The LLM connection check no longer falls back to an Ark-specific default model when the user has not configured one. Instead, it returns a dedicated marker and the settings UI surfaces the empty-state copy, which keeps the validation result aligned with the actual configuration state.
Constraint: Preserve the existing provider-status parsing and keep the change minimal.
Rejected: Keep the deepseek-v3-2 fallback | it creates a false positive for unconfigured non-Ark providers.
Confidence: high
Scope-risk: narrow
Directive: Validation should never invent a model when the user has not saved one.
Tested: npm run build; cargo test --lib
Not-tested: Live provider behavior with a truly empty model field on a real endpoint
H-Chris233
e99619948e