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Models, providers, and cost

Choose model access at the team and agent level while keeping availability, budgets, and actual work cost visible.

Models supply an agent's underlying reasoning capability. Delegate separates provider access, task defaults, agent choice, and cost controls so a team can change one without rewriting its entire operating model.

Review the team's model providers, then open the selected agent's Model page to inspect its effective choice.

Providers make models available

A deployment can include system providers, and a team can add provider accounts it is allowed to use. Provider credentials are team configuration; they are not the same as launching a card through an external MCP client.

The models currently visible in the product are the source of truth for availability and price. Catalogs change, and a configured model may become unavailable to a particular provider or team. Delegate checks availability when work is launched rather than assuming a name is enough.

Defaults and overrides serve different work

Team settings can choose defaults for interaction and background tasks such as knowledge extraction. An individual agent can override the appropriate model when its job benefits from a different balance of reasoning, speed, modality, or cost.

Choose for the task, not for prestige. A routine categorization agent may benefit from a fast economical model. A specialist handling complex analysis may justify a stronger one. Recommended personas include a dated, evidence-backed preference, but you should review it against the current catalog and your own results.

Cost belongs to the work record

Usage is tracked in dollars. A team balance distinguishes funds that are available from amounts already reserved for active work. Costs appear with the card and work stream so a result can be assessed alongside the resources used to produce it.

Team and project budgets provide hard operating boundaries. When a limit or available balance prevents more work, runs pause visibly rather than quietly continuing beyond the configured boundary. After an authorized person adjusts the budget or funding, eligible work can resume.

External subscriptions are a separate path

When a card is sent to a supported MCP client such as Codex or Claude Code, that external client uses its own subscription or execution environment for model tokens. It still works as a selected Delegate agent with the card's scope, tools, permissions, and visible work stream.

This handoff is not a provider account and does not turn a consumer subscription into provider credentials. It is a card-scoped execution path.

Evaluate quality and cost together

Review whether the result met the card, whether the work stream shows wasteful loops, and whether a different brief, skill, or model would improve the next run. The cheapest run that fails is not economical, and the most capable model is not automatically the best choice for every card.

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