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LLM Model Guide

Model Fallback

How a Mate switches to a backup model when its model does not reply, and how Owners and Admins choose that backup.

Last updated 15 days ago

Occasionally, AI providers experience temporary overloads, timeouts, or outages. Instead of interrupting your workflow with a red error message, allmates.ai uses Model Fallback to automatically switch to a backup model. This ensures your Mates can always reply to your prompts without delay, providing a seamless and reliable collaboration experience.

How it works in the chat

For standard users, the Model Fallback process is completely invisible and requires no manual action. If your Mate's primary model is unavailable, the conversation simply continues using the backup model.

To maintain total transparency, you can easily spot when a fallback has occurred:

  • Look for a small amber icon in the message header, located next to the token counter.
  • Hover over the icon to reveal a tooltip. This will tell you exactly which backup model generated the response and which original provider was unavailable.

Configuring Model Fallback (Owners and Admins)

By default, Model Fallback is enabled and set to Automatic for all organizations. If you are an organization Owner or Admin, you can customize this behavior to fit your team's specific needs.

  1. At the top of the sidebar, click your organization's name.
  2. Click Settings.
  3. Open the Models management tab, then the Settings sub-tab.
  4. Locate the Fallback model dropdown, just below the Default model field.
  5. Select your preferred fallback behavior, then click Save.

Available options

The dropdown has two groups: Behavior and Models.

Option

What it does

Automatic

(Default) "Automatic fallback managed by Allmates."

None

"No fallback, the error is surfaced to the user." If a model fails, the standard error message is displayed, and the user retries manually.

A model of the list

You choose one of your organization's models from the Models group to always act as the backup. The current default model is not in this list. Deprecated models are greyed out and cannot be picked.

Important details

  • Scope: Currently, Model Fallback applies only to standard conversations with Native Mates. It does not yet cover specialized features like Image Generation or Web Search.
  • Single-level fallback: There is only one level of backup. In the rare event that both the primary model and the fallback model fail, the standard error message will be displayed.
  • Fallback tag: In the Models sub-tab of Models management, the Fallback tag marks the model you chose. You cannot delete this model while it is the fallback model.

💡 Tip: If your Mates must stay on specific models, pick one of your own models in the Models group. The fallback then never uses a model outside your list.

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