"Invalid URL" error across multiple providers

[RomneyDa]

Summary

Several users are reporting an Invalid URL error with no additional context, across different providers and configurations. This is a tracking issue to consolidate the reports and fix the underlying causes.

Related issues: #6717, #9630, #9864, #10317, #10800, #11049, #11249, #11488

Are you hitting this?

The most common reason is an apiBase value that's missing the protocol. For example:

# This will cause "Invalid URL"
apiBase: localhost:11434

# This works
apiBase: http://localhost:11434

If you're using a provider like Ollama locally and haven't set apiBase at all, it should default correctly — but if you have set it, make sure it includes http:// or https://.

If you're using models from the Continue hub (registry packages with ${{ secrets.* }}), the error may occur if a secret failed to resolve, leaving a template string where a URL is expected.

What the error looks like

Error handling model response
There was an error handling the response from <model name>.

Invalid URL

No further detail is provided, which makes it hard to diagnose.

[RomneyDa]

Proposed fixes

Three distinct causes, all fixable:

1. No validation or normalization of apiBase

apiBase is accepted as a bare z.string().optional() in the schema and passed straight to new URL() at 60+ call sites. A value like localhost:11434 (missing protocol) silently passes config parsing and only blows up at request time with a useless error.

Fix: Validate and normalize apiBase in the BaseLLM constructor (core/llm/index.ts, around line 277). If it's a non-empty string without ://, prepend http://. If it's still not a valid URL, throw with a message that names the provider and the bad value. Optionally also add .url() validation in the config schema (packages/config-yaml/src/schemas/models.ts:182).

2. ContinueProxy inherits OpenAI but drops its apiBase default

ContinueProxy (core/llm/llms/stubs/ContinueProxy.ts:55) overrides static defaultOptions with { useLegacyCompletionsEndpoint: false }, which fully replaces the parent OpenAI.defaultOptions (including its apiBase). The controlPlaneProxyInfo setter patches apiBase later, but inherited code like OpenAI.getMaxStopWords() (core/llm/llms/OpenAI.ts:256) does new URL(this.apiBase!) — a non-null assertion on a potentially undefined value.

Fix: Either merge with the parent defaults ({ ...OpenAI.defaultOptions, useLegacyCompletionsEndpoint: false }), or guard getMaxStopWords() to handle undefined apiBase gracefully (return a safe default like Infinity).

3. Unresolved template strings used as URLs

When apiBase is set via ${{ secrets.xxx }} and resolution fails, the literal template string becomes the URL value.

Fix: Covered by fix #1 — constructor validation would catch this.

Key files

• core/llm/index.ts:277-289 — apiBase assignment in BaseLLM constructor
• core/llm/llms/OpenAI.ts:256 — new URL(this.apiBase!) non-null assertion
• core/llm/llms/stubs/ContinueProxy.ts:55 — defaultOptions missing apiBase
• packages/config-yaml/src/schemas/models.ts:182 — schema with no URL validation

[BillionClaw]

Looking into this — investigating the Invalid URL error across multiple providers. Happy to submit a fix.