[afonic]

Why

mergeConfigFrom merges top-level keys only. A site that published config/tolk.php to change any value, concurrency for example, froze the whole model catalog: no later release of Tolk could add a model there or fix a price or a request option.

1.0.0-beta.1's copy shows the cost. It sends Claude Haiku 5.5 the between_tools thinking option, which Anthropic refuses (T13.4), so Haiku calls fail on every site that published the config from beta.1.

What changes

• Tolk's catalog moves from config/tolk.php to resources/models.php, which only Tolk releases change. config/tolk.php ships models.anthropic, models.openai and models.gemini as empty lists.
• ModelCatalog::forProvider() merges a site's entries into Tolk's by id:
  • An entry with the id of one of Tolk's models replaces only the top-level keys it names and keeps its place. The model's other keys still get Tolk's updates. options and price are replaced whole.
  • An entry with any other id adds a model after Tolk's models, so Tolk's first model of each tier stays the default. A site can change that by giving Tolk's model another tier, or by choosing a model in the settings.
  • An entry without a string id is ignored.
• A site can no longer remove one of Tolk's models.
• The tests that replaced a provider's catalog, or edited it by index, now change Tolk's entries by id. A missing tier is now tested by giving Tolk's model another tier. RequestShapeTest read the config's list, which is now empty, so it passed without sending a request; it now reads the catalog.
• Docs: configuration.md (the catalog section, an example, and a note for configs published from 1.0.0-beta.1), troubleshooting.md, the Boost guideline and CHANGELOG.md, which tells beta.1 sites to delete their copied models entries or keep only the keys they changed.

Tracked as T11.6 in TASKS.md.

Not in this PR

• A catalog feed published by Reach and cached by each site, so that Automatic follows new models without a release.
• Using the providers' model lists for availability and retirement notices.

Checks

• vendor/bin/pest --parallel: 3,345 passed
• vendor/bin/pint --test: clean
• npm run cp:build: no change to resources/dist/build
• Sandbox, through tinker: a site that reprices Claude Sonnet 5.5 keeps Sonnet's other keys, an added Claude Opus 5.5 is listed after Haiku, and Sonnet stays the quality default. tolk:doctor reports OK.