Magpie reports models.dev's list price for every call. That is the right
number for a vendor's own key and the wrong one for a provider that
resells or exposes a model at a different tariff, and it leaves a model the
catalogue does not list with no cost at all — a provider's own /models
gives ids, not economics.
magpie model price relay-a/gpt-5.5 0.12,1.20,0.01,0.15
magpie model price relay-a/* 0.12,1.20,0.01,0.15
magpie model price relay-a/gpt-5.5 --reset
magpie model prices
Absolute USD per million tokens. All four parts are required: a price
missing one would understate the rest of every call, and a hand-edited file
that left a part out would bill it at zero, so each part is a pointer and
the setter refuses a price that is negative, NaN or infinite, naming the
part at fault. Zero stays distinct throughout — a model served at no cost
has a price, not the absence of one. A `<provider>/*` entry covers every
model of that provider and an exact entry wins over it; --reset removes
only the exact entry and says so when a provider-wide one is still in
force.
The order a price is looked for in is the price for this model, then
`<provider>/*`, then the provider's own catalogue, then models.dev for the
maker. A price is a provider's tariff, not the model's: the same model
through two providers has two prices, and each keeps its own. A provider is
resolved by its id, or by an id it was renamed from, and never by its
display name — Find answers those too, and a record naming one was counted
at another provider's price.
provider.EffectivePrice is the one lookup every cost caller shares, so the
usage ledger and a session's totals both go through it, and a session
naming a model bare is still priced at its maker's list price, which is a
different question from what one provider charges. catalog.PriceOf and
PricedBy keep returning the models.dev price for anything wanting an
unbiased number. The background-task pickers (draw, search, vision) still
rank by catalogue price: they choose which model answers, not what a call
is reported to cost.
Unlike every other per-model preference this does not call
catalog.Touched. What a call costs is not what an agent picks a model by,
and the model lists magpie keeps in the agents' own files are not its to
rewrite over a number in a cost report. A rename moves the prices with it
through the walk #288 adds, so nothing here has to say so, and an id
recorded before a rename still resolves.
Validation happens where the entry is written, not in Save: one hand-edited
bad price in the file must not make saving a theme or a window size fail. A
price for a model the provider does not serve is refused the way
`magpie model name` refuses the same id, since it is a price that never
applies and nothing reports it as dead; a removal is exempt, so an entry
left for a model that has since gone can still be taken away.
Comic Chang
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