diff --git a/components/backends/sglang/launch/agg.sh b/components/backends/sglang/launch/agg.sh
index e61685c7b..2a94117b2 100755
--- a/components/backends/sglang/launch/agg.sh
+++ b/components/backends/sglang/launch/agg.sh
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ cleanup() {
 trap cleanup EXIT INT TERM
 
 # run clear_namespace
-python3 -m dynamo.sglang.utils.clear_namespace --namespace dynamo
+python3 -m dynamo.sglang.clear_namespace --namespace dynamo
 
 # run ingress
 python3 -m dynamo.frontend --http-port=8000 &
diff --git a/components/backends/sglang/launch/agg_router.sh b/components/backends/sglang/launch/agg_router.sh
index 88434553a..290a382f8 100755
--- a/components/backends/sglang/launch/agg_router.sh
+++ b/components/backends/sglang/launch/agg_router.sh
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ cleanup() {
 trap cleanup EXIT INT TERM
 
 # run clear_namespace
-python3 -m dynamo.sglang.utils.clear_namespace --namespace dynamo
+python3 -m dynamo.sglang.clear_namespace --namespace dynamo
 
 # run ingress
 python -m dynamo.frontend --router-mode kv --http-port=8000 &
diff --git a/components/backends/sglang/launch/disagg.sh b/components/backends/sglang/launch/disagg.sh
index 37dee5363..bcd895c52 100755
--- a/components/backends/sglang/launch/disagg.sh
+++ b/components/backends/sglang/launch/disagg.sh
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ cleanup() {
 trap cleanup EXIT INT TERM
 
 # run clear_namespace
-python3 -m dynamo.sglang.utils.clear_namespace --namespace dynamo
+python3 -m dynamo.sglang.clear_namespace --namespace dynamo
 
 # run ingress
 python3 -m dynamo.frontend --http-port=8000 &
diff --git a/components/backends/sglang/launch/disagg_dp_attn.sh b/components/backends/sglang/launch/disagg_dp_attn.sh
index d344a5460..337c5c8cc 100755
--- a/components/backends/sglang/launch/disagg_dp_attn.sh
+++ b/components/backends/sglang/launch/disagg_dp_attn.sh
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ cleanup() {
 trap cleanup EXIT INT TERM
 
 # run clear_namespace
-python3 -m dynamo.sglang.utils.clear_namespace --namespace dynamo
+python3 -m dynamo.sglang.clear_namespace --namespace dynamo
 
 # run ingress
 python3 -m dynamo.frontend --http-port=8000 &
diff --git a/components/backends/sglang/launch/multimodal_agg.sh b/components/backends/sglang/launch/multimodal_agg.sh
index 503525db0..8216c75e7 100755
--- a/components/backends/sglang/launch/multimodal_agg.sh
+++ b/components/backends/sglang/launch/multimodal_agg.sh
@@ -1,8 +1,15 @@
 #!/bin/bash
 # SPDX-FileCopyrightText: Copyright (c) 2025 NVIDIA CORPORATION & AFFILIATES. All rights reserved.
 # SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
-set -e
-trap 'echo Cleaning up...; kill 0' EXIT
+
+# Setup cleanup trap
+cleanup() {
+    echo "Cleaning up background processes..."
+    kill $DYNAMO_PID $PREFILL_PID 2>/dev/null || true
+    wait $DYNAMO_PID $PREFILL_PID 2>/dev/null || true
+    echo "Cleanup complete."
+}
+trap cleanup EXIT INT TERM
 
 # Default values
 MODEL_NAME="Qwen/Qwen2.5-VL-7B-Instruct"
@@ -45,8 +52,12 @@ fi
 SCRIPT_DIR="$(cd "$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")" && pwd)"
 SGLANG_BACKEND_DIR="$SCRIPT_DIR/src"
 
+# run clear_namespace
+python3 -m dynamo.sglang.clear_namespace --namespace dynamo
+
 # run ingress
-python -m dynamo.frontend --http-port=8000 &
+python3 -m dynamo.frontend --http-port=8000 &
+DYNAMO_PID=$!
 
 # run SGLang multimodal processor
 python3 -m dynamo.sglang --multimodal-processor --model-path "$MODEL_NAME" --chat-template "$CHAT_TEMPLATE" &
@@ -55,6 +66,8 @@ python3 -m dynamo.sglang --multimodal-processor --model-path "$MODEL_NAME" --cha
 CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 python3 -m dynamo.sglang --multimodal-encode-worker --model-path "$MODEL_NAME" --chat-template "$CHAT_TEMPLATE" &
 
 # run SGLang multimodal inference worker
+# TODO: Remove disable-radix-cache once the issue is fixed.
+# See https://github.com/sgl-project/sglang/pull/11203.
 CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=1 python3 -m dynamo.sglang \
   --multimodal-worker \
   --model-path "$MODEL_NAME" \
@@ -62,6 +75,7 @@ CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=1 python3 -m dynamo.sglang \
   --tp 1 \
   --trust-remote-code \
   --skip-tokenizer-init \
+  --disable-radix-cache \
   --disaggregation-transfer-backend nixl &
 
 # Wait for all background processes to complete
diff --git a/components/backends/sglang/launch/multimodal_disagg.sh b/components/backends/sglang/launch/multimodal_disagg.sh
index 8409eb9d8..0b24fd33c 100755
--- a/components/backends/sglang/launch/multimodal_disagg.sh
+++ b/components/backends/sglang/launch/multimodal_disagg.sh
@@ -1,8 +1,15 @@
 #!/bin/bash
 # SPDX-FileCopyrightText: Copyright (c) 2025 NVIDIA CORPORATION & AFFILIATES. All rights reserved.
 # SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
-set -e
-trap 'echo Cleaning up...; kill 0' EXIT
+
+# Setup cleanup trap
+cleanup() {
+    echo "Cleaning up background processes..."
+    kill $DYNAMO_PID $PREFILL_PID 2>/dev/null || true
+    wait $DYNAMO_PID $PREFILL_PID 2>/dev/null || true
+    echo "Cleanup complete."
+}
+trap cleanup EXIT INT TERM
 
 # Default values
 MODEL_NAME="Qwen/Qwen2.5-VL-7B-Instruct"
@@ -45,8 +52,12 @@ fi
 SCRIPT_DIR="$(cd "$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")" && pwd)"
 SGLANG_BACKEND_DIR="$SCRIPT_DIR/src"
 
+# run clear_namespace
+python3 -m dynamo.sglang.clear_namespace --namespace dynamo
+
 # run ingress
-python -m dynamo.frontend --http-port=8000 &
+python3 -m dynamo.frontend --http-port=8000 &
+DYNAMO_PID=$!
 
 # run SGLang multimodal processor
 python3 -m dynamo.sglang --multimodal-processor --model-path "$MODEL_NAME" --chat-template "$CHAT_TEMPLATE" &
@@ -55,6 +66,8 @@ python3 -m dynamo.sglang --multimodal-processor --model-path "$MODEL_NAME" --cha
 CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 python3 -m dynamo.sglang --multimodal-encode-worker --model-path "$MODEL_NAME" --chat-template "$CHAT_TEMPLATE" &
 
 # run SGLang multimodal prefill worker
+# TODO: Remove disable-radix-cache once the issue is fixed.
+# See https://github.com/sgl-project/sglang/pull/11203.
 CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=1 python3 -m dynamo.sglang \
   --multimodal-worker \
   --model-path "$MODEL_NAME" \
@@ -65,6 +78,7 @@ CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=1 python3 -m dynamo.sglang \
   --disaggregation-mode prefill \
   --disaggregation-bootstrap-port 12345 \
   --host 0.0.0.0 \
+  --disable-radix-cache \
   --disaggregation-transfer-backend nixl &
 
 # run SGLang multimodal decode worker
diff --git a/components/src/dynamo/sglang/utils/clear_namespace.py b/components/src/dynamo/sglang/clear_namespace.py
similarity index 100%
rename from components/src/dynamo/sglang/utils/clear_namespace.py
rename to components/src/dynamo/sglang/clear_namespace.py
diff --git a/components/src/dynamo/sglang/multimodal_utils/__init__.py b/components/src/dynamo/sglang/multimodal_utils/__init__.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..ce69e76f5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/components/src/dynamo/sglang/multimodal_utils/__init__.py
@@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
+# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: Copyright (c) 2025 NVIDIA CORPORATION & AFFILIATES. All rights reserved.
+# SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
+
+from dynamo.sglang.multimodal_utils.multimodal_chat_processor import (
+    multimodal_request_to_sglang,
+    process_sglang_stream_response,
+)
+from dynamo.sglang.multimodal_utils.multimodal_encode_utils import (
+    encode_image_embeddings,
+)
+from dynamo.sglang.multimodal_utils.multimodal_image_loader import ImageLoader
+
+__all__ = [
+    "multimodal_request_to_sglang",
+    "process_sglang_stream_response",
+    "encode_image_embeddings",
+    "ImageLoader",
+]
diff --git a/components/src/dynamo/sglang/utils/multimodal_chat_processor.py b/components/src/dynamo/sglang/multimodal_utils/multimodal_chat_processor.py
similarity index 83%
rename from components/src/dynamo/sglang/utils/multimodal_chat_processor.py
rename to components/src/dynamo/sglang/multimodal_utils/multimodal_chat_processor.py
index d734c59b4..06343f8df 100644
--- a/components/src/dynamo/sglang/utils/multimodal_chat_processor.py
+++ b/components/src/dynamo/sglang/multimodal_utils/multimodal_chat_processor.py
@@ -8,32 +8,6 @@ from sglang.srt.parser.conversation import chat_templates
 logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
 
 
-def clean_addcriterion(text: str) -> str:
-    """
-    Removes the addCriterion prefix from the text output.
-
-    To prevent addCriterion from appearing in outputs, an assistant placeholder must be added to the conversation.
-    However, adding the assistant placeholder causes subsequent requests to fail with shape mismatch errors on the engine side.
-    The root cause is still under investigation, so this temporary workaround is in place to maintain functionality.
-    """
-
-    if text.startswith(" addCriterion"):
-        cleaned_text = text[13:].lstrip()  # 12 = len(" addCriterion")
-        logger.debug(
-            f"🛠️ HACK: Removed ' addCriterion' prefix: '{text[:20]}...' -> '{cleaned_text[:20]}...'"
-        )
-        return cleaned_text
-
-    if text.startswith("addCriterion"):
-        cleaned_text = text[12:].lstrip()  # 11 = len("addCriterion")
-        logger.debug(
-            f"🛠️ HACK: Removed 'addCriterion' prefix: '{text[:20]}...' -> '{cleaned_text[:20]}...'"
-        )
-        return cleaned_text
-
-    return text
-
-
 def multimodal_request_to_sglang(raw_request, tokenizer, chat_template):
     conv = chat_templates[chat_template].copy()
     conv.messages = []
@@ -53,6 +27,7 @@ def multimodal_request_to_sglang(raw_request, tokenizer, chat_template):
         elif msg.role == "assistant":
             conv.append_message(conv.roles[1], msg.content)
 
+    conv.append_message(conv.roles[1], "")
     logger.debug(f"conv: {conv}")
 
     # Tokenize and prepare input_ids
@@ -109,11 +84,11 @@ def detokenize_sglang_response(response_data, tokenizer):
 
         # Ensure response_data is a dictionary
         if not isinstance(response_data, dict):
-            return clean_addcriterion(str(response_data))
+            return str(response_data)
 
         # Get text content - detokenize if needed
         if "text" in response_data and response_data["text"]:
-            return clean_addcriterion(response_data["text"])
+            return response_data["text"]
         elif "token_ids" in response_data and response_data["token_ids"]:
             token_ids = response_data["token_ids"]
             if isinstance(token_ids, list) and token_ids:
@@ -122,7 +97,7 @@ def detokenize_sglang_response(response_data, tokenizer):
                 logger.debug(
                     f"Detokenized {len(token_ids)} tokens to: '{text_content}'"
                 )
-                return clean_addcriterion(text_content)
+                return text_content
 
         # Return empty string if no content to detokenize
         return ""
diff --git a/components/src/dynamo/sglang/utils/multimodal_encode_utils.py b/components/src/dynamo/sglang/multimodal_utils/multimodal_encode_utils.py
similarity index 100%
rename from components/src/dynamo/sglang/utils/multimodal_encode_utils.py
rename to components/src/dynamo/sglang/multimodal_utils/multimodal_encode_utils.py
diff --git a/components/src/dynamo/sglang/utils/multimodal_image_loader.py b/components/src/dynamo/sglang/multimodal_utils/multimodal_image_loader.py
similarity index 100%
rename from components/src/dynamo/sglang/utils/multimodal_image_loader.py
rename to components/src/dynamo/sglang/multimodal_utils/multimodal_image_loader.py
diff --git a/components/src/dynamo/sglang/protocol.py b/components/src/dynamo/sglang/protocol.py
index 7554b5344..4224c476b 100644
--- a/components/src/dynamo/sglang/protocol.py
+++ b/components/src/dynamo/sglang/protocol.py
@@ -1,14 +1,19 @@
 # SPDX-FileCopyrightText: Copyright (c) 2025 NVIDIA CORPORATION & AFFILIATES. All rights reserved.
 # SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
 
-from typing import List, Optional, Union
+from typing import Any, List, Literal, Optional, Tuple, Union
 
-from pydantic import BaseModel, Field
+from pydantic import BaseModel, ConfigDict, Field
 from sglang.srt.entrypoints.openai.protocol import ChatCompletionRequest
 
+import dynamo.nixl_connect as connect
+
 TokenIdType = int
 
 
+# ============================================================================
+# Standard LLM Protocol Types
+# ============================================================================
 # TODO: move these to common for all LLMs once we adopt dynamo-run
 # derived from lib/llm/src/protocols/common/preprocessor.rs
 class StopConditions(BaseModel):
@@ -59,3 +64,70 @@ class DisaggPreprocessedRequest(BaseModel):
     request: Union[PreprocessedRequest, ChatCompletionRequest]
     sampling_params: dict
     data_parallel_rank: Optional[int] = None
+
+
+# ============================================================================
+# Multimodal Protocol Types
+# ============================================================================
+
+
+class TextContent(BaseModel):
+    type: Literal["text"]
+    text: str
+
+
+class ImageURLDetail(BaseModel):
+    url: str
+
+
+class ImageContent(BaseModel):
+    type: Literal["image_url"]
+    image_url: ImageURLDetail
+
+
+class VideoURLDetail(BaseModel):
+    url: str
+
+
+class VideoContent(BaseModel):
+    type: Literal["video_url"]
+    video_url: VideoURLDetail
+
+
+MessageContent = Union[TextContent, ImageContent, VideoContent]
+
+
+class ChatMessage(BaseModel):
+    role: Literal["user", "system", "assistant"]
+    content: List[MessageContent]
+
+
+class MultiModalRequest(BaseModel):
+    model_config = ConfigDict(arbitrary_types_allowed=True)
+    model: str
+    messages: List[ChatMessage]
+    max_tokens: Optional[int] = None
+    temperature: Optional[float] = None
+    stream: Optional[bool] = False
+
+
+class MultiModalInput(BaseModel):
+    image_url: Optional[str] = None
+    video_url: Optional[str] = None
+
+
+class SglangMultimodalRequest(BaseModel):
+    model_config = ConfigDict(arbitrary_types_allowed=True)
+    request: PreprocessedRequest
+    multimodal_input: Optional[MultiModalInput] = Field(default_factory=MultiModalInput)
+    image_grid_thw: Optional[List[Any]] = None
+    embeddings_shape: Optional[
+        Union[Tuple[int, int, int], Tuple[int, int, int, int]]
+    ] = None
+    serialized_request: Optional[connect.RdmaMetadata] = None
+
+
+class DisaggSglangMultimodalRequest(BaseModel):
+    request: SglangMultimodalRequest
+    sampling_params: dict
+    data_parallel_rank: Optional[int] = None
diff --git a/components/src/dynamo/sglang/request_handlers/multimodal/encode_worker_handler.py b/components/src/dynamo/sglang/request_handlers/multimodal/encode_worker_handler.py
index 42b8eaec6..2ec2f9303 100644
--- a/components/src/dynamo/sglang/request_handlers/multimodal/encode_worker_handler.py
+++ b/components/src/dynamo/sglang/request_handlers/multimodal/encode_worker_handler.py
@@ -12,10 +12,9 @@ import dynamo.nixl_connect as connect
 from dynamo._core import Client, Component
 from dynamo.runtime import DistributedRuntime
 from dynamo.sglang.args import Config
+from dynamo.sglang.multimodal_utils import ImageLoader, encode_image_embeddings
+from dynamo.sglang.protocol import SglangMultimodalRequest
 from dynamo.sglang.request_handlers.handler_base import BaseWorkerHandler
-from dynamo.sglang.utils.multimodal_encode_utils import encode_image_embeddings
-from dynamo.sglang.utils.multimodal_image_loader import ImageLoader
-from dynamo.sglang.utils.multimodal_protocol import SglangMultimodalRequest
 
 logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
 
diff --git a/components/src/dynamo/sglang/request_handlers/multimodal/processor_handler.py b/components/src/dynamo/sglang/request_handlers/multimodal/processor_handler.py
index 37a62f02a..b2ad80cd6 100644
--- a/components/src/dynamo/sglang/request_handlers/multimodal/processor_handler.py
+++ b/components/src/dynamo/sglang/request_handlers/multimodal/processor_handler.py
@@ -11,16 +11,16 @@ from transformers import AutoTokenizer
 
 from dynamo._core import Client, Component
 from dynamo.sglang.args import Config
-from dynamo.sglang.request_handlers.handler_base import BaseWorkerHandler
-from dynamo.sglang.utils.multimodal_chat_processor import (
+from dynamo.sglang.multimodal_utils import (
     multimodal_request_to_sglang,
     process_sglang_stream_response,
 )
-from dynamo.sglang.utils.multimodal_protocol import (
+from dynamo.sglang.protocol import (
     MultiModalInput,
     MultiModalRequest,
     SglangMultimodalRequest,
 )
+from dynamo.sglang.request_handlers.handler_base import BaseWorkerHandler
 
 logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
 
diff --git a/components/src/dynamo/sglang/request_handlers/multimodal/worker_handler.py b/components/src/dynamo/sglang/request_handlers/multimodal/worker_handler.py
index 20d135b80..9a54345cf 100644
--- a/components/src/dynamo/sglang/request_handlers/multimodal/worker_handler.py
+++ b/components/src/dynamo/sglang/request_handlers/multimodal/worker_handler.py
@@ -12,11 +12,11 @@ import torch
 import dynamo.nixl_connect as connect
 from dynamo._core import Client, Component
 from dynamo.sglang.args import Config, DisaggregationMode
-from dynamo.sglang.request_handlers.handler_base import BaseWorkerHandler
-from dynamo.sglang.utils.multimodal_protocol import (
+from dynamo.sglang.protocol import (
     DisaggSglangMultimodalRequest,
     SglangMultimodalRequest,
 )
+from dynamo.sglang.request_handlers.handler_base import BaseWorkerHandler
 
 logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
 
diff --git a/components/src/dynamo/sglang/utils/multimodal_protocol.py b/components/src/dynamo/sglang/utils/multimodal_protocol.py
deleted file mode 100644
index 43e6f522e..000000000
--- a/components/src/dynamo/sglang/utils/multimodal_protocol.py
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,73 +0,0 @@
-# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: Copyright (c) 2025 NVIDIA CORPORATION & AFFILIATES. All rights reserved.
-# SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
-
-from typing import Any, List, Literal, Optional, Tuple, Union
-
-from pydantic import BaseModel, ConfigDict, Field
-
-import dynamo.nixl_connect as connect
-from dynamo.sglang.protocol import PreprocessedRequest
-
-TokenIdType = int
-
-
-class TextContent(BaseModel):
-    type: Literal["text"]
-    text: str
-
-
-class ImageURLDetail(BaseModel):
-    url: str
-
-
-class ImageContent(BaseModel):
-    type: Literal["image_url"]
-    image_url: ImageURLDetail
-
-
-class VideoURLDetail(BaseModel):
-    url: str
-
-
-class VideoContent(BaseModel):
-    type: Literal["video_url"]
-    video_url: VideoURLDetail
-
-
-MessageContent = Union[TextContent, ImageContent, VideoContent]
-
-
-class ChatMessage(BaseModel):
-    role: Literal["user", "system", "assistant"]
-    content: List[MessageContent]
-
-
-class MultiModalRequest(BaseModel):
-    model_config = ConfigDict(arbitrary_types_allowed=True)
-    model: str
-    messages: List[ChatMessage]
-    max_tokens: Optional[int] = None
-    temperature: Optional[float] = None
-    stream: Optional[bool] = False
-
-
-class MultiModalInput(BaseModel):
-    image_url: Optional[str] = None
-    video_url: Optional[str] = None
-
-
-class SglangMultimodalRequest(BaseModel):
-    model_config = ConfigDict(arbitrary_types_allowed=True)
-    request: PreprocessedRequest
-    multimodal_input: Optional[MultiModalInput] = Field(default_factory=MultiModalInput)
-    image_grid_thw: Optional[List[Any]] = None
-    embeddings_shape: Optional[
-        Union[Tuple[int, int, int], Tuple[int, int, int, int]]
-    ] = None
-    serialized_request: Optional[connect.RdmaMetadata] = None
-
-
-class DisaggSglangMultimodalRequest(BaseModel):
-    request: SglangMultimodalRequest
-    sampling_params: dict
-    data_parallel_rank: Optional[int] = None
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 3503eee46..a451d93ce 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -133,6 +133,7 @@ addopts = [
     "--ignore-glob=*/llm/tensorrtllm*",
     "--ignore-glob=docs/*",
     "--ignore-glob=components/src/dynamo/sglang/request_handlers/*",
+    "--ignore-glob=components/src/dynamo/sglang/multimodal_utils/*",
     "--ignore-glob=components/backends/sglang/slurm_jobs/*",
     # FIXME: Get relative/generic blob paths to work here
 ]
diff --git a/tests/serve/launch/sglang_agg.sh b/tests/serve/launch/sglang_agg.sh
index 38c5170bd..6f674bf7c 100755
--- a/tests/serve/launch/sglang_agg.sh
+++ b/tests/serve/launch/sglang_agg.sh
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ cleanup() {
 trap cleanup EXIT INT TERM
 
 # run clear_namespace
-python3 -m dynamo.sglang.utils.clear_namespace --namespace dynamo
+python3 -m dynamo.sglang.clear_namespace --namespace dynamo
 
 # run ingress
 python3 -m dynamo.frontend --http-port=8000 &