Codeman/.changeset/run-menu-custom-model-picker.md

aicodeman

aicodeman
minor

Custom model endpoints: Run-menu picker, and hardening from real llama-swap validation (#430, follow-up to #393's HTTP-API-only cut). With Custom model endpoints on (App Settings → Models) and at least one saved endpoint carrying a discovered model, the Run dropdown grows a Custom Endpoints section generated live off the CLI registry's own capabilities.customModelInjection — one entry per (harness that can redirect to a custom endpoint, saved endpoint). Picking one launches that harness and applies the endpoint to it; with two or more discovered models a small, scrollable dialog asks which one first, the endpoint's defaultModelId marked but never auto-chosen. Endpoints also now re-discover themselves automatically every 5 minutes in the background, one unreachable endpoint never blocking the others.

Everything below was found and fixed against a real llama-swap server, not just unit tests:

• Session-busy false refusal. A freshly launched CLI reports itself busy for its own startup (spinner, workspace-trust check) well before the apply call would reach it, and the apply route correctly refuses to restart a session mid-turn — indistinguishable from a fresh boot. The picker now waits for the new session to go idle (bounded at 20s, never an error on timeout) before applying.

• Errors and confirmations you can actually read. Toasts now default to sticky with a close button (errors always were meant to stay, but a fixed 3s timer silently hid them); a failed apply's real server-side reason (not a generic message) reaches the toast.

• "Both claude.ai and ANTHROPIC_API_KEY set" warning. A custom-model Claude session now runs with an isolated CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR (empty, no real credentials in it) so the injected API key never coexists with a stored OAuth login — projects is symlinked back to the real config dir so the response viewer/subagent windows/Read My Mind keep working. That isolated, otherwise-empty directory has none of a real profile's prior "Detected a custom API key — use it?" approvals either, which would otherwise re-ask on every launch with nobody at a TTY to answer (and silently refuse the key on its own default); the apply step now pre-seeds that exact approval field the same way answering the prompt once by hand would.

• Context-window overflow. Claude Code assumes a large default context window for a model id it doesn't recognize and never compacts, so a real local model's much smaller context silently overflowed (confirmed live: a stock ~33.7K-token system prompt against a 16384-token model). Discovery now also learns each model's real context length and applies it as CLAUDE_CODE_MAX_CONTEXT_TOKENS — sourced primarily from llama-swap's own GET /running, whose cmd field carries the launch flags (--fit-ctx/-c/--ctx-size) actually in effect, since GET /props's n_ctx was confirmed live to report the model's theoretical/trained maximum rather than the real --fit-ctx-shrunk runtime context (a 154112-vs-16384 discrepancy, caught only because the fixed value still overflowed) — /props is now a fallback for a plain llama.cpp server with no /running at all.

• Context floor too small for Claude Code to even start. Fixing the overflow above surfaced a second, unfixable-by-injection failure: Claude Code's own system prompt and tool schemas cost roughly 36.4K tokens on their own (confirmed live via an in:0 out:0 failure on the very first message), which can exceed a small model's entire real context before any conversation history exists to trim — no CLAUDE_CODE_MAX_CONTEXT_TOKENS value fixes that, since it only governs when history gets compacted. Applying such a model now returns a warning (gated on the CLI registry declaring a contextLengthVar, so it's a no-op for every other harness) instead of launching straight into a guaranteed first-message failure, and the Run-menu picker shows it as an in-app dialog naming the model, its discovered context and the ~40K safe floor, with the actual fix spelled out: give the model an explicit larger -c/--ctx-size in llama-swap's config instead of relying on auto-fit, which optimizes for the biggest model that fits rather than the biggest context. "Launch anyway" is still one click away.

• The real root cause of "it still says opus, not my model." llama.cpp runs exactly one model at a time; llama-swap unloads and reloads it on demand, which can take anywhere from a few seconds to well over a minute — long enough that a session mid-swap is indistinguishable from one that never left the native backend. Applying a selection now checks llama-swap's own GET /running first (feature-detected; a plain llama.cpp/OpenAI-compatible server has no such endpoint and is never checked); if switching would unload a model another live session is actively using, the apply is refused with a warning naming that session instead of silently switching, and a confirmation retry proceeds anyway. Either way, a sticky "loading model…" toast now covers the actual swap window until llama-swap reports the target model ready, so a prompt sent mid-swap reads as "loading," never as silence or an answer from whatever was loaded a moment before.

• Claude's whole first-run sequence, on every single launch. A fresh, otherwise-empty CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR isn't just missing the API-key approval above — Claude Code treats it as a brand-new profile and replays the theme picker, the security-notes screen, the per-project "trust this folder?" dialog, and (running bypassed) a one-time permissions-bypass warning, every time, confirmed live. None of that shows up again for a real, already-onboarded profile. customModelInjection's new skipFirstRunPrompts (claude's entry only) pre-seeds that same "already been through this" state — hasCompletedOnboarding and this session's own project trust into the same .claude.json the API-key approval merges into, skipDangerousModePermissionPrompt into settings.json — so a custom-model launch reaches the conversation exactly as fast as a native cloud one, with nobody there to click through a wizard.

Two more, from actually clicking through the swap-confirm and context-warning dialogs live: their z-index sat under the centred status banner, so a dialog could render fully hidden behind "Claude started — switching to llama-swap…"; and their Cancel/confirm buttons stacked instead of sitting side by side (.btn-toolbar's own display: flex needs a row-layout parent it never had). Both dialogs now clear the banner and lay their buttons out centred, side by side.

• A session's model getting silently swapped out later, not just at launch. The conflict check above only ever runs at the moment a session is created or a model applied — confirmed live: a second Codex session picking a different model launched with no warning at all, because nothing conflicted at that exact instant, yet it silently evicted the first session's model regardless (llama.cpp runs one model at a time). There was no mechanism to catch a swap caused by a DIFFERENT session's own later, ordinary use. A new periodic sweep (detectCustomModelSwapDisplacements, every 20s, one GET /running per distinct endpoint with a live custom-model session) now compares each such session's own model against what's actually loaded, and a new custom-model:swapped-out SSE event drives a global toast naming the displaced session and what's now loaded instead — so you find out before typing into a session that's about to trigger yet another reload. Notifies once per displacement, clearing once a session's own model is loaded and ready again so a later, genuinely new displacement notifies again.

Remote (SSH) and Docker sessions are refused for now (400) — their restart reattaches the durable remote/in-container tmux rather than relaunching the agent.

One more, from watching it launch live: opencode, Codex, Gemini, Pi, Grok, DeepSeek and OMP now launch directly on the endpoint, with no restart at all. Picking one of these seven from the Run-menu picker used to launch natively first, wait for it to settle, then restart it in place with the endpoint applied — a deliberate two-step design, but visibly a native boot immediately followed by a second one, worst on a CLI whose TUI fully reinitializes on a restart (confirmed live on Codex). POST /api/quick-start now accepts a customModel field and computes the same injection before the session exists, launching straight onto the endpoint the first time — no visible relaunch, and it also runs the same llama-swap conflict check (warns before unloading a model another live session is using) at create time. Claude still uses the original launch-then-restart path for now (its own --resume-based restart is far less jarring, and runClaude()'s multi-tab and docker-config-drift-retry logic make folding it into the one-shot path separate work).