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Question: Does model: in agent frontmatter and task() calls control model selection? #2564

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@TheTrustedAdvisor

Question

Does the model: property in .agent.md frontmatter and the model parameter in task() calls actually control which model is used?

Observed Behavior

Testing with Copilot CLI v1.0.19:

Context model: specified Actual model
Agent frontmatter model: claude-haiku-4.5 haiku 4.5 Sonnet 4.6 (session default)
Agent frontmatter model: claude-opus-4.6 opus 4.6 Sonnet 4.6 (session default)
task() parameter model: "claude-haiku-4.5" haiku 4.5 Sonnet (per sub-agent self-report)

All agents and sub-agents appear to run on the session default model regardless of explicit model configuration.

Expected Behavior

Per the custom agents configuration docs, model is a supported property. We expected it to route the agent to the specified model.

Questions

  1. Is model: in frontmatter intended to be honored? Or is it overridden by auto-selection?
  2. Does model in task() calls route sub-agents to different models?
  3. What is the correct way for a plugin to request different model tiers for different agents (e.g., haiku for search, opus for architecture review)?
  4. Does the user need a specific Copilot plan tier for multi-model agent routing to work?

Context

Building a multi-agent orchestration plugin (28 agents) that assigns different model tiers based on task complexity. The model routing appears to have no effect.

Related: #2563 (tools: enforcement)

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