Model routing and multi-provider setups

A practical model strategy for agents:

• Routing rules: cheap/fast for triage; strongest for synthesis or code you will ship.
• Fallbacks when a vendor is down or rate-limited—without silent quality collapse.
• Cost visibility: rough token awareness so teams do not get surprised at invoice time.

CoWork OS is built for many providers so you are not locked to a single vendor’s roadmap.

• Broad provider support in the ecosystem (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Ollama, Bedrock, OpenRouter, and more—see providers).
• BYOK keeps spend and data policy under your accounts.
• Local models via Ollama for offline or air-gapped experiments.

1. Inventory tasks by sensitivity, latency, and quality bar.
2. Assign default models per workflow class—not one model for everything.
3. Set budgets and alerts where your install supports them.
4. Test fallbacks quarterly; vendors change behavior and limits.
5. Document which model was used for audit-heavy outputs.

• API keys per provider with least privilege.
• Understanding of rate limits and regional constraints.
• Agreement on data residency if you route across regions or clouds.

1. Baseline latency and quality on a fixed prompt set per model.
2. Define primary and backup routes per task type.
3. Run shadow comparisons before switching production defaults.
4. Monitor errors and empty responses—often the first sign of routing bugs.
5. Review spend monthly; adjust routing when economics shift.

• “Given this task class, recommend model tier and why.”
• “List failure modes if provider A is unavailable.”
• “Estimate relative cost of these three approaches for 10k requests/day.”

Treat estimates as planning aids, not guarantees—pricing changes.

• Fallback path is tested end to end at least once.
• On-call knows how to disable a bad route quickly.
• Sensitive workloads never accidentally hit the wrong region or vendor.

• Routing by vibe instead of measured quality on your tasks.
• Silent downgrade to a weak model without noticing.
• Key sprawl—too many accounts with no owner.
• Ignoring local/offline needs until the network fails.