What Does an Observability Foundation Model Know?

arXiv:2610.05577 · cs.LG, cs.AI · Submitted 2026-10-04 · Read on arXiv

cs.LG, cs.AI

Submitted: 2026-10-04

Updated: 2026-10-04

Comments: Accepted to NeurIPS Main Conference '26. 25 pages

Journal ref: NeurIPS 2026

Code: https://github.com/DhyeyMavani2003/toto-interp

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

The gist: A linear probe can show that a label is recoverable from a model's hidden states, but not whether that goes beyond what the input already reveals, or whether the model uses it.

Terminology

Abstract

A linear probe can show that a label is recoverable from a model's hidden states, but not whether that goes beyond what the input already reveals, or whether the model uses it. We audit Toto, an observability forecasting foundation model, on the Benchmark of Observability Metrics (BOOM) across five series-disjoint resplits, comparing linear probes on its frozen residual stream with models that read the raw input window and with Toto's architecture stripped of its trained configuration. Short-vs-medium cadence and metric type are more linearly recoverable from Toto's residuals than from the strongest raw-window model in every resplit (macro-F1 0.766 vs. 0.633 and 0.545 vs. 0.498). Domain is nearly tied, and series cardinality is recovered far better from the raw window. MOMENT-base shows related cadence, metric-type, and domain readouts. Recoverability is not use: exchanging Toto's residuals with those of high-burst donors moves a future-burstiness readout as intended but does not make forecasts consistently burstier than a randomized donor. A BOOM-trained coordination probe has negative zero-shot R squared on the tested external benchmarks. We report each label against its strongest baseline.

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