') return true
+  // 127.0.0.0/8 — the whole loopback range, not just 127.0.0.1.
+  if (/^127\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}$/.test(host)) return true
+  return false
+}
+
 // Minimum free disk required before pulling the AI model on first run. llama3.1:8b
 // (Q4) is ~4.9 GB; this covers the model plus headroom for the transient sysbench
 // disk-test file and normal slack. Only enforced when the model isn't already cached.
@@ -289,8 +324,16 @@ export class BenchmarkService {
     //
     // Blocks submission only — running the benchmark locally is still useful to
     // the operator, it just isn't a result about this box.
+    // A "remote" host that points back at this same machine is not remote. The
+    // AI ran on the hardware being submitted, so blocking it is a false
+    // positive — see isSelfHostedOllamaUrl for which forms qualify and why a
+    // LAN address deliberately does not.
     const remoteOllamaUrl = await KVStore.getValue('ai.remoteOllamaUrl')
-    if (remoteOllamaUrl) {
+    if (remoteOllamaUrl && isSelfHostedOllamaUrl(remoteOllamaUrl)) {
+      logger.info(
+        `[BenchmarkService] ai.remoteOllamaUrl (${remoteOllamaUrl}) points at this machine; treating the AI result as local for submission purposes`
+      )
+    } else if (remoteOllamaUrl) {
       throw new Error(
         'This NOMAD is configured to use a remote AI host, so its AI results measure that machine rather than this one. ' +
           'Leaderboard results must be measured entirely on the submitting hardware. ' +