Cheapskate

Cheapskate

Select cheapskate/auto from the model picker to route through explicitly enabled models whose effective Piclaw/Pi catalogue costs are all exactly zero.

Eligibility

A physical model is eligible only when:

• the effective catalogue contains it;
• input, output, cache-read and cache-write base rates are finite zero values;
• every optional price tier also has four finite zero rates;
• its provider has configured authentication and the model is currently available;
• Settings enables the provider and model;
• the current session model scope permits it;
• its input, context and output capabilities fit the request;
• it has no active health quarantine or cooldown.

Positive, missing, malformed and unknown price metadata fails closed. A models.json model that omits cost remains unknown even when Pi normalises its displayed rates to zero. Trial credit and provider marketing do not make a positive-price model eligible. Newly discovered zero-cost models are disabled until the user enables them.

Identity

The session model remains:

cheapskate/auto

The final assistant message records the physical provider/model in responseModel and in a cheapskate.route diagnostic. Use those fields when reporting which route handled a request.

Settings

Open Settings → Cheapskate to:

• filter exact-zero candidates by text or provider;
• inspect catalogue-derived context, output, reasoning and image support;
• enable or disable models;
• set route priority;
• view active route, health, cooldown and last error;
• see why the virtual model is unavailable.

Configure provider credentials through Piclaw's normal login/keychain flow. The pane does not maintain its own credential catalogue.

Failover

Cheapskate tries at most three physical routes. It may retry a transient failure only before text, thinking or tool-call output has been emitted. It never replays after output begins because that can duplicate content or tool effects.

The router respects provider Retry-After and recognised rate-limit reset headers. It uses a bounded fallback cooldown when headers are absent. Route preference is session-local and concurrent chats retain request-local attribution.

Management tool

If a supposedly zero-cost model reports a positive provider charge, Cheapskate quarantines it and exposes a cost violation in Settings. Do not bypass that quarantine by choosing the physical model through Cheapskate.