A plain /model <name> switch only lasted for the current session — every
new session reverted to the previously-configured model, so users had to
re-switch every time (e.g. glm-5.1 -> glm-5.2 on every launch).
Persist-by-default is now the behavior across all three /model surfaces
(CLI, gateway, TUI/dashboard), gated by a new config key
model.persist_switch_by_default (default true):
/model <name> switch model (persists to config.yaml)
/model <name> --session switch for this session only
/model <name> --global switch and persist (explicit, unchanged)
The effective persistence is resolved once via resolve_persist_behavior()
in hermes_cli/model_switch.py so --session opts out, --global opts in,
and the config-gated default applies otherwise. --global remains a valid
explicit no-op alias for the new default.
Reported via AskClaw. When config.yaml has `model: <name>` (flat string)
instead of the nested `model: {default: ..., provider: ...}` form, every
gateway `/model X --global` crashed silently with
TypeError: 'str' object does not support item assignment
The persist block did:
model_cfg = cfg.setdefault("model", {})
model_cfg["default"] = result.new_model
`setdefault` returns the existing scalar, and the next assignment blows
up. The 'switch failed' warning was logged at WARNING level and the user
never saw why their persist didn't stick.
Coerce scalar/None `model:` into a dict before mutation, in both the
gateway path (`gateway/run.py`) and the sister site in
`hermes_cli/doctor.py --fix` (same setdefault-on-string flaw). The CLI
`/model` path is unaffected because it goes through `_set_nested` which
already replaces scalar leaves with dicts.
Regression test `tests/gateway/test_model_command_flat_string_config.py`
covers the flat-string, missing, and proper-dict cases. Without the fix,
the flat-string case fails with the exact original TypeError.
