diff --git a/common/common.h b/common/common.h
index 78c568a7bc..54b7849b17 100644
--- a/common/common.h
+++ b/common/common.h
@@ -507,6 +507,10 @@ struct common_params {
     // return false from callback to abort model loading or true to continue
     llama_progress_callback load_progress_callback = NULL;
     void *                  load_progress_callback_user_data = NULL;
+
+    bool has_speculative() const {
+        return !speculative.model.path.empty() || !speculative.model.hf_repo.empty();
+    }
 };
 
 // call once at the start of a program if it uses libcommon
diff --git a/tools/server/server.cpp b/tools/server/server.cpp
index 678aad93b8..f5089bef24 100644
--- a/tools/server/server.cpp
+++ b/tools/server/server.cpp
@@ -2400,7 +2400,7 @@ struct server_context {
 
         add_bos_token = llama_vocab_get_add_bos(vocab);
 
-        if (!params_base.speculative.model.path.empty() || !params_base.speculative.model.hf_repo.empty()) {
+        if (params_base.has_speculative()) {
             SRV_INF("loading draft model '%s'\n", params_base.speculative.model.path.c_str());
 
             auto params_dft = params_base;
@@ -2476,7 +2476,7 @@ struct server_context {
                 SRV_WRN("%s\n", "cache_reuse is not supported by multimodal, it will be disabled");
             }
 
-            if (!params_base.speculative.model.path.empty()) {
+            if (params_base.has_speculative()) {
                 SRV_ERR("%s\n", "err: speculative decode is not supported by multimodal");
                 return false;
             }
@@ -2520,6 +2520,7 @@ struct server_context {
             if (model_dft) {
                 slot.batch_spec = llama_batch_init(params_base.speculative.n_max + 1, 0, 1);
 
+                // TODO: rework speculative decoding [TAG_SERVER_SPEC_REWORK]
                 slot.ctx_dft = llama_init_from_model(model_dft, cparams_dft);
                 if (slot.ctx_dft == nullptr) {
                     SRV_ERR("%s", "failed to create draft context\n");
@@ -2825,6 +2826,7 @@ struct server_context {
         }
 
         // initialize draft batch
+        // TODO: rework speculative decoding [TAG_SERVER_SPEC_REWORK]
         if (slot.ctx_dft) {
             llama_batch_free(slot.batch_spec);
 
@@ -4291,6 +4293,8 @@ struct server_context {
             }
 
             // do speculative decoding
+            // TODO: rework to have a single draft llama_context shared across all slots [TAG_SERVER_SPEC_REWORK]
+            //       perform the speculative drafting for all sequences at the same time in a single batch
             for (auto & slot : slots) {
                 if (!slot.is_processing() || !slot.can_speculate()) {
                     continue;
@@ -4445,8 +4449,10 @@ int main(int argc, char ** argv) {
 
     // TODO: should we have a separate n_parallel parameter for the server?
     //       https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp/pull/16736#discussion_r2483763177
-    if (params.n_parallel == 1 && params.kv_unified == false) {
-        LOG_WRN("%s: setting n_parallel = 4 and kv_unified = true\n", __func__);
+    // TODO: this is a common configuration that is suitable for most local use cases
+    //       however, overriding the parameters is a bit confusing - figure out something more intuitive
+    if (params.n_parallel == 1 && params.kv_unified == false && !params.has_speculative()) {
+        LOG_WRN("%s: setting n_parallel = 4 and kv_unified = true (add -kvu to disable this)\n", __func__);
 
         params.n_parallel = 4;
         params.kv_unified = true;