diff --git a/Dockerfile.epp b/Dockerfile.epp
index 9d1e89fdb..4996c6fbe 100644
--- a/Dockerfile.epp
+++ b/Dockerfile.epp
@@ -102,6 +102,10 @@ ENV PYTHONPATH=/workspace/kv-cache/pkg/preprocessing/chat_completions:/workspace
 RUN ${PYTHON} -c "import tokenizer_wrapper"  # verify tokenizer_wrapper is correctly installed
 
 ENV HF_HOME="/tmp/.cache"
+# used by kv-cache-manager
+ENV LOCAL_TOKENIZER_DIR="/tmp/.cache"
+# Create cache directory and set permissions for non-root user
+RUN mkdir -p /tmp/.cache && chown -R 65532:65532 ${HF_HOME}
 
 USER 65532:65532
 
@@ -113,4 +117,3 @@ EXPOSE 9090
 EXPOSE 5557
 
 ENTRYPOINT ["/app/epp"]
-
diff --git a/deploy/config/dp-epp-config.yaml b/deploy/config/dp-epp-config.yaml
index 703a44f67..6e8418866 100644
--- a/deploy/config/dp-epp-config.yaml
+++ b/deploy/config/dp-epp-config.yaml
@@ -3,7 +3,13 @@
 apiVersion: inference.networking.x-k8s.io/v1alpha1
 kind: EndpointPickerConfig
 plugins:
-- type: prefix-cache-scorer
+- type: precise-prefix-cache-scorer
+  parameters:
+    indexerConfig:
+      tokenProcessorConfig:
+        blockSize: 5
+      kvBlockIndexConfig:
+        maxPrefixBlocksToMatch: 256
 - type: decode-filter
 - type: max-score-picker
 - type: data-parallel-profile-handler
@@ -14,5 +20,5 @@ schedulingProfiles:
   plugins:
   - pluginRef: decode-filter
   - pluginRef: max-score-picker
-  - pluginRef: prefix-cache-scorer
+  - pluginRef: precise-prefix-cache-scorer
     weight: 2
diff --git a/deploy/config/sim-epp-kvcache-config.yaml b/deploy/config/sim-epp-kvcache-config.yaml
index 7850950ef..76aab070f 100644
--- a/deploy/config/sim-epp-kvcache-config.yaml
+++ b/deploy/config/sim-epp-kvcache-config.yaml
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
 apiVersion: inference.networking.x-k8s.io/v1alpha1
 kind: EndpointPickerConfig
 plugins:
-- type: prefix-cache-scorer
+- type: precise-prefix-cache-scorer
   parameters:
     mode: cache_tracking
     tokenProcessorConfig:
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ plugins:
       prefixStoreConfig:
         blockSize: 16 
       tokenizersPoolConfig:
-        modelName: <model-name>            # specify the model name to use for tokenizer loading
+        modelName: TinyLlama/TinyLlama-1.1B-Chat-v1.0  # replace value to use different model for tokenizer loading
         hf:
           tokenizersCacheDir: "/cache/tokenizers"
       kvBlockIndexConfig:
@@ -29,5 +29,5 @@ schedulingProfiles:
   plugins:
   - pluginRef: decode-filter
   - pluginRef: max-score-picker
-  - pluginRef: prefix-cache-scorer
+  - pluginRef: precise-prefix-cache-scorer
     weight: 10
diff --git a/deploy/config/sim-epp-no-hit-lru.yaml b/deploy/config/sim-epp-no-hit-lru.yaml
index 8d0224411..e10ec5062 100644
--- a/deploy/config/sim-epp-no-hit-lru.yaml
+++ b/deploy/config/sim-epp-no-hit-lru.yaml
@@ -3,11 +3,13 @@
 apiVersion: inference.networking.x-k8s.io/v1alpha1
 kind: EndpointPickerConfig
 plugins:
-- type: prefix-cache-scorer
+- type: precise-prefix-cache-scorer
   parameters:
-    hashBlockSize: 5
-    maxPrefixBlocksToMatch: 256
-    lruCapacityPerServer: 31250
+    indexerConfig:
+      tokenProcessorConfig:
+        blockSize: 5
+      kvBlockIndexConfig:
+        maxPrefixBlocksToMatch: 256
 - type: no-hit-lru-scorer
   parameters:
     lruSize: 2048
@@ -19,7 +21,7 @@ schedulingProfiles:
   plugins:
   - pluginRef: decode-filter
   - pluginRef: max-score-picker
-  - pluginRef: prefix-cache-scorer
+  - pluginRef: precise-prefix-cache-scorer
     weight: 2
   - pluginRef: no-hit-lru-scorer
     weight: 1
diff --git a/scripts/kind-dev-env.sh b/scripts/kind-dev-env.sh
index 5ef91726d..6b0d22a04 100755
--- a/scripts/kind-dev-env.sh
+++ b/scripts/kind-dev-env.sh
@@ -37,7 +37,7 @@ EPP_IMAGE="${EPP_IMAGE:-${IMAGE_REGISTRY}/llm-d-inference-scheduler:${EPP_TAG}}"
 export EPP_IMAGE
 
 # Set the model name to deploy
-export MODEL_NAME="${MODEL_NAME:-food-review}"
+export MODEL_NAME="${MODEL_NAME:-TinyLlama/TinyLlama-1.1B-Chat-v1.0}"
 # Extract model family (e.g., "meta-llama" from "meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct")
 export MODEL_FAMILY="${MODEL_NAME%%/*}"
 # Extract model ID (e.g., "Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct")
@@ -74,32 +74,41 @@ export VLLM_REPLICA_COUNT_D="${VLLM_REPLICA_COUNT_D:-2}"
 # Data Parallel size
 export VLLM_DATA_PARALLEL_SIZE="${VLLM_DATA_PARALLEL_SIZE:-1}"
 
-PRIMARY_PORT="0"
-if [ "${PD_ENABLED}" != "\"true\"" ] && [ ${VLLM_DATA_PARALLEL_SIZE} -eq 1 ]; then
-  if [ "${KV_CACHE_ENABLED}" != "true" ]; then
-    DEFAULT_EPP_CONFIG="deploy/config/sim-epp-config.yaml"
-  else
-    DEFAULT_EPP_CONFIG="deploy/config/sim-epp-kvcache-config.yaml"
-  fi
-else
-  if [ "${KV_CACHE_ENABLED}" != "true" ]; then
-    if [ "${PD_ENABLED}" == "\"true\"" ]; then
-      DEFAULT_EPP_CONFIG="deploy/config/sim-pd-epp-config.yaml"
-      if [ ${VLLM_DATA_PARALLEL_SIZE} -ne 1 ]; then
-        PRIMARY_PORT="8000"
-      fi
-    else
-      DEFAULT_EPP_CONFIG="deploy/config/dp-epp-config.yaml"
-    fi
-  else
+# Validate configuration constraints
+if [ "${KV_CACHE_ENABLED}" == "true" ]; then
+  # KV cache requires simple mode: no PD and DP size must be 1
+  if [ "${PD_ENABLED}" == "\"true\"" ] || [ ${VLLM_DATA_PARALLEL_SIZE} -ne 1 ]; then
     echo "Invalid configuration: PD_ENABLED=true and KV_CACHE_ENABLED=true is not supported"
     exit 1
   fi
 fi
 
-export EPP_CONFIG="${EPP_CONFIG:-${DEFAULT_EPP_CONFIG}}"
+# Set PRIMARY_PORT based on PD mode with data parallelism
+if [ "${PD_ENABLED}" == "\"true\"" ] && [ ${VLLM_DATA_PARALLEL_SIZE} -ne 1 ]; then
+  PRIMARY_PORT="8000"
+else
+  PRIMARY_PORT="0"
+fi
 export PRIMARY_PORT
 
+# Determine EPP config file based on feature flags
+if [ "${KV_CACHE_ENABLED}" == "true" ]; then
+  # KV cache mode (simple mode only)
+  DEFAULT_EPP_CONFIG="deploy/config/sim-epp-kvcache-config.yaml"
+elif [ "${PD_ENABLED}" == "\"true\"" ]; then
+  # Prefill-Decode mode
+  DEFAULT_EPP_CONFIG="deploy/config/sim-pd-epp-config.yaml"
+elif [ ${VLLM_DATA_PARALLEL_SIZE} -ne 1 ]; then
+  # Data Parallel mode (only needed for Istio pre-1.28.1)
+  # Not really called in kind(docker.io/istio/pilot:1.28.1) by "make env-dev-kind"
+  DEFAULT_EPP_CONFIG="deploy/config/dp-epp-config.yaml"
+else
+  # Simple mode
+  DEFAULT_EPP_CONFIG="deploy/config/sim-epp-config.yaml"
+fi
+
+export EPP_CONFIG="${EPP_CONFIG:-${DEFAULT_EPP_CONFIG}}"
+
 # ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 # Setup & Requirement Checks
 # ------------------------------------------------------------------------------