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ADR-026: OpenRouter for Embed, Chat, and Rerank

Status: Accepted Date: 2026-06-02 Authors: paulhumanity (with grazianognoll)

Context​

humanwork already routes chat completions through OpenRouter. RAGflow had its own bundled embedder and reranker; migrating off it forces upstream-AI vendor decisions.

Options​

  • Region-tied managed model platform, rejected due to region and access-management lock-in.
  • Direct OpenAI plus direct Cohere, rejected because it requires two vendors, two keys, and two billing lines.
  • OpenRouter.

Decision​

Use OpenRouter for all three traffic classes: embed (/api/v1/embeddings), chat (/api/v1/chat/completions), and rerank (/api/v1/rerank). This gives humanwork a single key, single billing line, and vendor swap by config string.

Verified 2026-06-02​

OpenRouter exposes 26 embedding models, 3 rerankers (Cohere Rerank v3.5, Rerank 4 Pro, Rerank 4 Fast), and 342 chat models.

Last updated on by Degen