[Bug] Silent model downgrade on guardrail trigger—no iOS notification and model unaware of switch

Open 💬 0 comments Opened Jul 13, 2026 by gmadden

Bug Description
Title: Silent Fable→Opus guardrail downgrade — no notice on iOS, and the switched-to model isn’t informed

What happened: Session set to Fable via /model (which saved “for new sessions”). Over a long two-day session, /status and commit trailers showed Opus 4.8. A guardrail-triggered downgrade (security/health) is the likely cause — I’ve seen the yellow-text downgrade notice in CLI on a prior session.

Bug 1 — no downgrade cue on iOS remote control. The CLI shows yellow text when Fable downgrades to Opus on a guardrail; that notice does not appear (or isn’t noticeable) on iOS remote, so the user has no indication the model changed mid-session.

Bug 2 — the downgraded-to model isn’t told. After the switch, the model’s own identity context still reads “Fable 5,” so when asked which model is running it confidently answers Fable and only /status reveals Opus. The model can’t self-report or warn the user.

Impact: For security/health-adjacent work the user may believe they’re on the intended (Fable) model when they’re not; audit artifacts (commit Co-Authored-By trailers) and any model-attribution get silently wrong; trust in “which model did this” erodes.

Env: iOS remote control; model set to Fable; /status = Opus 4.8.

Environment Info

  • Platform: darwin
  • Terminal: Apple_Terminal
  • Version: 2.1.207
  • Feedback ID: b1b9da65-da0c-4f19-92e5-1a6fb4b344b3

Errors

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