Zen now allows you to define `roles` for an external CLI and delegate work to another CLI via the new `clink` tool (short for `CLI + Link`). Gemini, for instance, offers 1000 free requests a day - this means you can save on tokens and your weekly limits within Claude Code by delegating work to another entirely capable CLI agent!
Define your own system prompts as `roles` and make another CLI do anything you'd like. Like the current tool you're connected to, the other CLI has complete access to your files and the current context. This also works incredibly well with Zen's `conversation continuity`.
feat: Azure OpenAI / Azure AI Foundry support. Models should be defined in conf/azure_models.json (or a custom path). See .env.example for environment variables or see readme. https://github.com/BeehiveInnovations/zen-mcp-server/issues/265
feat: OpenRouter / Custom Models / Azure can separately also use custom config paths now (see .env.example )
refactor: Model registry class made abstract, OpenRouter / Custom Provider / Azure OpenAI now subclass these
refactor: breaking change: `is_custom` property has been removed from model_capabilities.py (and thus custom_models.json) given each models are now read from separate configuration files
fix: restrictions should resolve canonical names for openrouter
fix: tools now correctly return restricted list by presenting model names in schema
fix: tests updated to ensure these manage their expected env vars properly
perf: cache model alias resolution to avoid repeated checks
Adds support for OpenAI's GPT-5-Codex model which uses the new Responses API
endpoint (/v1/responses) instead of the standard Chat Completions API.
Changes:
- Add GPT-5-Codex to MODEL_CAPABILITIES with 400K context, 128K output
- Prioritize GPT-5-Codex for EXTENDED_REASONING tasks
- Add aliases: codex, gpt5-codex, gpt-5-code
- Update tests to expect GPT-5-Codex for extended reasoning
Benefits:
- 40-80% cost savings through Responses API caching
- 3% better performance on coding tasks (SWE-bench)
- Leverages existing dual-API infrastructure
