[2026-08-04] OmniRoute free-DeepSeek silent stops (empty-after-tool)

Status

Mitigated — combos reworked; upstream still degraded.

Symptom

On both Hermes instances (ops/Tusk + the other instance), turns using deepseek-flash-free (and smart-route via good-free) did one tool call, then went silently — no text, no error. "continue" → one more tool call → silent stop again.

Root cause

The free-DeepSeek upstreams behind the combos started returning valid-but-empty HTTP 200s right after a tool_calls turn (no content, no further tool call). Hermes can't distinguish "empty" from "model chose to stop" → ends turn silently. Began 2026-08-01 ~09:14 UTC, still active. OmniRoute log markers:

[STREAM] Empty assistant response after tool_calls completion (<provider>:<model>)
[ProxyEgress] <provider>/<conn-hash> ... status=error

Per-model evidence (counts in storage.sqlite era log):

238d5978/deepseek-v4-flash — 63× empty-after-tool (conn d4b9fee0, 189 proxy errors)
238d5978/deepseek-v4-flash-0731 — 70× empty-after-tool
eb5af0da/deepseek-v4-flash-thinking:free (conn f8169018) — 504 proxy errors (combo #1 slot)
nvidia deepseek + opencode-zen deepseek-free — noisy, errors

Strategy trap: both combos used priority, which retries the same broken connection and never fails over on an empty 200.

Change applied (2026-08-04, ~03:30 AWST)

Edited combos in /var/lib/omniroute/storage.sqlite on CT600 (live DB, hot-reloads — no restart):

deepseek-flash-free — strategy priority → fill-first; 8 → 7 models: healthy free first (mimo-v2.5-free, laguna-s-2.1:free ×2 providers, step-3.7-flash, glm-5.2-cheap:free), one deepseek (deepseek-v4-flash-thinking:free) demoted to last resort.
good-free — strategy priority → fill-first; 15 → 12 models. Dropped the proven culprits: 238d5978/deepseek-v4-flash, nvidia/deepseek-ai/deepseek-v4-pro, nvidia/deepseek-ai/deepseek-v4-flash. opencode/deepseek-v4-flash-free kept as last resort.

Backup of both pre-change rows: /tmp/combo_backup_20260804.json on the Hermes gateway LXC.

Verification

Live API (/v1/combos) reflects both changes immediately (hot reload).
2-step tool-call round-trip through deepseek-flash-free returns proper final content.
Direct round-trips (stream + non-stream) through the OLD combo were also healthy — the failure needs the degraded upstream + real session, hence counts not repro.

Follow-ups

Upstream free-DeepSeek tier still degraded; re-check counts in a few days and restore deepseek-first ordering if it recovers.
Consider auto+explorationRate for self-tuning if free tier stays flaky.
Hermes-side: empty-post-tool turns are nudge/retry/fallback handled, but still end silently once exhausted — possible future improvement: surface "(empty after tool calls)" more visibly.

Refs

systems/omniroute

2.9 KiB Raw Blame History Unescape Escape