kagent install uses retired Anthropic model claude-3-5-haiku-20241022 with no validation

[tjorourke]

Summary

kagent install with the Anthropic provider deploys claude-3-5-haiku-20241022 which Anthropic has retired. Every agent fails immediately with:

Error code: 404 - {'type': 'error', 'error': {'type': 'not_found_error', 'message': 'model: claude-3-5-haiku-20241022'}}

Root cause

The model is hardcoded in helm/kagent/values.yaml:

anthropic:
  provider: Anthropic
  model: "claude-3-5-haiku-20241022"   # retired

Impact

A fresh kagent install --profile demo --provider anthropic is broken out of the box. The user sees no error during install — the failure only surfaces when they try to chat with an agent.

Two requested fixes

1. Update the default model to the current Haiku release:

anthropic:
  model: "claude-haiku-4-5-20251001"   # Haiku 4.5 — current

2. Add model validation at install time — before writing the ModelConfig into the cluster, make a lightweight API call to verify the model ID is active. This catches retired or mistyped model names immediately with a clear error, rather than silently deploying a broken configuration that only fails mid-chat.

Error: Anthropic model 'claude-3-5-haiku-20241022' is not available.
Did you mean 'claude-haiku-4-5-20251001'? Run 'kagent models list --provider anthropic' to see available models.

Workaround

kubectl patch modelconfig default-model-config -n kagent \
  --type=merge \
  -p "{\"spec\":{\"model\":\"claude-haiku-4-5-20251001\"}}"```