Codestral 2508 is the measured default. Gemini 3 Flash Preview is the fallback candidate. DeepSeek V4 Pro is rejected for exceeding the complete-run budget. The external-repository run additionally caused bounded Markdown batch concurrency; no validation rule or schema was relaxed.
The user explicitly authorized live comparison. Each run keeps the existing $0.50 total cost ceiling and 15-minute total latency ceiling. Provider output remains fail-closed and redacted in reports.