[Feature]: Allow arbitrary global ordering of favorite models across providers

[juliusmarminge]

Originally filed as issue #18590 by @LouisDeconinck: #18590

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Before submitting

• I searched existing issues and did not find a duplicate.
• I am describing a concrete problem or use case, not just a vague idea.

Area

apps/web

Problem or use case

T3 Code lets users favorite models and reorder models within an individual provider, but the Favorites view does not support an arbitrary global order across provider instances.

For example, I may want my Favorites list to be:

1. Claude Opus
2. GPT Codex
3. Gemini
4. Claude Sonnet
5. another OpenCode model

Today, that ordering cannot be expressed if those models belong to different providers. The Favorites picker is effectively constrained by provider-instance ordering, while the model-order preference is scoped per provider.

This matters especially for users who intentionally use several harnesses/providers and treat Favorites as their small cross-provider working set. In that workflow, the provider a model comes from is less important than the user's own preferred model priority.

Proposed solution

Allow users to define a single arbitrary order for all favorited models, independent of provider/provider-instance order.

A suitable UI could be either:

• drag-and-drop directly in the Favorites list, or
• Move up / Move down controls similar to the existing model ordering controls in provider settings.

The persisted order should use the full provider-instance + model identity so identical model slugs from different provider instances remain distinct.

Implementation-wise, this could be represented by a dedicated global favorite-order preference, or by making the ordering of the existing favorites collection authoritative. The important behavior is that the Favorites picker respects a user-defined cross-provider sequence.

Why this matters

Favorites are most useful as a short, curated list of the models a user actually switches between. If the list is still grouped/ordered by provider, users with several providers cannot arrange it according to capability, cost, speed, or their own workflow.

For multi-provider setups, a global order also makes keyboard navigation and quick model switching much more predictable.

Smallest useful scope

On web/desktop:

1. Persist a global order for favorited models.
2. Add simple up/down controls (drag-and-drop can come later).
3. Respect that order when the Favorites rail/view is selected in the model picker.

No changes to ordering inside the individual provider tabs are required.

Alternatives considered

• Reorder provider instances: this only moves whole provider groups and cannot interleave models from different providers.
• Reorder models inside each provider: this controls ordering within that provider, but still cannot produce an arbitrary cross-provider Favorites sequence.
• Favorite models in a particular sequence: the picker does not currently treat favorite creation order as the global display order.

Risks or tradeoffs

A global favorite order needs stable identities for models across provider instances. T3 already distinguishes favorites by provider instance + model, so this seems compatible with the existing model identity scheme.

Newly favorited models would also need a deterministic insertion position; appending them to the end of the Favorites list would be the least surprising default.

Examples or references

Related but different issues found during duplicate search:

• [Feature]: Support options in model favorites #3035 — support options in model favorites
• [Bug]: Favorited legacy models stay buried in the Legacy section instead of hoisting to the top (web) #11925 — favorited legacy models should be hoisted
• [Bug]: Model favorites and hidden models silently fail to save on servers older than #16816 #18576 — model preference persistence against older servers

None of these provide arbitrary ordering across providers.

Contribution

• I would be open to helping implement this.