Lamprey Provider & Model Reference

When to use / when not

• Use when working in electron/services/providers/, adding or retiring a model/provider, debugging streaming/tool-calling/reasoning behavior, or choosing capability flags.
• Don't use for general architecture (see lamprey-architecture-contract), key storage (see lamprey-config-and-flags), or symptom triage (see lamprey-debugging-playbook).

Domain primer (terms defined once)

• OpenAI-compatible chat completions: the de-facto HTTP protocol (POST …/chat/completions) all five providers speak. Requests carry messages[], optional tools[] (JSON-schema function specs), stream: true for SSE (Server-Sent Events — a long-lived HTTP response emitting data: lines, each a JSON delta chunk).
• Delta accumulation: streamed chunks carry partial content / partial tool_calls; the client concatenates them until a finish_reason arrives (stop, tool_calls, length).
• reasoning_content: a non-standard extra field some providers (DeepSeek, DashScope) stream alongside content, carrying chain-of-thought. OpenRouter uses reasoning. Lamprey preserves it end-to-end (audit phase).
• Context window: max input tokens the model accepts. Capability flags: per-model descriptor booleans/values that change dispatch behavior (below).

The registry (electron/services/providers/registry.ts)

Providers (17 built-in + custom) — ids are also the keychain ids

Built-ins since the Provider Expansion Phase (2026-07-11): deepseek, google, dashscope, openrouter, zhipu, openai, anthropic, xai, mistral, moonshot, groq, together, fireworks, cerebras, huggingface, plus keyless local runtimes ollama and lmstudio (keyOptional: true, placeholder key 'local', empty built-in catalogs — import live ids). User-defined custom providers (settings.json.customProviders: {id, baseURL, label?, requiresKey?}) resolve like built-ins everywhere via resolveProviderDescriptor(id); built-in ids cannot be shadowed. All dispatch rides the one OpenAI-compatible protocol; Google goes through its v1beta/openai/ compat endpoint (FC-0), Anthropic through its official OpenAI-compat layer at api.anthropic.com/v1/ (tools+streaming supported; strict/response_format/reasoning_effort silently ignored — never set reasoningCapOnToolUse on anthropic models). providerBaseUrlOverrides in settings.json redirects any provider's base URL (http/https only, validated at the registry). Per-provider wire notes: ARCHITECTURE/FUNCTION_CALLING.md §16.

MODEL_CATALOG (verified 2026-07-11, Provider Expansion Phase — re-verify command in Provenance)

39 entries. Per-id evidence status lives in PLANNING/PX_BASELINE.md §3.

provider	ids (summary)	notes
deepseek	deepseek-v4-pro (default), deepseek-v4-flash	reasoners, full v0.15.5 guard
google	gemma-3-27b-it, gemma-3-12b-it
openrouter	4× gemma-4 + or-claude-sonnet-5, or-gpt-5.6-terra, or-grok-4.5, or-kimi-k2.5, or-llama-4-maverick	or- prefix avoids first-party id collisions; all live-verified on the public list
dashscope	qwen3-max, qwen3-coder-plus/flash, qwen3.5-plus/flash, qwen-long	qwen-long: huge context, no tools
zhipu	glm-5.2, glm-5.2-1m	[1m] suffix is a literal apiModelId
openai	gpt-5.6 (=Sol), gpt-5.6-terra, gpt-5.6-luna, gpt-5.5	GA 2026-07-09; gpt-5.5-pro excluded (Responses-API-only)
anthropic	claude-opus-4-8, claude-sonnet-5, claude-haiku-4-5	haiku is tier flash = the key-validation chat probe
xai	grok-4.5, grok-4.3, grok-build-0.1
mistral	mistral-large/medium/small-latest, codestral-latest	rolling aliases
moonshot	kimi-k2.6, kimi-k2.5, kimi-k2-thinking	thinking model carries the full reasoning guard
groq	llama-3.3-70b-versatile, llama-3.1-8b-instant, openai/gpt-oss-120b, openai/gpt-oss-20b
together	Llama-3.3-70B-Turbo, DeepSeek-V4-Pro, gpt-oss-120b, Kimi-K2.6 (hub-style ids)
fireworks	accounts/fireworks/models/gpt-oss-120b	UNVERIFIED until a key exists
cerebras	gpt-oss-120b, gemma-4-31b, zai-glm-4.7
huggingface	openai/gpt-oss-120b, meta-llama/Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct, zai-org/GLM-5.2	hub ids; optional :policy/:provider suffix
ollama / lmstudio	(none — import)	keyless local runtimes

Capability flags and what each changes at dispatch

Flag	Effect
supportsTools	false → native tools[] never sent; the FC-6 fallback contract is injected instead (below)
supportsVision	gates image attachments
isReasoner	reasoning-channel handling; native reasoners get the in-prose <think> bullet stripped from the system prompt (avoids double-emission)
defaultMaxTokens	output budget applied when the caller omits one (v0.15.5 guard — DeepSeek V4 could exhaust its whole budget on reasoning and emit empty tool params)
reasoningCapOnToolUse	sends reasoning_effort: 'low' when tools are offered (same v0.15.5 incident)
tier	display/selection grouping (pro/flash/open/coder/reasoner)

Rule: behavioral differences are expressed as flags on the descriptor, never as model-id conditionals scattered through dispatch code.

resolveModel priority chain

1. MODEL_CATALOG builtin → 2. RETIRED_MODEL_MAP remap → 3. custom models from settings.json.customModels (cache keyed by settings.json mtime; JM-11 fixed these being ignored) → 4. synthetic OpenAI-compatible fallback descriptor (assumes deepseek provider).

RETIRED_MODEL_MAP (v0.15.6): deepseek-chat→deepseek-v4-flash, deepseek-reasoner→deepseek-v4-pro, deepseek-v3→deepseek-v4-flash, deepseek-r1→deepseek-v4-pro. When a provider retires a model: add the mapping, delete the catalog entry, and sweep hardcoded ids across electron/ and src/ (the v0.15.6 sweep hit ChatInput, SideChatPanel, WorktreeManagerModal, AutomationsPanel, ModelSettings).

chatStream vs chatOnce

• chatStream: the main path. Callbacks: onChunk (text delta), onReasoning, onVitals (~2s heartbeat feeding the "Ns since last chunk" pill), onDone (accumulated tool calls + final content), onError (partial content/reasoning preserved). onDone fires without being awaited — its body must catch its own errors (JM-8 lesson).
• chatOnce: one-shot completion returning { content, reasoning? }, reading both message.reasoning (OpenRouter) and message.reasoning_content (DeepSeek/DashScope).

Retry / stall behavior

• Up to 3 retries for HTTP 429 and connection errors without a status code, exponential backoff.
• Stream inactivity watchdog (T1): if no chunk arrives for streamInactivityMs (default 60 000, min clamp 5 000, 0 disables), the attempt is aborted and retried with backoff; after retries exhaust, a StreamInactivityError surfaces.
• Per-attempt accumulators reset on retry (JM-9) — a retried stream must not duplicate the already-streamed prefix.

Tool calling: native vs fallback

Native path (supportsTools: true): JSON-schema tools sent with the request; streamed tool_calls deltas accumulated; arguments validated via validateToolArguments before dispatch — schema mismatches return a corrective tool result (the model is told what was wrong) rather than silently coercing to {} (JM-10).

Fallback path (supportsTools: false, or after downgrade): the model is instructed to emit

{"action": "<tool_name>", "input": { …args }}

and a brace-balanced parser (FC-6) extracts it from prose. Two hard rules:

• The fallback instruction must actually be injected into the prompt — it was dead code until JM-10; non-native models were never told the format.
• Fallback-parsed calls get fb_-prefixed ids and skip persisted "always allow" approval policies (FC-9 trust degradation).

Capability downgrade (FC-10): 3 capability mismatches in a conversation (model claims/attempts tools it can't do natively) → session-scoped downgrade to the fallback path. Per-conversation state; cleared on conversation delete.

Checklist: adding a model

1. Append a descriptor to MODEL_CATALOG with honest flags (test supportsTools empirically — send a trivial tool and see if a structured tool_calls delta comes back).
2. Confirm the provider id maps to an existing keychain entry; if the key is new, that's "adding a provider" (below).
3. Set defaultMaxTokens/reasoningCapOnToolUse if the model is a reasoner (check for the empty-params failure mode on tool turns).
4. Verify: npx tsc --noEmit -p tsconfig.node.json && npx tsc --noEmit -p tsconfig.web.json, then a live smoke: stream a reply, force a tool call, confirm reasoning lands if applicable.
5. Route through lamprey-change-control (trivial catalog append = small change; new behavior = plan).

Checklist: adding a provider (post-Provider-Expansion, 2026-07-11)

User-controlled OpenAI-compatible endpoint → zero code. Settings → API Keys → Custom endpoints (persists settings.json.customProviders); the id becomes valid across keychain, dispatch, Custom Models, verifyCatalog, and the /v1/models import.

Promoting a built-in:

1. Add the id to BOTH ProviderId unions — providers/registry.ts and src/lib/types.ts (provider-parity.test.ts source-locks them; it caught a real one-sided widening the day it landed).
2. Add the PROVIDERS entry: baseURL, keyEnv (= id), docsUrl, keyHint ("sk-...") where the format is known, keyOptional: true for keyless runtimes.
3. Add catalog models (checklist above). The Settings → API Keys card renders automatically from settings:listProviderKeys — no UI edit; only extend the renderer's PROVIDER_GROUPS display map in ApiKeySettings.tsx if the new id should sit in a specific group (ungrouped ids show under Custom endpoints).
4. Validate validateProviderKey against the provider's cheapest endpoint (the chat-probe fallback uses the provider's flash-tier catalog entry — give every key-required provider one).
5. Both tsc configs + npm test + live key test in Settings.

Provenance and maintenance

Based on direct reads of electron/services/providers/registry.ts (catalog ids, retired map, watchdog constants re-verified 2026-07-11 during the Provider Expansion Phase) plus ARCHITECTURE/FUNCTION_CALLING.md §16 and PLANNING/PX_BASELINE.md, at v0.17.0.

Re-verify:

• Catalog: grep -n "id: '" electron/services/providers/registry.ts
• Retired map: grep -n -A8 "RETIRED_MODEL_MAP" electron/services/providers/registry.ts
• Watchdog defaults: grep -n "DEFAULT_STREAM_INACTIVITY_MS" electron/services/providers/registry.ts
• Fallback contract injection: grep -rn "FALLBACK_TOOL_INSTRUCTION\|\"action\"" electron/services/ | grep -i fallback | head
• Downgrade threshold: grep -n "MALFORMED\|MISMATCH" electron/services/tool-unlock-state.ts electron/services/capability-*.ts 2>/dev/null