diff --git a/packages/agent/build.go b/packages/agent/build.go
index 3e8dc76..343c7ee 100644
--- a/packages/agent/build.go
+++ b/packages/agent/build.go
@@ -213,6 +213,51 @@ func isKnownProvider(name string) bool {
 	return false
 }
 
+// providerAliases maps common short / alternate provider names to the
+// canonical id in knownProviders. Users (and other agents) reach for
+// "bedrock" or "vertex" far more naturally than the fully-qualified
+// "amazon-bedrock" / "google-vertex"; without this mapping an alias is
+// treated as an unknown provider and Resolve silently falls back to
+// anthropic, producing a misleading "no credential for anthropic" error
+// after the user explicitly picked, say, bedrock.
+var providerAliases = map[string]string{
+	"bedrock":      "amazon-bedrock",
+	"aws-bedrock":  "amazon-bedrock",
+	"amazon":       "amazon-bedrock",
+	"vertex":       "google-vertex",
+	"gcp-vertex":   "google-vertex",
+	"gemini":       "google",
+	"googleai":     "google",
+	"google-ai":    "google",
+	"azure":        "azure-openai-responses",
+	"azure-openai": "azure-openai-responses",
+	"copilot":      "github-copilot",
+	"github":       "github-copilot",
+	"codex":        "openai-codex",
+	"moonshot":     "moonshotai",
+	"kimi-code":    "kimi",
+	"ai-gateway":   "vercel-ai-gateway",
+	"vercel":       "vercel-ai-gateway",
+	"cloudflare":   "cloudflare-workers-ai",
+	"workers-ai":   "cloudflare-workers-ai",
+	"hf":           "huggingface",
+}
+
+// canonicalProvider normalises a user-supplied provider name: trims
+// surrounding whitespace, lower-cases it, and resolves any known alias
+// to its canonical id. Unknown names are returned trimmed/lower-cased
+// and unchanged so the existing unknown-provider handling still runs.
+func canonicalProvider(name string) string {
+	n := strings.ToLower(strings.TrimSpace(name))
+	if n == "" {
+		return n
+	}
+	if canon, ok := providerAliases[n]; ok {
+		return canon
+	}
+	return n
+}
+
 // Resolve merges args, config, and env into a Resolved set.
 //
 // Unlike the earlier version, Resolve NEVER returns an error for
@@ -223,7 +268,11 @@ func Resolve(args Args, requireCred bool) (Resolved, error) {
 	cfg, _ := LoadConfig()
 
 	// User-requested provider (explicit > config > default).
-	provName := firstNonEmpty(args.Provider, cfg.Provider, "anthropic")
+	// Normalise common aliases (e.g. "bedrock" -> "amazon-bedrock")
+	// before validation so an alias is never mistaken for an unknown
+	// provider and silently downgraded to anthropic.
+	argProvider := canonicalProvider(args.Provider)
+	provName := firstNonEmpty(argProvider, canonicalProvider(cfg.Provider), "anthropic")
 	if !isKnownProvider(provName) {
 		// Unknown provider (maybe removed or renamed). Fall back to
 		// the first provider that has credentials, or anthropic.
diff --git a/packages/agent/build_test.go b/packages/agent/build_test.go
index 92e1711..3e3bd44 100644
--- a/packages/agent/build_test.go
+++ b/packages/agent/build_test.go
@@ -108,3 +108,37 @@ func TestResolveExplicitFlagStaleDoesNotRepairConfig(t *testing.T) {
 		t.Errorf("config.json was clobbered (was %q; now %q)", good, cfg.Model)
 	}
 }
+
+func TestCanonicalProviderResolvesAliases(t *testing.T) {
+	cases := map[string]string{
+		"bedrock":         "amazon-bedrock",
+		"AWS-Bedrock":     "amazon-bedrock",
+		"  bedrock  ":     "amazon-bedrock",
+		"vertex":          "google-vertex",
+		"gemini":          "google",
+		"azure":           "azure-openai-responses",
+		"copilot":         "github-copilot",
+		"codex":           "openai-codex",
+		"moonshot":        "moonshotai",
+		"vercel":          "vercel-ai-gateway",
+		"hf":              "huggingface",
+		"anthropic":       "anthropic",       // canonical passes through
+		"amazon-bedrock":  "amazon-bedrock",  // already canonical
+		"totally-unknown": "totally-unknown", // unknown returned unchanged (lowered)
+		"Totally-UNKNOWN": "totally-unknown",
+		"":                "",
+	}
+	for in, want := range cases {
+		if got := canonicalProvider(in); got != want {
+			t.Errorf("canonicalProvider(%q) = %q, want %q", in, got, want)
+		}
+	}
+}
+
+func TestCanonicalProviderAliasesAreKnown(t *testing.T) {
+	for alias, canon := range providerAliases {
+		if !isKnownProvider(canon) {
+			t.Errorf("alias %q maps to %q which is not a known provider", alias, canon)
+		}
+	}
+}
diff --git a/packages/provider/amazon_bedrock.go b/packages/provider/amazon_bedrock.go
index 4acaa88..56fb36e 100644
--- a/packages/provider/amazon_bedrock.go
+++ b/packages/provider/amazon_bedrock.go
@@ -317,7 +317,18 @@ func (c *bedrockClient) Stream(ctx context.Context, req Request) (<-chan Event,
 	if resp.StatusCode != http.StatusOK {
 		b, _ := io.ReadAll(resp.Body)
 		resp.Body.Close()
-		return nil, fmt.Errorf("bedrock: http %d: %s", resp.StatusCode, strings.TrimSpace(string(b)))
+		msg := strings.TrimSpace(string(b))
+		// A 403 on the bearer route is almost always a region mismatch:
+		// short-term Bedrock API keys are scoped to the region of the
+		// console session that minted them, but zot defaults to
+		// us-east-1. Surface the resolved region and the fix so the user
+		// is not left guessing why a freshly-copied key is "invalid".
+		if resp.StatusCode == http.StatusForbidden && c.bearerToken != "" {
+			return nil, fmt.Errorf(
+				"bedrock: http 403 (region=%s): %s\nhint: Bedrock API keys are region-scoped. If your key was created in another region, set AWS_REGION (e.g. AWS_REGION=eu-central-1) or pass --base-url https://bedrock-runtime.<region>.amazonaws.com",
+				c.region, msg)
+		}
+		return nil, fmt.Errorf("bedrock: http %d: %s", resp.StatusCode, msg)
 	}
 	out := make(chan Event, 16)
 	go c.runStream(ctx, resp, req, out)