Skip the network probe in DeepgramProvider.health_check when the API key is missing

[mahimairaja]

Want to work on this? Comment .take and it is yours (first comment wins). When your fix is ready, open a PR with Closes #168.

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Good first issue. One guard line, to match four other providers.

What's going on

When you check a provider's health with no API key set, most cloud providers short-circuit and return False right away without hitting the network. Deepgram does not. With no key, DeepgramProvider.health_check still fires a live request to https://api.deepgram.com/v1/projects with the header Authorization: Token None. It does not crash (the whole body is wrapped in try/except Exception: return False), but the request is pointless: no key means it can never pass, so we should skip the round-trip.

Cartesia, Anthropic, ElevenLabs, and AssemblyAI already do the right thing. This issue makes Deepgram match them.

What to do

One file: src/voicegateway/inference/providers/deepgram_provider.py (the health_check method starts at line 44).

Copy the pattern from src/voicegateway/inference/providers/cartesia_provider.py (lines 45-46). Add an early return before the try:

    async def health_check(self) -> bool:
        import httpx

        if not self.api_key:
            return False
        try:
            async with httpx.AsyncClient() as client:
                ...

That is the entire change. self.api_key is already set in __init__ (line 13), so no other edits are needed.

How to test

There is already a test for this exact pattern on Cartesia. Copy it for Deepgram.

1. Look at src/voicegateway/tests/providers/test_cartesia_health_check.py, specifically test_health_check_returns_false_when_key_missing (lines 48-55). It patches httpx.AsyncClient to blow up if called, then asserts health_check() returns False without ever touching the network.
2. Add the same test for DeepgramProvider (a new file src/voicegateway/tests/providers/test_deepgram_health_check.py, or add a case next to the existing Deepgram tests). Remember to monkeypatch.delenv("DEEPGRAM_API_KEY", raising=False) so an env var does not leak in.
3. Run it:

pytest src/voicegateway/tests/providers/test_deepgram_health_check.py

Bonus (optional)

openai_provider.py (line 58) and groq_provider.py (line 48) also probe without this guard. If you want, add the same if not self.api_key: return False line to each in the same PR so all cloud providers behave consistently.