Chimera Agent 0.43.0: LiteLLM Gate Opens, Registry Surfaces, and Fixes That Matter

LiteLLM Gate Now Accepts Any Provider Key

Previously, Chimera only recognized five LiteLLM providers, rejecting valid keys from services like Groq or Mistral with a misleading "No provider key configured" error. The gate now accepts any <PROVIDER>_API_KEY, with two safeguards:

1. A denylist prevents non-model providers (like ElevenLabs or Stability AI) from being misidentified as model sources
2. doctor now validates provider names against LiteLLM's enum, catching typos that would otherwise fail silently

The change addresses a deeper issue: keys placed in .env were being silently ignored due to Pydantic's extra="ignore" setting. Since chimera init creates .env files and documentation directs users there, this was causing persistent configuration failures.

Previously Hidden Features Now Accessible

Three significant capabilities existed in the code but lacked user interfaces:

1. Agent Registry: The board's lane box was a free-text field guessing at registry IDs that were never displayed. Now accessible via Automation's third tab, it shows existing agents while still allowing work to be filed against non-existent IDs (which wait in backlog).
2. Embed Model Selection: Previously buried, this now appears directly under the semantic memory switch it affects. Failures degrade to lexical search silently, making visible configuration crucial.
3. Key Pools: These rotated round-robin with cooldowns but had no UI. The interface now manages them by operation (add/remove) rather than exposing secret values.

Critical Fixes for Core Functionality

Two features shipped broken in the app:

• File Uploads and Message Dictation: Both failed with 422 errors because authHeaders() forced application/json Content-Type, preventing proper multipart form boundaries. Tests had missed this because they mocked the entire API layer.
• Session Persistence: The app lost theme, workspace, and language settings on launch due to random port assignment changing the localStorage origin. Now remembers and reuses ports.

The first-run wizard also better handles model selection, showing (but not auto-applying) compatible models for your provider to prevent immediate 401 errors.

Update with pip install --upgrade chimera-agent or see Chimera Agent v0.43.0 for full details.