Pathrule Auto

Auto is one thing you pick instead of a decision you make every turn. Select it once and Pathrule chooses which engine and which model runs each message.

It routes over what you already pay for

This is the part that separates it from a per-prompt API router. Auto does not send your work to a catalogue of hosted models billed by the token. It routes over the local, subscription-limited engines you already have installed and signed into: the same Claude Code, Codex, Grok, Kimi, Antigravity and OpenCode you would have picked by hand.

So the resource it is being thrifty with is your existing plan, not a new bill.

Sticky on purpose

A stateless router picks the best model for each prompt in isolation. That works when a prompt is a prompt. It does not work here, because switching engine mid-conversation is a real context handoff: the new engine has to be given the thread rather than simply continuing it.

So Auto is deliberately sticky. It stays on the engine already driving the thread, and leaves only when that engine is genuinely no longer an option: its limit is reached, you signed out, or it is no longer installed.

Even then it does not move for a small difference. Another engine's best option has to beat the current one by a real margin before Auto pays the cost of a handoff, which is what stops it flip-flopping between two nearly equal choices and losing the thread's continuity each time.

Models change every turn, engines do not

Inside one engine, changing model is cheap: it is an override on the next turn, with no handoff at all. So that is where Auto does most of its work.

Each turn is read for what it actually needs:

• Complexity, from trivial to hard.
• Vision, when the turn carries images only a multimodal model can read.
• Long context, when the assembled context is large enough to need a big window rather than a fast one.

A cost and quality dial decides how those needs are weighed, and it leans thrifty by default: a trivial turn does not get the expensive model just because it is available.

A small pool, on purpose

Auto chooses from a curated set rather than the full model picker: roughly a cheap, a middle and a strong rung per engine. A router that can reach forty models produces choices nobody can explain; one that reaches nine or ten produces choices you can predict.

One deliberate omission is worth stating: a model that would bill to usage credits rather than run inside your plan's limits stays out of the pool, even when it is technically available to your account. Auto is not allowed to spend credits you did not agree to spend. Picking that model stays a manual choice.

Where it applies

Auto is not only a Chat setting. The same policy runs in the Tasks board, in scheduled runs, and in work drained from another device, so a card that runs while you are asleep makes the same choices you would have got in front of the app.