Restores ChatGPT Web on a clean-room browser transport, merged on the operator's explicit decision.
Worth stating precisely, because this touches a provenance decision: the PR does not revert #11754. It narrows RETIRED_COMMON_CHATGPT_WEB_PROVIDER_IDS to the single GPL-derived alias cgpt-web and registers chatgpt-web as a separate clean-room id. The old implementation stays retired and blocked; the retirement machinery, its error code and its 410 contract are untouched. All four retirement suites agree with that distinction and pass unchanged.
The 44 protected agent-instruction surfaces this PR touches (AGENTS.md, llm.txt and its 42 mirrors, README) were verified rather than trusted: masking digits and comparing the removed and added line sets gives 264 lines on each side, identical — every change is a provider-count substitution, with no sentence added, removed or reworded.
Reconciled on merge: clean against the tip, with the two chat chokepoints this PR grows (src/sse/handlers/chat.ts +40, open-sse/handlers/chatCore.ts +30) recorded in the file-size baseline under an annotation. Verified that exactly those two caps move and nothing else, so the #12411 ratchet holds. The rebaseline is carried on this branch rather than left in a validation worktree — the propagation mistake that put the 2026-09-02 merge waves base-red in #12434.
Verified: 504/504 across the PR's 44 test files plus all four chatgpt-web retirement suites, check:provider-consistency OK (272 REGISTRY entries, 355 canonical providers), check-file-size OK, and every changed TypeScript file parses.
Thanks @backryun — separating the clean-room id from the retired alias, instead of reopening the old one, is what made this reviewable.
Rebased onto the current release/v3.8.51 tip as part of a combined provider-retirement/provenance merge batch (Designer Web, Felo Web, Runtime, GPL-derived removal, Qwen Web already landed). Large conflict set (this is the biggest PR in the batch — the common ChatGPT Web provider touches chat, images, count-tokens, session leases, and combos). Conflicts resolved:
- `open-sse/config/providers/registry/chatgpt-web/*`, `open-sse/executors/chatgpt-web*`, `open-sse/handlers/imageGeneration/providers/chatgptWeb.ts`, and their tests: kept deleted, matching the PR's stated scope.
- `open-sse/config/providers/registry/minimax/web/index.ts`, `open-sse/handlers/imageGeneration/providers/geminiWeb.ts`, `open-sse/executors/gemini-web.ts`'s stale image-mode branch: base-drift collisions against already-merged sibling retirements (#11691, #11708) — kept deleted / dropped the dead code, since this PR's own branch forked before those merged.
- `src/shared/constants/reservedProviderPrefixes.ts`, `open-sse/executors/index.ts`, `executorProxy.ts`, `virtualFactory.ts`, `autoStrategy.ts`, `src/lib/db/providers.ts`, `src/sse/handlers/chat.ts`: combined the Designer + Runtime (Felo/Qwen) + common-ChatGPT-Web retirement guard calls at each shared chokepoint — compute-once-then-OR pattern, consistent with prior combinations in this batch.
- `src/sse/services/model.ts` / `src/sse/handlers/chatHelpers.ts`: adopted this PR's new `getModelInfoOrRetirementResponse()` central wrapper (a real improvement over ad-hoc try/catch), and extended it to also catch the Designer + Runtime retirement errors it didn't originally cover, so the consolidation doesn't regress the other two mechanisms.
- `src/app/api/v1/images/edits/route.ts`: this PR moved the retirement check earlier (before `enforceApiKeyPolicy`) but left the old later call+catch block in place from base drift — removed the now-redundant duplicate `resolveImageRouteModel()` call and merged the Designer catch into the earlier one.
- `open-sse/config/imageRegistry.ts`, `tests/snapshots/executors/executor-map.json` (`keyCount` recomputed to 133), `tests/snapshots/provider/translate-path.json`: same "both sides inserted a different retired provider at the same slot" pattern — resolved by dropping both.
- `tests/unit/chatcore-executor-proxy.test.ts`, `provider-node-reserved-prefix.test.ts`, `combo-auto-candidate-expansion.test.ts`, `messages-count-tokens-route.test.ts`, `virtual-auto-combo.test.ts`: split into independent per-mechanism test blocks (established pattern); `virtual-auto-combo.test.ts`'s old "includes cookie web-session providers" positive-inclusion test (which used chatgpt-web as its example) was retired along with the provider and replaced by this PR's negative-exclusion test for the same slot.
- `docs/architecture/ARCHITECTURE.md`, `CODEBASE_DOCUMENTATION.md` (+ 4 i18n mirrors), `README.md`, `FREE-TIERS-GUIDE.md`, `docs/diagrams/free-tier-budget.svg`, `docs/screenshots/free-tier-budget-card.svg`, `docs/reference/PROVIDER_REFERENCE.md`: recomputed every stale count from the real merged state — 104 executors (`countFiles` gate logic), 351 providers (regenerated via `gen:provider-reference`), 152/351 `hasFree` entries, 445/438/7 free-tier catalog rows, 13 ToS-avoid providers, budget-card regenerated via its real generator script. One doc conflict (`oauth/` module list) needed picking HEAD's side specifically — theirs still listed the already-removed `raycast` module instead of the real `openference`.
- `config/quality/test-masking-allowlist.json`: additive merge of the PR's 17 `_deletedWithReplacement` entries alongside the batch's existing ones (one real duplicate-key mistake in my first pass, caught and fixed via a `object_pairs_hook` duplicate-key check before finalizing).
Also fixed two real, unrelated-to-my-merge issues surfaced by the focused suite:
- `tests/unit/resolve-web-provider-host.test.ts`: the PR's own test had a typo — it asserted `perplexity-web`'s resolved host as `"perplexity.ai"`, but the provider's registered `website` is `"https://www.perplexity.ai"` and the resolver returns the URL's `host` verbatim (no www-stripping), so the correct value is `"www.perplexity.ai"` (consistent with the same test's own `url` assertion).
- `tests/unit/hard-session-lease-bypass-inventory.test.ts`: this golden call-site inventory was already stale on the pristine post-#11713 tip (confirmed via a throwaway probe worktree) — `src/lib/db/providers.ts`'s 3 connection-fallback sites and a third `src/app/api/providers/route.ts` site were never added to the golden list by the earlier-merged #11698/#11720 PRs. Updated it to the real current inventory (dated inline comments explain each delta and which PR introduced it), plus this PR's own legitimate deltas (image-edits duplicate-call removal, `ChatGptWebExecutor.execute()` site removed).
Focused suite green (433/433 across executor-proxy, reserved-prefix, hard-session-lease-bypass-inventory, resolve-web-provider-host, retirement/runtime-block/source-retirement/management-retirement/image-handler-retirement, migration-168, combo-auto-candidate-expansion, virtual-auto-combo, executor-map-golden and siblings), plus `typecheck:core`, `check-file-size`, and `check-changelog-integrity` clean. Thanks for the thorough provenance-hold retirement work — appreciated.
