Probing and model discovery

When you add an upstream interactively, Noket asks the server which models it serves so you can pick from a list instead of typing ids. The same probe backs noket upstream test and the console’s Add upstream form.

The request

The probe is a GET to {base_url}/v1/models.

A base URL that already ends in /v1 is not given a second one.
The request uses the upstream’s key and headers, so a protected server answers the same way it would for a real call.
It times out after 10 seconds and reads at most 1 MiB of the response body.

Reading the answer

Different servers describe their models differently, and Noket handles the two common shapes:

OpenAI-style: {"data": [{"id": "..."}, ...]}.
Ollama’s legacy list: {"models": [{"name": "...", "model": "..."}]}.

What the probe returns is a list of model id strings. The picker shows those ids; selecting one adds it to the upstream’s model list.

What a probe is not

It is not a generation test. No prompt is sent, no tokens are billed by your provider beyond any list request, and the model’s quality is not checked.
It does not write anything. A probe from noket upstream test or from the console’s form does not change config.toml. Only saving does.
It does not prove calls will work. A server can list a model and still fail a completion, for example when the model is not loaded or the account lacks access.

When the probe fails

A failing probe does not block you from saving. The form lets you save and type model ids by hand, which is what you need when:

the server does not implement /v1/models;
the server requires a key you have not entered yet;
the server is temporarily down but you want to configure it now;
you want to expose an id the list endpoint omits.

If the probe succeeds but a call later fails with model_not_found, the id in the request does not match any id an upstream lists. Compare it with noket upstream list.

Console versus CLI probing

Both ask the node’s connector to make the request, so the probe runs from the machine that can reach the server, not from the cloud. The console’s form can probe with a key you have typed but not saved; when you edit an upstream and leave the key blank while keeping the base URL, it reuses the stored key.