Show HN: Smart model routing directly in Claude, Codex and Cursor

---

What it does

Point Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or your own app at localhost:8080. The router:

• 🎯 Routes per request. A cluster scorer derived from Avengers-Pro 1 picks the right model from your enabled providers, every turn.

• 🔌 Speaks everyone's API. Anthropic Messages, OpenAI Chat Completions, Gemini native. Streaming, tools, vision, the works.

• 🧠 Knows OSS too. DeepSeek, Kimi, GLM, Qwen, Llama, Mistral via OpenRouter (or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint).

• 🔒 BYOK by default. Provider keys stay on your box, encrypted at rest.

• 📊 Observable. OTLP traces out of the box. See them in the Weave dashboard (http://localhost:8080/ui/dashboard) or drop in Honeycomb, Datadog, Grafana, whatever.

30-second quickstart

The fastest way: point Claude Code, Codex, or opencode at the hosted Weave Router with one command. No clone, no Docker, no Postgres.

npx @workweave/router

That's it. The installer asks which tool (Claude Code, Codex, or opencode), walks you through scope (user vs. project), grabs a router key, and wires the right config file. Other flavors:

npx @workweave/router --claude              # skip the picker, Claude Code
npx @workweave/router --codex               # skip the picker, OpenAI Codex CLI
npx @workweave/router --opencode            # skip the picker, opencode
npx @workweave/router --scope project       # per-repo, commits settings.json (or .codex/ / opencode.json)
npx @workweave/router --local               # self-hosted localhost:8080
npx @workweave/router --base-url https://router.acme.internal
npx @workweave/router@0.1.0                 # pin a version

Requires Node ≥ 18 (Claude Code and opencode paths also need jq). Full flag reference: install/npm/README.md.

Or: self-host the whole stack

If you want the router (and dashboard) running on your own box:

# 1. Drop a provider key in. OpenRouter is the recommended baseline.
echo "OPENROUTER_API_KEY=sk-or-v1-..." >> .env.local

# 2. Boot Postgres + router on :8080 and seed an rk_ key.
make full-setup

The router is up at http://localhost:8080, the dashboard at http://localhost:8080/ui/ (password: admin), and your rk_... key prints in the logs.

# Call it like Anthropic
curl -sS http://localhost:8080/v1/messages \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer rk_..." \
  -d '{"model":"claude-sonnet-4-5","max_tokens":256,
       "messages":[{"role":"user","content":"hi"}]}'

# ...or like OpenAI
curl -sS http://localhost:8080/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer rk_..." \
  -d '{"model":"gpt-4o-mini",
       "messages":[{"role":"user","content":"hi"}]}'

# Peek at the routing decision without proxying
curl -sS http://localhost:8080/v1/route -H "Authorization: Bearer rk_..." -d '...'

Wire it into your tools

Claude Code. Run make install-cc to wire Claude Code at the local self-hosted router (it's also invoked automatically at the end of make full-setup). For the hosted router, use npx @workweave/router above.

Codex (OpenAI CLI). npx @workweave/router --codex patches ~/.codex/config.toml (or <repo>/.codex/config.toml with --scope project) with a managed [model_providers.weave] block and sets model_provider = "weave". Codex's existing OPENAI_API_KEY flows through to api.openai.com for the plan-based passthrough; the router key rides in an X-Weave-Router-Key HTTP header. Re-install and --uninstall --codex rewrite/remove only the managed block, leaving the rest of your Codex config untouched.

opencode. npx @workweave/router --opencode merges a provider.weave entry into ~/.config/opencode/opencode.json (or <repo>/opencode.json with --scope project). It uses opencode's bundled @ai-sdk/anthropic provider pointed at the router's /v1 endpoint — the router speaks the Anthropic Messages API natively, so opencode works unmodified. The router key and identity headers ride alongside the provider config; re-install rewrites only the managed block and --uninstall --opencode strips it.

Cursor (early beta, performance may not be the best). Settings → Models → Override OpenAI Base URL → http://localhost:8080/v1, paste rk_... as the API key.

Switching on/off. After installing, npx @workweave/router off --claude (or --codex / --opencode) routes that client straight to its provider again without discarding the router config; on flips it back, and status reports which way it's pointing. Claude Code also gets /router-off, /router-on, and /router-status slash commands. Cursor toggles via the same Settings → Models override above. See install/README.md.

Two keys, don't mix them up:

• sk-or-... / sk-ant-... / sk-... = your upstream provider key. Lives in .env.local.

• rk_... = your router key. Clients send this as a Bearer token.

Endpoints

Endpoint	Format
POST /v1/messages	Anthropic Messages, routed
POST /v1/chat/completions	OpenAI Chat Completions, routed
POST /v1beta/models/:action	Gemini generateContent, routed
POST /v1/route	Returns the decision, no upstream call
GET /v1/models · POST /v1/messages/count_tokens	Anthropic passthrough
GET /health · GET /validate	liveness + key check

Deeper docs

• 📐 Configuration reference: every env var, BYOK encryption, OTel knobs, cluster routing.

• 🛠️ Contributing: layering rules, hot-reload dev, migrations, tests, the whole engineering loop.

• 🏗️ Architecture: package layout, import contracts, recipes for adding endpoints / providers / strategies.

Star history

---

Footnotes

1. Zhang, Y. et al. Beyond GPT-5: Making LLMs Cheaper and Better via Performance–Efficiency Optimized Routing (Avengers-Pro). arXiv:2508.12631, 2025. https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.12631 ↩