- add FlashAttnBackend (ATTN_BACKEND.FLASH) using flash_attn_func with KV-cache gather + GQA, mirroring TorchNativeBackend - add flash_attn_available() probe gated on compute capability plus a real-kernel smoke test, cached at first use - lazy-import flash-attn via importlib so it stays an optional dependency, raising clear errors when unusable - add 'flash' optional extra (flash-attn>=2.6) and export the new backend