Inference and routing

Status: bun LIFEOS/ROUTER/Router.ts status · optional

What it does

LifeOS runs a lot of small model calls that nobody is watching: scheduled jobs, eval judges, daily reviews, classifiers. This system decides which vendor and which model each one uses. The model for a given effort level (low, medium, high, max) comes from one registry, LIFEOS/TOOLS/models.ts, so a change of lineup is a one-line edit that every tool follows. Inference.ts is the shared tool those jobs call, and the Router (LIFEOS/ROUTER/) is the read-only view of who runs what.

Out of the box everything runs on your Claude subscription through the claude command, and no file here is required. No API key is needed for the default route. During setup, bun skills/LifeOS/Tools/DetectInference.ts --apply looks for the Claude and Codex logins already on the machine and writes inference-vendor.json from what it finds: both logins give anthropic with an openai fallback, one login gives that vendor alone. It replaces only the shipped template or its own earlier write, so a file you edited is left alone (--force replaces it). The files below only change the defaults: send unattended work to OpenAI, route image judging to a different vendor, or tune the daily coaching review.

Fill in

All files live in LIFEOS/USER/CONFIG/.

File	What it controls
inference-vendor.json	default: the vendor unattended calls use (anthropic, openai or anthropic-api). byLevel: an optional vendor per effort level (low, medium, high, max) that beats default for that level, for example "high": "openai". fallback: the vendor tried when the chosen vendor fails. Delete fallback if you only have one vendor.
vision-judge.json	Which vendor judges images, per eval suite. {"version": 1, "suites": {}} keeps the default (Google). To route one suite to OpenAI, add "<suite-name>": {"provider": "openai", "level": "medium", "fallback": "google"}.
coach-review.json	The daily coaching review that turns your corrections of the assistant into upgrade suggestions. Fields: lookback_hours, rating_threshold (ratings at or below this count as corrections), min_confidence, max_new_per_day. The shipped values are the defaults.

The vendors mean: anthropic is the claude command on your subscription. openai is the codex command on your ChatGPT subscription; it never uses an API key. anthropic-api is the Anthropic API, paid per token, and covers low and medium only; it never falls back to the subscription. For one command you can override the file with --vendor, and for a whole shell with the LIFEOS_INFERENCE_VENDOR environment variable.

Accounts and secrets

The anthropic vendor needs only a logged-in claude command. The openai vendor needs the codex command logged in to a ChatGPT plan (codex login, which writes ~/.codex/auth.json); without that login it fails with “no ChatGPT subscription login”. The rest need a key in ~/.claude/.env:

Vendor	Key name
anthropic-api	ANTHROPIC_API_KEY_LIFEOS
Google vision judge (default)	GOOGLE_API_KEY

Never paste a key into a config file or a chat. Store one with bun LIFEOS/TOOLS/Secrets.ts set KEY_NAME: it reads the value from your terminal with echo off (or from a pipe), writes .env at mode 0600, and reseals when sealing is set up. If you edit .env by hand instead, run bun LIFEOS/TOOLS/Secrets.ts seal afterwards. Check that a key is present, without printing it (a key whose value is empty reads no):

bun LIFEOS/TOOLS/Secrets.ts has ANTHROPIC_API_KEY_LIFEOS   # prints "ANTHROPIC_API_KEY_LIFEOS yes" or "no"

Prove it works

bun LIFEOS/ROUTER/Router.ts status    # exit 0 and "router: N agents, N lanes" when every agent has a lane
bun LIFEOS/ROUTER/Router.ts lanes     # every agent with its vendor, model and effort
bun LIFEOS/ROUTER/Router.ts rules     # the routing rules the dispatcher follows

status exits 1 and names the agent when one has no lane or points at a model that does not exist. To prove a vendor end to end, make one small live call; this uses your subscription or key:

bun LIFEOS/TOOLS/Inference.ts --level low --vendor openai "Reply with one word." "Say OK."

Swap openai for anthropic to test the subscription route. A missing key fails with the key’s name, and a missing codex login says so. An unknown vendor name fails and lists the accepted ones.