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

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

#21

Post by adchurch »

g00k wrote: post #13

Man, I'm not so sure if I'd use something like this because the way I prompt already changes based upon what model I am using. I'm not convinced it would route to the right model based on my diction or whatever.

Yeah that's a really interesting point, tbh I think the more relevant variable here is the harness you're using rather than the specific model? i.e. GPT 5.5 in the Claude harness behaves a lot more like Claude than Codex if that makes sense.

Hard to quantify this ofc but that's what I've felt vibes wise from using this for the last month.

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

#23

Post by adchurch »

alansaber wrote: post #19
adchurch wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right and that's why we built the router to be cache aware! Once it starts using one model, the threshold to switch to another model will be higher because the additional cost of the cache miss needs to be worth the cost savings or quality increase. This is the key thing that other routers we've seen miss: they're stateless so for a coding agent use case you end up spending more money due to all the cache miss…

That is interesting, sounds like in practice you only end up routing between 2 models

I'd say that a typical main agent loop has 1-3 models (obviously very situationally dependent), but when you have subagents those can get routed independently since they have a fresh context window, so there are a lot more degrees of freedom there.

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

#24

Post by adchurch »

gautam_io wrote: post #22

This is cool! Will this use my Claude Pro/Max subscription? Or will it always use the API billing "pay as you go"?

Yep it uses the Claude sub if possible and falls back to API billing only if you don't have a Claude sub or it's out of usage! Same deal for Codex

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

#25

Post by adchurch »

spqw wrote: post #10

This + making sure common requests are saved as reusable skills and scripts would probably save a large part of my token usage As prices increase we will see more of these tools to optimise and make the best use of token budget

100%, from what we've seen, for a lot of big companies that 1. don't have subsidized usage and 2. are pushing AI adoption hard, figuring out token costs is P0 or P1 for their eng leadership

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

#28

Post by emilio_srg2 »

adchurch wrote: post #17
emilio_srg2 wrote: post #14

but this means you work with API pricing rather than subscription pricing. Isn’t it better to use claude or codex CLI etc directly in terms of cost?

If you have a Claude/Codex subscription then we use that (and account for the subsidized price accordingly when making routing decisions) instead of API billing. So you get the best of both worlds: subsidized usage for frontier models + save by using open/smaller models when it's genuinely better. In practice, lots of ppl are using this to make their Claude sub limits go further!

I see but didn’t they severely limited the usage allowed with `claude -p`

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

#29

Post by adchurch »

suyash wrote: post #27

I would rather just use OpenCode - leverage AI models, even can host locally or paid ones with ease.

We integrate with OpenCode too! OpenCode provides the harness, then the router selects the right model for the task.

We haven't yet set up local model routing though, that's really interesting - have you had any success using local models for coding tasks? Tbh I haven't heard many success stories from using local models yet

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