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Model Aliases ​

ZenMux now ships a model alias feature. Coding Agents such as Claude Code and Codex can be pointed at ZenMux without separately mapping model names — the alias makes each ZenMux model answer to the exact id that the downstream tool expects.

What It Means for You ​

Using Claude Code as an example:

  1. No more manual model-id rewriting. You no longer have to write anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6 just to satisfy Claude Code.
  2. Effort control works. Budget control and reasoning-intensity knobs (effort) take effect normally.
  3. No extra mapping layer. You don't have to maintain a model-name translation table in the downstream tool.

Why This Mattered Before ​

Claude Code gates certain features on a hardcoded check against the model name. Take reasoning effort control: the trigger is detecting a model named claude-sonnet-4-6. When ZenMux previously exposed the same model as anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6, the string didn't match, and the feature silently turned off.

The same thing happens with the 1M context window — if the name isn't what Claude Code expects, the extended window never activates and you fall back to the default 200K tokens.

How Aliases Fix It ​

The alias makes claude-sonnet-4-6 fully equivalent to anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6. Claude Code's validator sees the string it wants, the check passes, and effort / 1M context / everything else works as designed.

Commonly used aliases for the official Claude family:

AliasFull ZenMux Model ID
claude-opus-4-7anthropic/claude-opus-4.7
claude-sonnet-4-6anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6
claude-haiku-4-5anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5

Rule of Thumb

  • Using a native Claude model inside Claude Code (or another Claude-native Coding Agent): no need to set a model name at all — Claude Code's defaults already use aliases that match ZenMux.
  • Using a non-native model inside the same tool (e.g., gpt-5.3-codex inside Claude Code): you still have to set the full ZenMux model id manually, since there is no alias that the tool recognizes out of the box.

How to Look Up an Alias ​

Every model's detail page on ZenMux lists the aliases it currently supports. Open the model page and check the Aliases section:

Model alias displayed on a ZenMux model detail page

Aliases are curated and maintained by ZenMux. If you need a new alias for your workflow, feel free to send us a request — see the Contact Us page.

Example: Claude Code ​

bash
# ✅ Use aliases so Claude Code unlocks 1M context, effort control, and other features
export ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_HAIKU_MODEL="claude-haiku-4-5"
export ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_SONNET_MODEL="claude-sonnet-4-6"
export ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL="claude-opus-4-7"

After editing, reload your shell (source ~/.zshrc or source ~/.bashrc) and restart Claude Code.

For end-to-end Claude Code setup, see the Claude Code Integration guide.