Claude Router

January 13, 2026 · View on GitHub

Intelligent model orchestration for Claude Code - Automatically routes queries to the optimal Claude model (Haiku/Sonnet/Opus) based on complexity, reducing costs by up to 80% without sacrificing quality.

What Makes This Novel

What Exists	What Claude Router Does
Multi-provider routers (OpenRouter, etc.)	Intra-Claude optimization (Haiku/Sonnet/Opus)
Manual `/model` switching	Automatic routing via UserPromptSubmit hook
Generic LLM complexity scoring	Coding-task specific pattern recognition
External API wrapper approach	Native Claude Code integration using subagents

Technical Achievements:

Zero-latency rule-based classification with LLM fallback
Token-optimized agent definitions (3.4k vs 11.9k tokens)
Multi-turn context awareness and follow-up detection
Persistent knowledge system across sessions

Key Metrics

Metric	Value
Classification latency	~0ms (rules) or ~100ms (LLM fallback)
Classification cost	$0 (rules) or ~$0.001 (Haiku fallback)
Cost savings (simple queries)	~80% (Haiku vs Opus)
Cost savings (mixed workload)	Est. 50-70%
Additional savings (orchestration)	~40% on complex tasks

Installation

# Step 1: Add the marketplace (one-time, per project)
/plugin marketplace add 0xrdan/claude-plugins

# Step 2: Install the plugin
/plugin install claude-router

# Step 3: Restart Claude Code session to activate

That's it! The plugin automatically routes queries - no configuration needed.

# Update
/plugin marketplace update 0xrdan-plugins

# Uninstall
/plugin uninstall claude-router

Migrating from old marketplace? If you previously installed via claude-router-marketplace, run:
/plugin uninstall claude-router@claude-router-marketplace
/plugin marketplace remove claude-router-marketplace
Then follow the installation steps above.

Quick Start

Automatic routing works out of the box:

Simple queries → Haiku (fast, cheap)
Coding tasks → Sonnet (balanced)
Complex analysis → Opus (powerful)

Manual override when needed:

/route opus "Design a microservice architecture"
/route haiku "What is JSON?"

View statistics:

/router-stats

Commands

Command	Description
`/route <model>`	Override routing for a query
`/router-stats`	View usage statistics
`/learn`	Extract insights from conversation
`/knowledge`	View knowledge base status
`/orchestrate`	Execute complex tasks with forking
`/router-analytics`	Generate HTML dashboard
`/retry`	Retry with escalated model
`/router-plugins`	Manage plugin integrations

See Configuration & Commands for full documentation.

Documentation

Document	Description
How It Works	Default vs Router behavior, cost savings
Routing Rules	Classification rules, example output
Configuration	All commands and settings
Knowledge System	Persistent learning across sessions
Architecture	Project structure, data flow
Roadmap	Completed phases, coming soon
Contributing	How to contribute

How It Works

Claude Router intercepts queries and routes them to the optimal model:

"What is JSON?"        → Haiku   (~\$0.01)  ✓ Fast, cheap
"Fix this typo"        → Haiku   (~\$0.01)  ✓ Fast, cheap
"Run all tests"        → Sonnet  (~\$0.03)  ✓ Balanced
"Design architecture"  → Opus    (~\$0.06)  ✓ Powerful

For complex tasks, the Opus Orchestrator delegates subtasks to cheaper models:

Opus handles strategy → expensive reasoning
Haiku handles file reads → cheap I/O
Sonnet handles edits → balanced implementation

Result: Same quality, ~40% less cost on complex workflows.

See How It Works for detailed comparison.

Contributing

Sharing and Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.

Built for the Claude Code community | Report Issues | @dannymonteiro