Free plan: pricey models now fall back instead of failing
If you are on the free plan and pick a model that needs a paid plan, Portail no longer stops you with an error. It answers with a lighter model from the same maker instead and marks the reply as switched, so you can see what happened and upgrade if you want the original.
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Free plan: choosing a flagship model now gets an answer from a cheaper model, not an error.
A small Switched badge on the reply shows which model you asked for.
Portail v2.7.7 shipped on 2026-10-24 as a patch release focused on free plan: pricey models now fall back instead of failing. If you are on the free plan and pick a model that needs a paid plan, Portail no longer stops you with an error. It answers with a lighter model from the same maker instead and marks the reply as switched, so you can see what happened and upgrade if you want the original. The work is recorded here because small releases are still product history. They change how people sign in, read responses, pay for access, share conversations, open files, or trust the system when something goes wrong.
The main changes were direct: free plan: choosing a flagship model now gets an answer from a cheaper model, not an error, and a small switched badge on the reply shows which model you asked for. That list is intentionally plain. It names what changed without turning the release into theatre. When a release fixes a build, a redirect, a storage path, or a UI edge case, the value is often that users stop noticing the problem. The archive keeps that invisible work visible enough for future debugging and for anyone checking whether Portail has cared about the details over time.
This version also fits into the wider Portail contract. One account, one chat history, and one model picker only work if the smaller pieces keep their promises. Authentication has to fail clearly. Billing has to count honestly. Uploads have to arrive in a form models can read. Admin tools have to show the operator what happened instead of hiding it behind a blank screen. v2.7.7 moved that contract forward in its own narrow lane.
The screenshots attached to this entry show the public release record as it now appears on portail.cc. For older releases, this archive was rebuilt from the git history, package version changes, release modal text, and commit subjects. That means the page is honest about its source: it documents the shipped change and preserves the record going forward, even when the exact old production screen cannot be recreated from a single saved image.
The practical result is simple. Someone landing on this page can see the version number, date, release tier, headline, highlights, and a real rendered screenshot of the archive page. Search engines can index the post through the canonical URL, sitemap entry, and structured data. Future releases now have a standard to meet before deploy, so the history should get cleaner from here instead of fuzzier.