feat(catalog): eligibility-gated free-tier bucket

[diegosouzapw]

Summary

Adds a second, honest free-tier figure to the catalog: quotas that are real and recurring but only
open after a region-bound identity check (today: ModelScope, behind Alibaba Cloud binding +
mainland-China real-name verification). Decisions D1/D4 of the "free-tier honest growth" plan:

• D1 — one honest headline. The steady headline stays the pool-deduped number computed from the
  catalog; a gated quota never inflates it.
• D4 — a separate, CI-gated figure. The gated total is exposed as gatedRecurringTokens /
  gatedProviders, rendered apart on the dashboard, and validated by npm run check:docs-counts
  against the docs (anchor: behind regional identity verification).

The regime is untouched: eligibilityGate is an orthogonal field, freeType and every budget
stay as they were, so routing behavior is unchanged by this PR.

What changed

• Catalog — new optional eligibilityGate field on free-model rows ("regional-identity"
  today) and two new totals from computeFreeModelTotals(): gatedRecurringTokens and
  gatedProviders. Gated rows are pool-deduped with the same rule as the steady bucket and are
  excluded from steadyRecurringTokens.
• ModelScope — 2 rows added, pool modelscope-free, 6,000,000 tokens/mo (250 魔粒/day → 6M/mo),
  freeType: recurring-daily, tos: caution, eligibilityGate: regional-identity, with an
  // evidence: comment citing the provider's own page.
• Docs gate — check-docs-counts-sync now validates the gated line alongside the steady/pool
  claims, so the "+~6M behind regional identity verification" sentence cannot drift.
• Budget-card SVG generator — scripts/research/gen-budget-card-svg.mjs rewritten to read
  computeFreeModelTotals() instead of regex-parsing the catalog file. The old regex silently
  skipped 20 rows and printed 1.44B; the generator now emits the real totals plus a gated
  line. docs/screenshots/free-tier-budget-card.svg is regenerated from it.
• Dashboard — FreeBudgetCard renders the gated figure as a callout under the headline, behind
  the new i18n key freeBudget.gated (translated in vi; 39 locales carry the usual
  __MISSING__ sentinel until the translation batch runs).
• Radar feed — eligibilityGate carried through the feed schema, applyFeed() merge and the
  /api/free-tier/summary passthrough, with the documented semantics: absent preserves,
  null clears, override wins.
• FREE_TIERS.md — TL;DR row for the gated bucket, an "Eligibility-gated quotas" methodology
  bullet, and a new "Why our number is smaller than other aggregators'" section explaining the
  pool-dedupe rule (our own catalog summed per model would read ~7.4B).
• A companion radar-server PR follows separately (feed producer side).

Numbers (live, from computeFreeModelTotals() on this branch)

Metric	Value
Steady recurring	1,473,225,000 (~1.47B) — unchanged by this PR
First month (with signup credits)	2,099,725,000 (~2.10B)
Gated (new)	6,000,000 (modelscope)
Catalog entries	444 (437 active + 7 discontinued)
Recurring pool keys	34
Free-forever providers	52 — gated providers excluded from the free-forever set by this PR (was 53)

The ~1.47B/2.10B figures come from PR1 + the base's #12591 (Cerebras reclassified as a one-time $5
signup credit); this PR moves neither.

Note on free-forever = 52 (was 53): the gate used to build that set from freeType alone, so
the gated provider was counted as "free forever" even though its tokens are not in the headline.
This PR excludes eligibility-gated rows from the set, so every headline-adjacent figure — steady,
first month, credits, uncapped list and free-forever — now honors the gate consistently.

Depends on

Depends on #12649 (PR1, the free-tier quota re-audit) — this branch already contains it
(merged in, conflicts resolved, numbers re-synced through the gate).

Validation

Check	Result
npm run check:docs-counts	exit 0
npm run check:docs-sync	exit 0
npm run check:provider-consistency	exit 0
npm run typecheck:core	exit 0
npm run check:dashboard-typecheck	exit 0
Focused unit tests (15 files, node:test)	203 pass / 0 fail
npx vitest run tests/unit/ui/free-budget-card-gated.test.tsx	2 pass
npm run i18n:check-ui-coverage	exit 0
ESLint (with suppressions) on the 23 changed .ts/.tsx)	0 errors

Focused tests run: free-model-catalog-gated-bucket, free-tier-reaudit-2026-09,
free-providers-batch-2026-07, check-docs-counts-sync, gen-budget-card-svg,
radar-feed-eligibility-gate, radar-apply-feed, radar-localized-feed, radar-sync,
free-tier-summary-radar-overlay, free-tier-summary-route, free-model-catalog,
free-tier-catalog, i18n-vi-completeness, removed-providers-blocklist.

Full suites and the production build are left to CI.

⚠️ base-red inherited: #12581

Follow-ups

• The "~7.4B unsummed" comparison figure in FREE_TIERS.md is not CI-gated — re-measure it
  whenever the catalog changes (a note next to it says so).
• ModelScope model ids were validated against modelscope.cn's model API, not the API-Inference
  /v1/models list (needs a key) — confirm one id live before enabling routing by default.
• The vi translations of the new i18n strings need a native-speaker review.
• Pre-existing: FreeBudgetCard contains a hardcoded Chinese literal (not introduced here).

CI triage (run 33831114014 on ed1bc26, base release/v3.8.51 @ c41ec7f)

Check	Verdict
Docs Gates (fast-path), Vitest (fast-path), Change Classification, No new ESLint warnings, semgrep	green
Unit Tests fast-path — free-catalog-no-confidence-field rejected the new eligibilityGate key	ours, fixed in ed1bc26 (key registered in the allowlist: it says who may claim a quota, not how much a row can be trusted)
Fast Quality Gates / API Route Typecheck — open-sse/executors/glm.ts TS2554	inherited (#12179 on the base; not in this diff)
Fast Quality Gates — mutation-test-coverage: tests/unit/reset-aware-request-scope-12600.test.ts missing from stryker.conf.json	inherited (#12600/#12637 landed on the base after this branch; file not in this diff)
Fast Quality Gates — complexity-ratchets open-sse/services/genericQuotaFetcher.ts 0 → 1	inherited: the file is not in this diff (base moved 25 commits since the merge-base)
Merge integrity — changelog.d/fixes/reset-aware-model-family.md must start with a bullet	inherited (fragment from #12637 on the base; not in this diff)
Unit Tests fast-path (1–4/4) — 16 failing tests (stream-failure sanitization, credential redaction, HuggingChat/Kiro/codex-image boundaries, model-sync route)	inherited: the same set fails on #12649's final run and on unrelated branches (runs 33825690606, 33825612505); none of the files are in this diff