Operator: "pass everything through, lobe is a test surface for me." The picker
goes from 11 curated seats to all 25 chat-capable models the gateway serves,
paid passthroughs included.
Membership is derived from LiteLLM's declared `mode` rather than by taste:
chat (15) and completion (1) are in, and the nine GLM/frontier entries whose
mode is unset are chat models in practice. Out: audio_speech (ext-tts, tts-1,
tts-1-hd, gpt-4o-mini-tts), embedding (qwen3-embedding) and rerank (reranker,
reranker-a3-bge-v2-m3) — seven models that cannot answer a chat request at all,
so listing them would recreate the visible-but-dead entry this list just got
fixed for.
Every candidate was probed live from inside the container before being pinned,
which corrected an earlier claim in this file. char-rp and char-rp-reasoning
are NOT retired: they are configured and their upstream seat (ana-ml2:8016) is
refusing connections while under maintenance, which is a 500, not a 400. Both
are retained deliberately — dropping a name because its seat is bouncing makes
the list rot in the other direction. Only char-rp-fable is genuinely gone (400,
absent from model_info). The comment now spells out the 400-vs-500 distinction
so the next editor does not repeat the mistake.
Also corrects the credential-posture header, which still described the key as
scoped to free local models and cited the glm/kimi rejection as current
verification. The key now carries the all-proxy-models access group with no
budget ceiling, so that block had become a false security claim in the most
load-bearing comment in the file.
Two independent gates kept the new `sec` family out of Lobe, and only one of
them was visible from the symptom.
The picker never auto-discovers. `OPENAI_MODEL_LIST=-all,+<names>` clears
Lobe's built-in OpenAI catalogue and re-adds one model per `+name`, so anything
added to LiteLLM stays invisible until this list is edited and the container
bounced. That pin is deliberate — an unpinned picker offers models that fail on
click — but it means the list rots in both directions, and it had:
- `sec` / `sec-reasoning` missing (hosted_vllm/mog-sec-27b{,-thinking} on
ana-ml2:8019, added to config.yaml earlier today), and
- `char-rp-reasoning` / `char-rp-fable` still listed after being retired
upstream, i.e. two picker entries that 400 on click. Verified: a call to
char-rp-fable now returns 400 Bad Request.
The list is now curated to live, chat-capable, free-local seats — eleven, each
round-tripped through the container after the bounce. The paid family stays out
deliberately; that is now a picker decision rather than a key one.
Which is the other half of this commit: the `lobe-chat-esh` key is no longer
scoped to free local models. On the operator's instruction infra-ops swapped its
explicit array for the `all-proxy-models` access group, so it now reaches the
paid passthroughs with `max_budget: None`. The README documented the old posture
as current, which made it a security claim that was no longer true; it now
carries the change, what it costs, and the fact that the picker is the only
remaining gate.
The gpt-5-mini calls were Lobe's System Agent -- a background model,
separate from the chat model, used for auto-naming conversations, history
summarization, translation, query rewrite, thread naming, and assistant
metadata. Its default is openai/gpt-5-mini, which our OpenAI provider (the
gateway) forwards verbatim; the scoped key blocks it, so every background
task 403'd and the log filled with 'Tried to access gpt-5-mini' while
auto-naming silently failed.
Set SYSTEM_AGENT to route all six documented keys (topic, translation,
agentMeta, queryRewrite, historyCompress, thread) at fleet models --
summarizer for the naming/summarize tasks (same seat as gen at temp 0),
gen where quality matters. Any key left unset falls back to the gpt-5-mini
default, so all six are explicit.
Notably this one IS env-configurable (SYSTEM_AGENT), unlike the per-model
output-token cap which is UI-only -- a mixed result on the
manageable-by-agent axis.
Replacement candidate for the hand-rolled gateway-chat HTML surface, which
the operator does not want to keep improving -- it has already produced two
defects tonight.
Chosen over Open WebUI on weight, measured from the registries rather than
recalled: Lobe 143 MB compressed / 1 layer vs Open WebUI 1,825 MB / 19
layers, a 12.8x difference. Open WebUI was declined in June 2026 on weight
and that still holds; its secondary recorded objection (empty-tools 400
against vLLM) is now moot since strip_empty_tools covers the normal API
path and only missed LiteLLM's built-in playground.
CREDENTIAL POSTURE: deliberately NOT the shared all-agents key, which
reaches the paid GLM/Kimi passthroughs -- a LAN-exposed chat UI holding it
would let anyone reaching the port spend vendor credits from a pool shared
across every project. Minted a scoped LiteLLM virtual key
(key_alias lobe-chat-esh) limited to the 20 free local models, and verified
the scoping BOTH ways: gen answers, glm-5.2 / kimi-k3 / gen-frontier all
return 'key not allowed to access model'. Secrets vaulted, host .env 0600.
Verified from INSIDE the container, not just from the host: /v1/models
returns the fleet seats and a gen round-trip returns 'ok', so the app's own
network path and key both work. Container healthy, / -> 307 -> /chat -> 200.
Documents the open question this deploy exists to answer: whether Lobe's
TTS is ENV-configurable or UI-only. That is the operator's deciding
criterion and is NOT yet established -- Open WebUI has dedicated AUDIO_TTS_*
vars, Lobe documents a shared OPENAI_PROXY_URL which should carry TTS since
LiteLLM serves audio/speech on the same base, but that is inference.
Also records the ext-tts voice foot-gun: unknown voices 404 and can trip
the router cooldown, so the voice must be pinned rather than left at a UI
default.
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