AI Routing Without Vendor Lock-In
Design a provider-neutral application contract while preserving access to specialized model capabilities.
Provider neutrality does not mean pretending every model behaves identically. It means keeping the application’s core contract stable while provider-specific capabilities remain isolated behind adapters.
Normalize the common path
Messages, streaming, tool requests, attachments, usage events, errors, and cancellation should use a common internal format. Specialized features can be exposed through capability flags rather than leaking provider logic across the application.
- Store provider request identifiers for reconciliation
- Version model and pricing registries
- Keep fallback behavior policy controlled
- Test provider changes against held-out workloads
- Preserve the ability to abstain when no route qualifies
Portability is operational leverage
A stable gateway contract allows a team to respond to price changes, outages, model deprecations, privacy requirements, and new capabilities without rebuilding every product that consumes AI.