Operator ruled the repoint; Miranda moves off the paid z.ai Coding Plan
onto free local compute. model.default gen-large, provider custom,
base_url http://10.250.50.70:4000/v1. Verified by a real turn rather than
by config: hermes status reports gen-large / Custom endpoint and a
completion through /v1/chat/completions returns 660 tokens. The
openrouter/nous credit warnings cleared with it.
Records the landmine found on the way: CUSTOM_API_KEY and
HERMES_CUSTOM_API_KEY are inert for bare provider: custom — they bind only
a named custom_providers entry through its key_env. Without model.api_key
the request ships the placeholder no-key-required and LiteLLM 401s inside
the response body while hermes status still reports a healthy gen-large /
Custom endpoint, so status alone cannot verify this change.
Also notes that nh3-dev/hermes/api-server-key must not be rotated until
SVOS splits its HS256 signing key off the shared value.