fix(onboard): honor provider model env for Ollama

[HwangJohn]

Summary

Honor NEMOCLAW_PROVIDER_MODEL as a compatibility fallback for Ollama onboarding while keeping NEMOCLAW_MODEL as the preferred model env. Interactive Ollama selection now defaults to the requested model when that model appears in the rendered menu, instead of falling back to the memory-based or alphabetically-first default.

Related Issue

Fixes #6869

Changes

• Add a shared requested-model env reader that prefers NEMOCLAW_MODEL and falls back to NEMOCLAW_PROVIDER_MODEL for non-interactive provider selection.
• Pass the requested model env into interactive Ollama model prompting only when no route-compatibility lock already controls the model.
• Match the requested default against rendered Ollama menu entries with existing Ollama model-reference normalization, and keep the memory-based default when the requested model is not shown.
• Document the NEMOCLAW_PROVIDER_MODEL compatibility fallback for Ollama and add regression coverage for env precedence, interactive defaults, and hidden requested models.

Type of Change

• Code change (feature, bug fix, or refactor)
• Code change with doc updates
• Doc only (prose changes, no code sample modifications)
• Doc only (includes code sample changes)

Quality Gates

• Tests added or updated for changed behavior
• Existing tests cover changed behavior — justification:
• Tests not applicable — justification:
• Docs updated for user-facing behavior changes
• Sensitive paths changed (security, policy, credentials, preflight, onboarding, inference, runner, sandbox, or messaging)
• Sensitive-path review completed or maintainer-approved waiver recorded — reviewer/approval link/justification: Contributor self-review focused on onboarding/inference env precedence and validation; the change does not read credentials, alter policy, or expose new secret material. Maintainer review is still required before merge.
• Non-success, skipped, or missing CI check accepted by maintainer — check name, approval link, and follow-up issue:

Verification

• PR description includes the DCO sign-off declaration and every commit appears as Verified in GitHub
• Normal pre-commit, commit-msg, and pre-push hooks passed, or npm run check:diff passed when hooks were skipped or unavailable — npm run check:diff passed on DGX Spark Linux/aarch64 against the committed diff
• Targeted behavior tests pass for the current change set, or tests are marked not applicable above — npx vitest run --project cli src/lib/inference/ollama/proxy.test.ts src/lib/onboard/setup-nim-ollama.test.ts src/lib/onboard/providers.test.ts passed locally on Windows and on DGX Spark Linux/aarch64 (71 passed)
• Applicable broad gate passed — npm test for broad runtime/test-harness changes; npm run check for repo-wide validation/coverage changes — not applicable; this is a focused onboarding/inference env handling change covered by targeted tests, docs build, CLI build, and diff gate
• Quality Gates section completed with required justifications or waivers
• No secrets, API keys, or credentials committed
• npm run docs builds without warnings (doc changes only) — npm run docs passed on DGX Spark Linux/aarch64 with 0 errors; Fern reported existing hidden warnings/upgrade notice, so this box is left unchecked
• Doc pages follow the style guide (doc changes only)
• New doc pages include SPDX header and frontmatter (new pages only)

---

Signed-off-by: HwangJohn angelic805@gmail.com

Summary by CodeRabbit

• New Features
  • Added compatibility support for configuring a provider model via NEMOCLAW_PROVIDER_MODEL.
  • Enhanced interactive Ollama onboarding: when a requested “safe” model tag exists in the current Ollama menu, it’s used as the default selection.
• Bug Fixes
  • Improved Ollama model selection to match models by reference and compute the default selection index correctly.
  • If the requested model isn’t available, the app now consistently falls back to the memory-based default.
• Documentation
  • Updated Ollama onboarding docs to describe NEMOCLAW_PROVIDER_MODEL and the interactive/non-interactive default-model fallback behavior.
• Tests
  • Added/expanded unit tests for provider-model selection and interactive default-model forwarding.

[copy-pr-bot]

This pull request requires additional validation before any workflows can run on NVIDIA's runners.

Pull request vetters can view their responsibilities here.

Contributors can view more details about this message here.

[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Path: .coderabbit.yaml

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Enterprise

Run ID: 3ce6a81e-0687-495d-ad94-1cff2217a8a2

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between f3965ee and a5d4b28.

📒 Files selected for processing (3)

• docs/inference/set-up-ollama.mdx
• src/lib/onboard/providers.test.ts
• src/lib/onboard/providers.ts

🚧 Files skipped from review as they are similar to previous changes (3)

• docs/inference/set-up-ollama.mdx
• src/lib/onboard/providers.test.ts
• src/lib/onboard/providers.ts

---

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Ollama onboarding now resolves model requests from NEMOCLAW_MODEL or NEMOCLAW_PROVIDER_MODEL, propagates validated interactive defaults, and matches requested model references against installed Ollama options. Tests and documentation cover precedence, fallback, and prompt selection behavior.

Changes

Ollama model selection

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Environment model resolution src/lib/onboard/providers.ts, src/lib/onboard/providers.test.ts	Adds primary and compatibility model environment resolution, applies it to hosted staging and non-interactive validation, and tests precedence and fallback behavior.
Interactive default propagation src/lib/onboard/setup-nim-ollama.ts, src/lib/onboard/setup-nim-ollama.test.ts	Derives prompt defaults from environment variables for interactive Ollama setup and passes them through model selection, including null behavior when unavailable.
Prompt model matching and documentation src/lib/inference/ollama/proxy.ts, src/lib/inference/ollama/proxy.test.ts, src/lib/onboard.ts, docs/inference/set-up-ollama.mdx	Validates prompt defaults, matches installed models by reference, recalculates the default index, and documents compatibility fallback and interactive selection rules.

Estimated code review effort: 3 (Moderate) | ~25 minutes

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage	⚠️ Warning	Docstring coverage is 33.33% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%.	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title is concise and accurately summarizes the Ollama onboard model-env fix.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	The changes address #6869 by honoring NEMOCLAW_PROVIDER_MODEL in non-interactive and interactive Ollama onboarding with fallback behavior.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	The docs and tests are directly tied to the Ollama model-selection fix and do not introduce unrelated scope.

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests

---

_{Comment @coderabbitai help to get the list of available commands.}

[coderabbitai]

Actionable comments posted: 1

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents

Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

Inline comments:
In `@src/lib/onboard/setup-nim-ollama.test.ts`:
- Around line 112-115: Update the injected process.env in the fallback test to
explicitly set NEMOCLAW_MODEL to undefined, ensuring the fallback uses
NEMOCLAW_PROVIDER_MODEL regardless of the host environment. Preserve the
existing environment spread and provider-model setup.

🪄 Autofix (Beta)

Fix all unresolved CodeRabbit comments on this PR:

• Push a commit to this branch (recommended)
• Create a new PR with the fixes

---

ℹ️ Review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Path: .coderabbit.yaml

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Enterprise

Run ID: 41f9d7eb-e396-4b07-892b-ad24a6d3ebb4

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 20130dd and eae13ba.

📒 Files selected for processing (8)

• docs/inference/set-up-ollama.mdx
• src/lib/inference/ollama/proxy.test.ts
• src/lib/inference/ollama/proxy.ts
• src/lib/onboard.ts
• src/lib/onboard/providers.test.ts
• src/lib/onboard/providers.ts
• src/lib/onboard/setup-nim-ollama.test.ts
• src/lib/onboard/setup-nim-ollama.ts

[github-actions]

PR Review Advisor — Informational

Advisor assessment: Informational / medium confidence
Next action: No advisor follow-up needed.
Findings: 0 blockers · 0 warnings · 0 suggestions
Status: No actionable findings remain in the canonical review ledger.

Model lanes

• GPT-5.6 Terra (primary): Completed · medium confidence · 0 blockers · 0 warnings · 0 suggestions
• Nemotron 3 Ultra (second opinion): Completed · high confidence · 0 blockers · 1 warning · 0 suggestions
• Model comparison: normalized findings differ; normalized E2E selections differ; Nemotron reported the same number of blockers, 1 more warning, the same number of suggestions.

Nemotron output stays in workflow artifacts and does not change the assessment above.

E2E guidance

Advisory only. E2E / PR Gate selects and runs jobs independently.

Recommended E2E: inference-routing, network-policy, onboard-repair, onboard-resume, cloud-onboard

1 optional E2E recommendation

• ollama-auth-proxy

Workflow run details

This automated review informs maintainers. Warnings and suggestions do not require a response. A maintainer decides whether to merge.

[wscurran]

✨ Thanks for the fix, @HwangJohn. Honoring NEMOCLAW_PROVIDER_MODEL as a compatibility fallback for Ollama onboarding resolves the reported regression. Ready for maintainer review.

---

Related open issues:

• #6869 [All Platforms][Onboard] NEMOCLAW_PROVIDER_MODEL ignored — Ollama onboard auto-selects the alphabetically-first model

[prekshivyas]

@cv Exact head a5d4b28b2ddb4cc96ccc32bba8de3257bca1285d has been maintainer-reviewed and all non-credentialed CI is green. The E2E gate selected inference-routing, network-policy, onboard-repair, and onboard-resume and is waiting on the protected approve-credentialed-e2e-skip-for-fork-pr deployment. Please approve Review deployments on run 29373860855. No fork code received repository secrets.

[cv]

@prekshivyas approved, please review

[prekshivyas]

Reviewed exact head a5d4b28. Ollama model precedence and compatibility fallback are correct and covered; CI, PR Advisor, CodeRabbit, and the policy-approved fork E2E gate are clear.