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docs: add Model fallback configuration guide - #1309
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stephenvapiai wants to merge 2 commits into
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Why this gap, and what was excluded
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What changed
Adds a new help center page, Model fallback configuration (
fern/customization/model-fallback-plan.mdx), and wires it intofern/docs.ymlunder Documentation → Assistants → Model configurations, right after the existing Voice/Transcriber fallback pages.Why (customer evidence)
Over the last 7 days, "Language Model Providers" was the top-volume Ask AI (
docs.vapi.ai) topic (197 conversations this week vs. 127 the prior week vs. a ~131/week trailing-4-week baseline — an accelerating topic, not a one-off spike).Most of that volume is customers successfully getting answers about which models each provider supports (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Groq, MiniMax, xAI, Mistral, etc.) — that content already exists and is accurate on the individual
/providers/model/*pages, so it isn't the gap.Within that same topic, a recurring cluster of distinct customers asked specifically about model-level fallback (
fallbackModels/fallbackPlanon themodelobject) and the Ask AI assistant could not answer:fallbackModelslist on the model object" — outcome: refusedfallbackModels" — bot found no documentation forfallbackModelsorfallbackPlan— outcome: refusedI verified against the live Create Assistant API reference that
fallbackModelsis a real, documented field — but only onOpenAIModel(list of fallback model IDs) andAnthropicBedrockModel(at most one same-provider fallback). No other provider schema exposes it. Meanwhile Vapi already ships dedicated guides for the analogous features on the other two pipeline components (voice-fallback-plan.mdx,customization/transcriber-fallback-plan.mdx) — there was no equivalent page for models, which is exactly the shape of confusion customers hit (they expected afallbackPlan-style page like voice/transcriber have, and the assistant had nothing to cite).This is a missing content gap, not a wording tweak:
fallbackModelspreviously only appeared in changelog entries and a Simulations example, never in a standalone how-to guide.Scope / what this intentionally does NOT claim
OpenAIModel,AnthropicBedrockModel) that actually exposefallbackModelsin the live API schema — verified directly against the Create Assistant API reference, not assumed.Excluded candidates (per review scope)
Other candidate gaps touching security, auth/authorization, data privacy, or compliance topics (e.g. a customer support request for architecture/security/data-retention documentation, and the separate
Compliance Planstaxonomy bucket) were intentionally skipped for this PR and not drafted, per the review's exclusion criteria for that category.Checks done
list_commitson the two sibling fallback pages,search_codeforfallbackModels,list_pull_requests).maintip (d9efddec9207511d8e6c249fbdad82db30f89f35) and recheckedmainhadn't moved immediately before branching.fallbackModelsschema (allowed values, per-provider availability) directly against/api-reference/assistants/create.