Claude OpenRouter

Use OpenRouter models in Claude Code without giving up your native login or connectors.

Claude OpenRouter is a small, dependency-free CLI and loopback router. It indexes OpenRouter's live catalog, gives you a searchable multi-select picker, and places those favorites beside Claude's built-in models in /model. Native Claude requests keep using Anthropic; explicitly labeled OpenRouter favorites use your OpenRouter key. After setup, run the normal claude command.

Install

curl -LsSf https://xhluca.github.io/claude-openrouter/install.sh | sh

The installer prompts for your OpenRouter key without echoing it, fetches the current catalog, and opens the model picker immediately. It installs for the current user on Linux or macOS. If a credential already exists, setup shows its path and asks whether to reuse it before offering a masked replacement prompt. Max routing requires an existing Claude.ai login; run claude auth login first if Claude Code is newly installed.

Or use uv:

uv tool install claude-openrouter
clor setup

For a one-off setup without installing the package first:

uvx claude-openrouter setup

pipx install claude-openrouter works too. The full command is claude-openrouter; clor is the shorthand. Claude Code 2.1.242 or newer is required for the multi-model picker.

Upgrade the installation in place at any time:

clor update

The updater uses the manager that owns the current installation, reports the installed version before and after, and restarts an existing hybrid service. clor upgrade is an alias. When moving from an older direct-routing release to 0.4.x, run clor setup once to activate hybrid routing.

Quick start

Refresh the local catalog:

clor index

fetch is an alias for index. index is the canonical name because the result is a persistent local catalog used by selection and search.

Search refreshes the index first. Plain terms are case-insensitive substring globs; *, ?, and bracket expressions use shell-style matching:

clor search claude
clor search glm --tools
clor search 'anthropic/*' '*coder*'
clor search --regex '^(anthropic|google)/.*(sonnet|gemini)'

--tools keeps only models whose live OpenRouter metadata advertises function calling. The table and interactive picker show tools ✓, tools ✗, or tools ? so the compatibility signal is visible without a separate query. Because catalog metadata cannot prove that a model follows Claude Code's particular tool protocol reliably, run one real compatibility check before depending on a new model for agent work:

clor check z-ai/glm-5.3-flash

clor check does not require favoriting the model. It starts an isolated local route, asks the real Claude Code CLI to perform one Glob call, verifies that the tool completed and that the model continued from its result, then exits. Before sending the billable request, it shows a model-specific planning range from the current OpenRouter input/output rates and asks:

Continue? [y] Yes / [N] No / [a] Always allow:

No is the default. Always allow disables future prompts while retaining the estimate in command output; restore them with clor config --check-confirmation ask. Scripts and CI can consent to one run explicitly with clor check MODEL --yes. The exact charge cannot be known in advance because Claude Code's injected context and provider usage vary; the successful result also shows the cost reported by Claude Code when available.

Select one exact model, several exact models, or open the interactive picker:

clor select anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6
clor select --model openai/gpt-5.4
clor select --models anthropic/claude-opus-4.6 google/gemini-3.1-pro-preview
clor select

The positional value is shorthand for --model. Each non-interactive call replaces the saved favorite set. In the picker, type a search and press Down or Enter to browse its results. Press Enter or Space to select and deselect; press Up past the first result or Esc to focus the search again. Press s while browsing results, or Shift-S/Ctrl-S while typing a search, to save. Selecting a model that does not advertise tools is allowed, but clor warns that Claude Code agent actions may fail and gives the exact clor check command.

An existing Claude session does not need a full restart after clor select. Run /agents once to load the updated generated subagent definitions immediately, then reopen /model. Claude Code normally hot-reloads the managed hook setting as well; /hooks shows whether it is active. Restart only if the session's settings watcher missed the change.

Launch Claude Code normally, then switch models normally:

claude

> /model

The selected rows are Claude Code's native picker rows, and model requests use the provider shown in the row. Every local Claude Code entry point reads the same settings, including claude --continue, claude --agent NAME, background agents, and the claude agents view.

Each OpenRouter favorite is also installed as a user-level Claude Code subagent. This matters because Claude Code's per-invocation Agent.model field only accepts the native sonnet, opus, and haiku aliases, while custom subagent definitions accept a full model ID. Ask the parent to delegate to the named OpenRouter favorite (or select the generated clor-* agent in Claude Code), and the child uses that exact favorite. A scoped PreToolUse hook strips an accidental native alias override only for clor-managed subagents; ordinary Claude subagents and inherit behavior are untouched.

The router never infers a provider from a bare third-party ID. OpenRouter rows use a private clor/openrouter/ namespace, and an unknown or unfavorited model fails closed. Selecting Opus cannot silently send it to OpenRouter.

Claude Code keeps its native Claude.ai authentication, so connectors remain available and the external-auth warning is absent. If you prefer direct Anthropic API billing for built-in Claude models, configure it separately:

clor setup --anthropic-auth api
# or, after setup:
clor config --anthropic-auth api

# Return native Claude models to Max subscription billing:
clor config --anthropic-auth max

The Anthropic API key is stored inside the router and is not exported as ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, preserving Claude's native login and connectors. clor config --anthropic-key-stdin is available for non-interactive secret input. Deferred tool loading is disabled because non-Anthropic OpenRouter models reject that Anthropic-specific protocol; connector tools remain available and are loaded eagerly instead. This is required for GLM in claude agents.

Image support follows the live OpenRouter catalog rather than assumptions about model names. When architecture.input_modalities marks a favorite as text-only, the router tells the agent that it cannot inspect images before it chooses a tool. If Claude Code still returns image content from Read, the router removes the image bytes and substitutes a categorized ToolError[unsupported_input_modality] result. The agent can then explain the actual limitation and suggest a vision-capable /model favorite instead of showing Claude Code's generic model-access error. Image inputs pass through unchanged for models whose catalog metadata includes image.

Commands

Every catalog command also accepts --json where useful. API keys are never accepted as command-line arguments; automation can pipe one to setup --key-stdin or config --key-stdin.

What it changes

                                    ┌─ Claude model ─────► Anthropic
Claude Code ─► 127.0.0.1 router ────┤
                                    └─ clor/openrouter/* ► OpenRouter

• Stores the key at ~/.config/claude-openrouter/credential with mode 0600.
• Runs a loopback-only router on 127.0.0.1:9417, supervised by a systemd user service on Linux or a LaunchAgent on macOS. Minimal containers without a service manager use a detached process for the container lifetime.
• Adds the local endpoint, a random local-service token, and OpenRouter picker rows to ~/.claude/settings.json. Provider API keys never appear there.
• Creates one marked ~/.claude/agents/clor-*.md definition per favorite and a scoped Agent hook so GLM can delegate to DeepSeek, DeepSeek can delegate to GLM, and other selected OpenRouter combinations keep their exact child model.
• Does not set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY or apiKeyHelper when a native login exists.
• Strips OAuth and Anthropic keys before OpenRouter requests, strips the OpenRouter key before Anthropic requests, and allows only selected OpenRouter model IDs.
• Saves the fields it replaces in a private, versioned backup and restores them exactly with clor reset or clor uninstall; generated subagent files and the scoped hook are removed at the same time.
• Migrates settings created by older claude-openrouter releases automatically the next time setup or selection runs.

Claude Code itself applies one endpoint and authentication context to an entire process. The local router supplies the missing per-model boundary while keeping Claude Code unmodified. If the router is unavailable or cannot classify a model, the request errors instead of falling back to another paid provider.

Claude Code is optimized for Anthropic models. OpenRouter can accept other model IDs through its Anthropic-compatible endpoint, but models differ in tool use, thinking blocks, context handling, and Claude Code compatibility. Prefer models that advertise tools, and use clor check MODEL to verify an actual Claude Code tool round-trip rather than assuming that metadata alone guarantees behavior.

Reset and uninstall

Stop the router, restore the pre-install Claude settings, and keep the command:

clor reset

Restore settings, remove the credential and index, and uninstall a curl/uv tool installation:

clor uninstall

Reset and uninstall only reverse fields managed by Claude OpenRouter in ~/.claude/settings.json. They intentionally leave project-owned settings such as .claude/settings.local.json unchanged. If Claude Code reports an unsafe project permission after uninstalling, open /permissions, select the named local allow rule, and remove it. Do not replace it with a broader wildcard.

Demo

The animation above and the interactive replay come from an end-to-end Docker capture: the regular public curl installer, progressively masked key entry, interactive search and selection of z-ai/glm-5.3, Claude Code's native /model picker launched through plain claude, and the model's live answer about its identity and open weights.

The terminal is recorded at 75×24 and rendered at 32 px into a 1480×1110 4:3 video. The 25-second installation and setup lead-in is compressed to 12 seconds; subsequent user and UI actions stay at 1×, while Claude's active fetch/thinking interval is accelerated 4× for pacing. /model is submitted as one command so partial autocomplete redraws do not flash in the video, and capture sanitization removes transient expanded-thinking frames without changing the final answer.

The scripts verify the exact saved favorite and assistant turn, then reject any cast containing the OpenRouter key or mounted Claude OAuth tokens before publishing it. Sanitization also replaces the randomized temporary path with ~; release-only command, settings-path, and version labels may be rebased without altering the captured Claude interaction or response.

Watch the MP4, download the asciicast, or reproduce the capture.

Development

git clone https://github.com/xhluca/claude-openrouter.git
cd claude-openrouter
uv run --with pytest pytest
uv run --with ruff ruff check .
scripts/live-docker-check.sh /path/to/openrouter-key ~/.claude

The Docker check mounts temporary copies of Claude OAuth state and the key only at runtime. It makes live, billable Max and OpenRouter calls, dispatches a GLM 5.3 Flash background agent, verifies GLM-to-DeepSeek and DeepSeek-to-GLM child dispatches, and launches the real claude agents terminal UI.

License

MIT

Acknowledgements

Claude Code Router (CCR) helped establish the broader Claude Code routing space. CCR is a full, self-contained routing and UI-based management system spanning providers, profiles, routing rules, and more. Claude OpenRouter is intentionally narrower: it is a simple connection from Claude Code to OpenRouter, installs with one small Bash command (or uv/uvx), and does not aim to cover CCR's full management spectrum.