Routing modes

Each AI has its own mode, set in its editor. The mode is the consent: it decides, up front, what routing may do.

Mode	What it may do
Auto - Offline Only	Never touches the internet. Picks among your installed models by how each runs on this machine - full speed, GPU + RAM, or too large. The mode name is the promise.
Auto - Online and Offline	Answers with a frontier online model by default and keeps a question on your device when a model here is better for it, by the rules. Health questions never go online; attachments stay home unless you say otherwise.
Auto - My Hardware	Appears when you've connected your own server: routes across this device and your machines, never the online relay.
A specific model	No routing at all - that model answers everything. A pinned offline model stays offline, full stop.

What "offline only" means in practice

An offline-only AI makes no network requests for a reply, ever. In project sessions it stays off the web too - the agent's web search is refused, and the rail says so, rather than quietly routing around the promise. The app's own routing check holds it to that: an offline-only AI sends nothing online on any dial.

What "online and offline" means in practice

Online is the default for an ordinary question, not the exception. The rules decide which online model takes it - everyday, hard, or the live web - and the one dial decides how much stays home: Frontier-first, Balanced, or Local-first, where online is for the live web alone. The mode is the consent; the dial is the leaning. The reply always names where it ran.