Cost schema cannot express time-based pricing (peak/off-peak), so estimates diverge from actual billing

[greedyivan]

DeepSeek V4 bills peak/off-peak (peak 01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC, Mon–Fri; off-peak exactly half). #4891 works around this by storing the peak rate in [cost] and documenting the windows in a comment — reasonable given the current schema, but any flat rate is 2× off in one of the windows. Billing-level example: a session I reconciled against the provider's invoice was billed at exactly the peak rates during the peak window; the same session run off-peak would be estimated 2× above its bill with #4891's data.

CostTier already has a discriminated tier.type (z.literal("context"), packages/core/src/schema.ts), and consumers already select tiers at calculation time (opencode does this for context tiers in packages/opencode/src/session/session.ts, which carries a TODO: "update models.dev to have better pricing model"). A time tier would follow the same pattern:

[cost]
# base rates = off-peak (or peak — naming decision)
input = 0.66
output = 1.98
cache_read = 0.022

[[cost.tiers]]
input = 1.32
output = 3.96
cache_read = 0.044
[cost.tiers.tier]
type = "time"
windows = [
  { days = ["mon","tue","wed","thu","fri"], from = "01:00", to = "04:00" },
  { days = ["mon","tue","wed","thu","fri"], from = "06:00", to = "10:00" },
]
timezone = "UTC"

Design questions before any code:

1. Explicit per-window rates vs multiplier (DeepSeek is exactly ½ off-peak; a multiplier = 0.5 on the tier is compact, explicit rates generalize better).
2. Base-rate semantics: is [cost] the list price (peak) with tiers as discounts, or the floor (off-peak) with tiers as surcharges? fix(deepseek): update V4 pricing for peak/off-peak billing #4891 argues list price; consumers that ignore tiers would then overestimate rather than underestimate — is overestimation the preferred failure mode? (I'd say yes.)
3. Compatibility: Cost/CostTier are .strict(), so old SDK builds reject a time tier outright — data using it can't ship until consumers that validate are updated. How has the project handled adding discriminator values before — engine support first, data later?
4. Scope: timezone-aware windows only (provider schedules are published in UTC; DST/holiday calendars feel out of scope).

Context: opencode's pricing-correctness threads stalled (anomalyco/opencode#7387 auto-closed, RFC #12377 closed, PR #7763 closed unmerged), so this issue is also a place to decide the consumer-side rollout. I can prepare the schema PR plus the opencode engine change (timestamp-based tier selection) once the shape is agreed.

[github-actions]

This issue is a schema/feature design request (time-based cost tiers), not a concrete model catalog data fix.

It needs maintainer review on schema shape, compatibility, and consumer rollout. No automated catalog fix was opened.