fix(model-management): allow deleting a BYOK model after its team is deleted

[yuneng-berri]

Relevant issues

Linear ticket

LIT-3635

Pre-Submission checklist

Please complete all items before asking a LiteLLM maintainer to review your PR

• I have added meaningful tests
• My PR passes all unit tests on make test-unit
• My PR's scope is as isolated as possible; it only solves 1 specific problem
• I have requested a Greptile review by commenting @greptileai and received a Confidence Score of at least 4/5 before requesting a maintainer review

CI (LiteLLM team)

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Screenshots / Proof of Fix

A BYOK model added to a team stores model_info.team_id. Once the team is deleted the model is orphaned, and POST /model/delete used to reject it with Team id=... does not exist in db, so it lingered on the Models + Endpoints page with no way to remove it.

Reproduction against a live proxy (master key is proxy admin):

# 1) create a team
TID=$(curl -s "http://localhost:4000/team/new" -H "Authorization: Bearer sk-1234" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"team_alias":"demo"}' | jq -r .team_id)

# 2) add a BYOK model scoped to that team
MID=$(curl -s "http://localhost:4000/model/new" -H "Authorization: Bearer sk-1234" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "{\"model_name\":\"demo-byok\",\"litellm_params\":{\"model\":\"openai/gpt-4o-mini\",\"api_key\":\"sk-fake\"},\"model_info\":{\"team_id\":\"$TID\"}}" | jq -r .model_id)

# 3) delete the team
curl -s "http://localhost:4000/team/delete" -H "Authorization: Bearer sk-1234" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d "{\"team_ids\":[\"$TID\"]}"

# 4) delete the now-orphaned model
curl -s -w "\nHTTP %{http_code}\n" "http://localhost:4000/model/delete" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk-1234" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d "{\"id\":\"$MID\"}"

Before the fix, step 4 returned:

{"error":{"message":"{'error': 'Team id=... does not exist in db'}","type":"auth_error","code":"400"}}
HTTP 400

After the fix, the proxy admin can remove the orphan:

{"message":"Model: 39134476-6198-4965-b122-a9c92f746f94 deleted successfully"}
HTTP 200

The check is fail-closed; a non-admin key attempting the same delete is rejected rather than allowed through:

{"error":{"message":"{'error': 'Only a proxy admin can delete a model whose team has been deleted.'}","type":"auth_error","code":"403"}}
HTTP 403

Deleting a model whose team still exists, deleting a non-team model, and the team-admin auth path are all unchanged, and adding a model that references a non-existent team is still rejected.

Type

🐛 Bug Fix

Changes

delete_model no longer treats team existence as a prerequisite. It resolves the model's team_id and, when the team still exists, runs the existing can_user_make_model_call auth check unchanged. When the team is gone the model is orphaned, so a proxy admin may delete it and any other caller gets a 403. This is a positive authorization requirement rather than a skipped check, so a None or errored team lookup can only block the delete or require an admin, never grant a non-admin access. The add, update, and health paths keep their team-existence validation

Tests cover both the proxy-admin success and the non-admin rejection (asserting the row is not deleted), and both fail on the pre-fix code with the original Team id=... does not exist in db error

[greptile-apps]

Greptile Summary

This PR fixes an orphaned-model deletion problem: BYOK models scoped to a team became undeletable after the team was removed, because the auth check unconditionally expected the team to still exist in the database. The fix adds an allow_missing_team opt-in flag to can_user_make_model_call that, when set, permits a proxy admin to delete the orphan while explicitly rejecting all non-admin callers with a 403.

• can_user_make_model_call gains allow_missing_team=False; when the team is absent and the flag is True, proxy admins proceed and everyone else receives HTTP 403 — a fail-closed design.
• delete_model is the only caller that passes allow_missing_team=True; all add/update/health callers retain the original fail-with-400 behaviour.
• _remove_unbacked_team_models already returns early when the team row is missing, so the post-delete cleanup is safe when called on an orphaned model.

Confidence Score: 5/5

Safe to merge — the change is narrowly scoped, fail-closed, and only affects delete_model.

The new code path is fail-closed: a missing team row can only result in a 403 (non-admin) or an explicit allow (proxy admin), never an accidental bypass. The flag defaults to False so no existing caller changes behaviour. _remove_unbacked_team_models already guards against a missing team with an early return, so the post-delete cleanup is safe for orphaned models. Tests cover both the admin success path and the non-admin rejection, and assert that the row is not deleted on rejection.

No files require special attention.

Important Files Changed

Filename	Overview
litellm/proxy/management_endpoints/model_management_endpoints.py	Adds allow_missing_team=False opt-in to can_user_make_model_call; delete_model passes True, granting proxy-admin-only access to orphaned models and returning 403 for everyone else — a correctly fail-closed gate.
tests/test_litellm/proxy/management_endpoints/test_model_management_endpoints.py	Adds three new tests for orphaned-model deletion: proxy-admin success, non-admin 403 with no row deleted, and single-lookup assertion on the live-team rejection path. All test via mocks with no real network calls.

_{Reviews (2): Last reviewed commit: "refactor(model-management): drop redunda..." | Re-trigger Greptile}

[codecov]

Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 62.50000% with 3 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.

Files with missing lines	Patch %	Lines
...management_endpoints/model_management_endpoints.py	62.50%	3 Missing ⚠️

📢 Thoughts on this report? Let us know!

[yuneng-berri]

@greptile

[ryan-crabbe-berri]

lgtm