Model routing

Every pipeline node routes independently to a model of your choice (models.yaml in the agent home; the shipped defaults are DeepSeek slugs, but the host is yours to pick with /provider). Swap any node to any slug your host serves, live and persisted:

/model critic openai/gpt-4o      # one node
/model deepseek/deepseek-v4-pro  # everything

Where models.yaml comes from

The package bundles the shipped defaults (src/writingagent/resources/models.yaml) and copies them out on first run to config/models.yaml in the agent home ($WRITINGAGENT_HOME, else the OS user-data dir), so /model edits land in a real, editable file - on every install. A read-only install falls back to reading the bundled copy in place.

Default routing

Node	Model	Why
planner, writer, consolidation	DeepSeek V4 Pro	Highest prose quality; global reasoning across the book
critic	DeepSeek V4 Pro	Insight scoring and thesis checks need real judgment
judge	DeepSeek V4 Pro	Ranks divergent drafts side by side (best-of-N) - route cross-family for an independent eye
verifier	DeepSeek V4 Pro	Checks each cited claim against its source text - cross-family routing helps here too
diagram	DeepSeek V4 Pro	Authors a structured diagram spec (nodes/edges/labels); layout is done deterministically, not by the model
diagram_fallback	DeepSeek V4 Flash	Re-authors the spec if pro returns nothing; a placeholder ships only if this flash retry also returns no spec
toc, summarizer, production, learner, researcher, humanizer, chat	DeepSeek V4 Flash	The bulk of calls by volume - fast and cost-efficient
seo	DeepSeek V4 Flash	Keyword / hashtag / meta-description signals pack (plan §24)
repurpose	DeepSeek V4 Flash	X thread / LinkedIn / teaser / TLDR / headline variants

Temperatures

Explicit per node where it matters:

Node	Temp	Why
writer	0.9	Base; divergent first drafts sample 0.7 / 1.0 / 1.2
toc	0.4	Structured but not rigid
humanizer	0.3	Surgical line edits - must not get creative
critic, judge, verifier	0.2	Consistent, repeatable judgment
summarizer	0.0	Deterministic extraction

Per-node max tokens

config/models.yaml carries a per-node max_tokens: block, read via ModelConfig.max_tokens_for. The shipped config sets it for the reasoning judgment nodes - critic, judge, verifier = 8000 - so the model has room to emit its JSON after it finishes reasoning (the diagram node’s spec call is capped at 4000 tokens). It also ships repetition penalties (frequency_penalty: writer 0.3, presence_penalty: writer 0.1) that attack token-level repetition at the source. Add or raise a max_tokens: entry for any node you want to cap or give more room.

Budget mode reroutes the judgment nodes

With cost_mode: budget (the recommended cost opt-in; the shipped default is standard), the spend-heavy judgment nodes - critic, judge, verifier, consolidation, and diagram - are rerouted to the global fallback: tier (DeepSeek V4 Flash) for the run, and the drafting knobs are pinned lean (divergent_drafts 1, max_revisions 1, table_read off, max_context_chars 12000). The writer and planner stay on Pro. Leave cost_mode: standard (the default) to keep every node on its routed model. The run log lists exactly what was pinned. See Cost.

Call resilience (applies to every node)

• Classified retry with exponential backoff + jitter; honors Retry-After; fails fast on 4xx.
• Structured outputs are validated against Pydantic schemas with a repair retry (the model sees its own invalid output + the error).
• Truncation recovery: a reasoning model can spend its whole budget thinking and come back empty or cut off mid-JSON (finish_reason=length). Structured calls raise max_tokens and retry the same model instead of degrading - so the call stays on its stronger routed tier rather than falling back to flash.
• Model fallback: after a node’s primary model exhausts its retries (outage, 5xx, content filter), the call retries once on the global fallback: slug (default DeepSeek V4 Flash) - one node’s failure degrades the run instead of killing an unattended book.
• Context-overflow recovery: an over-long prompt is shrunk and retried once instead of failing the node.
• Per-request timeout (request_timeout), and the run-level token kill-switch (max_run_tokens) checks before every call.

Cost visibility

Real cost (OpenRouter’s usage.cost) is captured per call, shown live in the run dashboard, summarized on the post-run card, and aggregated in /dashboard. A minimal 2-section article run lands roughly at ~$0.15, ~15 calls, ~84k tokens. A full agentic article (6 sections, divergent drafts, diagrams, claim-checks) measured ~$0.52, ~108 calls, ~606k tokens - agentic mode and deep research multiply the call count; the prompt cache offsets some of it (a measured run served 36% of prompt tokens from cache). See Cost.