OrcaRouter: only fan out when it is worth it

The Stack

Tested Against

Prerequisites

• An OrcaRouter account (hosted DSL, BYOK)
• Provider API keys to actually run it

Steps

1. 1

   Author the gated routing rules and lint them

   Write routing.yaml: cheap chat to the cheapest model, a fan-out gated behind difficulty > 0.6, and a repair rule that escalates after failed tests. CI parses the DSL and asserts cheap_chat delegates cheap and the fan-out rule carries a difficulty gate (not a match-all), with a default present.

   cat > routing.yaml <<'YAML'
   version: 1
   rules:
     - id: cheap_chat
       when: task_class == "chat" && difficulty < 0.3
       use: { delegate: cheapest }
     - id: hard_only_fanout
       when: difficulty > 0.6
       use:
         parallel:
           - { model: "anthropic/claude-opus-4.8" }
           - { model: "openai/gpt-4o", samples: 2 }
         arbiter:
           strategy: best_of_n
           model: "anthropic/claude-opus-4.8"
     - id: repair_after_failed_test
       when: agent_state.last_test_failed && agent_state.consecutive_errors >= 2
       use:
         model: "anthropic/claude-opus-4.8"
         reason_tag: repair
   default:
     delegate: balanced
   YAML
   ruby -ryaml -e '
   c = YAML.safe_load(File.read("routing.yaml"))
   abort "BAD: version must be 1" unless c["version"] == 1
   abort "BAD: no default" unless c["default"]
   rules = c["rules"] || []
   chat = rules.find { |r| r["id"] == "cheap_chat" }
   abort "BAD: cheap_chat does not delegate cheapest" unless chat && (chat["use"] || {})["delegate"] == "cheapest"
   fan = rules.find { |r| r["id"] == "hard_only_fanout" }
   abort "BAD: no hard_only_fanout rule" unless fan
   gate = fan["when"].to_s
   abort "BAD: fan-out is not gated behind difficulty (would match everything)" unless gate.include?("difficulty")
   puts "config OK: cheap_chat -> cheapest, fan-out gated behind a difficulty condition, default present"
   '

2. 2

   Watch it in shadow mode, then go live (not checked by CI)

   Run OrcaRouter's shadow mode for a week to see what the rules would have done before they touch live traffic, then tune the difficulty thresholds. The routing decisions are fenced.