A whisper-server model could not be used by the id /v1/models advertises for
it. Asking for it reported the weights as a missing HuggingFace repository:

    500 Transcription error: whisper-large-v3-turbo-q8_0.bin is not a local
    folder and is not a valid model identifier listed on
    'https://huggingface.co/models'

which reads like a broken download and is nothing of the kind. One
whisper-server is described by TWO models.json rows: a RUNNER, carrying
model_path + server_path + port, registered under its id (whisper0..whisper3
here); and a MODEL row naming the weights, which registration skips on purpose
as "the model config, not a runner". But /v1/models takes its id from the model
row -- so the published name was the one name that matched nothing: not a
runner key, not an alias. The lookup missed, and the request fell through to
the generic audio path, which can only interpret a string it does not
recognise as a hub repo id.

Now every name that identifies the same runner resolves to it: its own id, an
alias (round-robin as before), and the weights by full path, basename, or
basename without extension. Where several runners share one file, naming the
file prefers an idle one, so it balances the way an alias does instead of
always landing on whichever registered first.

This is the third defect in one week with the same shape -- a name in
models.json not matching the name the runtime registered. v0.5.4 read a
backend from the runtime map instead of the file that declares it; v0.5.5
looked for a binary in a directory that does not exist; this one publishes an
id it cannot resolve. The pattern is worth an audit of its own.

Also pins a rule on the VRAM estimator that it already followed in most places
and now cannot lose: an estimate of zero means NOTHING WAS MEASURED, never
"measured as needing nothing". A stored zero was already read as absent; v0.5.6
stopped a configured zero from claiming authority over a real measurement; the
two tests added here also cover a zero arriving with force_vram_update, which
is the one flag that makes a measurement beat the operator's own number.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01S8LAP3ueNzQJtwzhgVbq66