Pippa can't observe her own downtime
When any primary brain is degraded, asking that same brain to report its own status is already unreliable. The fallback chain does not depend on self-observation; it tries the configured brains in order.
The chain
- Codex (most stable for background tasks)
- Claude
- Grok
- Kimi
- Gemini API key (insurance, explicitly enabled only)
Stops on first success. Logs which brain handled it. Daily/weekly tasks see the fallback in the logs and adjust ordering if a brain is consistently dropping requests.
The current unattended chain is Codex → Claude → Grok → Kimi. Gemini and Ollama remain first-class for 1:1 and Family Council, but they are not subscription-chain legs. Gemini API insurance is tried last only when its explicit toggle is enabled.
The principle: Self-observation has a blind spot when you're observing the same component you depend on. Fallbacks are how you handle the blind spot — try the alternatives until one works, no introspection required.