Evidence record / openhands
A dated record of one change, kept so the writing that cites it can be checked. Compiled from the sources listed below by the research run, not written for reading. The judgment lives in the issues that cite it, below.
2026-08-17-openhands-the-default-model-changed-twice-in-fourteen-days-both-times-to-a-free
The default model changed twice in fourteen days, both times to a free OpenHands-routed endpoint.
Agent Canvas's default LLM moved from MiniMax M2.7 to openhands/glm-5.2 in v1.10.0 (PR #16146, merged 2026-08-03) and from GLM 5.2 to openhands/kimi-k3 in v1.14.0 (PR #16657, merged 2026-08-17). Both PRs change DEFAULT_SETTINGS.llm_model, the agent_settings default, and ONBOARDING_DEFAULT_LLM_MODEL, and both add the new model to FREE_OPENHANDS_MODELS listed first. In between, v1.12.0 shipped a single feature (PR #16281) whose stated purpose was that 'only the OpenHands-routed endpoints are free' and that users were confusing openhands/glm-5.2 with similarly named non-OpenHands provider endpoints. The Enterprise SaaS default moved to GLM 5.2 on the same footing (Enterprise 0.41.0 release notes, OpenHands/enterprise PR #89).
Channel: tagged-release. Ancestry: PR #16657 merge commit 8989bf3bb5762041baa52b91ecf1f347f9360db4 (merged 2026-08-17T19:12:29Z); gh api compare/8989bf3bb5762041baa52b91ecf1f347f9360db4...v1.14.0 returns status ahead, ahead_by 1, behind_by 0. PR #16146 merge commit 246dbd48c3705511b2c1c94f113072f1184027f5 (merged 2026-08-03T21:04:10Z); compare/246dbd48c...v1.10.0 returns status ahead, ahead_by 21, behind_by 0. PR #16281 merge commit 7d897d766990088da90af1a697b6293a107442e7; compare/7d897d766...v1.12.0 returns status ahead, ahead_by 1, behind_by 0. All three tags are non-prerelease GitHub releases.
Operator consequence: Pin, don't inherit. If you run Agent Canvas and never set llm_model in your profile, the model underneath your agents changed twice in fourteen days -- including a change to a model family from a different vendor -- and the change arrives on upgrade with no migration note. Set llm_model explicitly in the profile for anything whose output you compare across time, and note that the free tier is free only through the openhands/ prefix; the same model name from a direct provider endpoint bills you.
Receipt
Finding metadata
Run: 2026-08-17-weekly-digest-2026-08-10_2026-08-17-frontier-v0
Finding ID: 2026-08-17-openhands-the-default-model-changed-twice-in-fourteen-days-both-times-to-a-free
Source links
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Versioned source: run artifact