Show HN: Gremlord – Run Claude Code on any model, with a budget

Gremlord, a new open-source tool announced on Hacker News, wraps Anthropic's Claude Code in a local router that lets users run the coding assistant on any model—including OpenAI, xAI, Ollama, vLLM, and OpenRouter—while metering every token and enforcing user-set budgets. The tool adds a SQLite-based cost log, per-turn model selection via a cheap classifier, and session-to-session messaging, addressing Claude Code's single-provider limitation and lack of cost visibility.

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Run Claude Code on any model, with a budget. gremlord wraps Claude Code in a thin local router. Same TUI, same tools, same auto-updates — Anthropic runs byte-faithful passthrough, while OpenAI, xAI, and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint Ollama, vLLM, OpenRouter work through full request/stream translation. Every token is metered, priced, and checked against a budget you set. A cheap classifier picks the model for each turn, filtered by which models can actually hold the request; a second, independent pass flags tasks that want a recurring loop instead of a single reply. And now, sessions find and message each other by name. curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gremlord/gremlord/main/install.sh | sh README → https://github.com/gremlord/gremlord What Claude Code alone doesn't do. It's a great harness and it keeps getting better — forking it means losing that. But it only talks to one provider, and it never tells you what a session cost. Two dialects, every provider Anthropic runs byte-faithful passthrough. Everything else — OpenAI, xAI, Ollama, vLLM, OpenRouter, a local llama.cpp server — works through the same request/stream translation. Model names are aliases you define in config.yaml . Every token priced A local SQLite log prices every request as it happens. gremlord cost --by model breaks spend down by model, profile, or session. Budgets that actually stop you Daily, weekly, monthly caps, global or per profile. Hit one and the router refuses the next request with a clear message in the TUI — in-flight responses are never cut. Two classifiers watch every turn --model auto sends planning to a big model and mechanical edits to a cheap one, sticky for the whole turn. The same classifier call can also name a task specialist — see task routing tasks below. A second, independent pass, Auto Goal, flags tasks that need a recurring check-in — a flaky test, a long build — and nudges Claude Code toward ScheduleWakeup or /loop instead of a single reply. Context scaling per model Claude Code sizes auto-compact for a ~200K Claude window. Declare a model's real context window and an effective context below it, if the model gets unreliable early and the router scales every token count it reports, so a 32K local model and a 400K one both compact at the right moment — never against a window they don't have. Size-aware routing, before it fails The auto-router checks a request's size against each candidate model's window before picking one, so a large prompt skips tiers that can't hold it instead of overflowing one that can't. Anything still too large for every configured model gets refused with a clear error, before it reaches a provider. Subagents on any model Claude Code's Agent tool is normally pinned to sonnet | opus | haiku | fable . gremlord agents sync writes one subagent definition per configured model alias, so a routed model becomes selectable by name — subagent type: "gremlord-qwen" — and its traffic is priced and budgeted like anything else. No daemon, no fork The first session binds the router port; when it exits, another running session takes over in seconds. Claude Code stays unmodified and keeps auto-updating on its own. Profiles you switch on the fly Bundle a main model, a fast background model, and a budget into a profile. -p cheap for one session, --model grok for one request. No wrapper in the launch path Claude Code sessions now find and message each other natively, so gremlord dropped its own launch wrapper — claude starts directly, one less subprocess and PTY hop between you and the TUI. Find the other session by the name you'd actually say. Claude Code sessions can message each other natively now — but session names are auto-derived from whatever a session is doing, so the name you'd say out loud is usually the project directory, not the name it registered under. gremlord peers matches on both, reads Claude Code's own session registry, and hands back the exact session to send to. Ties are surfaced as ties: messaging the wrong project is worse than a question. "the labs-service one" — matched on name and cwd ❯ gremlord peers labs-service-secondlife-be Best match for "labs-service-secondlife-be": daily-case-runtime busy ~/code/secondlife/labs-service started 12h ago gremlord setup writes this workflow into ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md , so plain claude sessions pick it up too. Sessions on a Claude Code build older than 2.1.224 don't register a peer socket and stay unreachable until restarted. The gauge tracks the model, not the label. Claude Code sizes auto-compact for the ~200K window it assumes. gremlord scales every token count it reports so a 32K local model and a 400K one both compact at the moment that's actually right for them — and a request too large for anything you've configured is refused before it reaches a provider, not after. See it in motion in the hero above; gremlord context below shows the same numbers as plain text. same session, two models configured ❯ gremlord context sess 4f21 model window effective used reported compact-at qwen-32k 32K 28K 27,940 99.8% ✓ compacted sonnet 200K 200K 27,940 14.0% — Three ways to get Claude Code off one provider. gremlord isn't the only answer to "I want Claude Code but not locked to Anthropic." Here's how the options actually differ. | | gremlord | claude-code-router · proxy forks · LiteLLM | OpenCode, Crush, Goose, Aider | |---|---|---|---| | Harness | Real Claude Code, unmodified, auto-updating | Real Claude Code, unmodified | Different harness entirely — own prompts, tools, TUI | | Runs as | Static Go binary, no daemon leader election over a fixed port | Daemon / server process you deploy and administer | Standalone CLI you run instead of Claude Code | | Cost & budgets | First-class CLI: gremlord cost , live statusline, hard-stop daily / weekly / monthly budgets | Usually a dashboard LiteLLM or not built in | Varies by tool, rarely budget-gated | | Model routing | Aliases + a built-in LLM-classifier tier router auto , size-aware and sticky per turn, with optional per-task specialist overrides | Rule-based routing configs; no classifier-based tiering | Manual model switch, no auto-routing | | Memory | Composes with clauder https://github.com/MaorBril/clauder — separate binary, optional | Not their concern | Varies | | Multi-session | gremlord peers resolves a session by name or project directory | Not their concern | Varies | gremlord doesn't try to be a better harness than Claude Code — it keeps Claude Code exactly as Anthropic ships it and only swaps what's behind ANTHROPIC BASE URL . Want a different agent loop entirely? OpenCode, Crush, Goose, and Aider are the right layer to look at. Want a gateway you deploy and administer for a team? LiteLLM is more mature for that. Choosing between gremlord and claude-code-router /compare/claude-code-router/ ? There's a longer, honest comparison. gremlord is for one developer who wants claude , unmodified, with a budget and a cheap-model escape hatch — installed in one command, with nothing to operate. A gateway, plus the CLI around it. Claude Code already supports pointing at a gateway via ANTHROPIC BASE URL . gremlord is that gateway — it never touches Claude Code's source. Install One command drops the binary in ~/.local/bin . gremlord setup writes a config, registers the statusline, and offers to install anything missing. Run gremlord It starts the local router, points Claude Code at it via ANTHROPIC BASE URL , and hands you the exact same TUI you already know. The router does the rest Resolves the model alias, translates the dialect if needed, logs priced usage, checks the budget — then streams the response straight back. default profile, tracked ❯ gremlord same session, cheaper models ❯ gremlord -p cheap one-off model override ❯ gremlord --model grok where did today's $4.31 go? ❯ gremlord cost --by model opus $2.87 sonnet $1.12 qwen $0.32 Same tier, different specialist. Tiering alone can't say that ordinary implementation work and architecture review need comparable capability but do better on different models. An optional tasks: map adds that second dimension on top of tiering, from a fixed label set: implementation , sql data , debugging , code review , architecture , security review , critical review . The classifier's one call per turn returns both the tier and, if configured, the task — no extra classifier request, just a fraction of a cent depending on classifier and prompt. tier router, plus specialists for two labels ❯ gremlord routing set auto --classifier haiku \ --deep opus --standard sonnet --light qwen \ --task implementation=grok --task security review=fable later calls merge into this rule; --task label= removes one ❯ gremlord routing list ALIAS CLASSIFIER DEEP STANDARD LIGHT TASKS auto haiku opus sonnet qwen implementation=grok, security review=fable tier and model disagree — the task override is what moved it ❯ grep autoroute ~/.gremlord/router.log ... tier=standard model=grok reason=task:implementation ... tier=deep model=fable reason=task:security review A task label only wins if its model fits the request's context and size budget; otherwise the request stays on the classified tier's own model. The label set is fixed, not customizable, and this is a model-selection hint, not a security boundary — naming security review picks a model, it doesn't enforce a review policy. Pinned sessions pin tiers / X-Gremlord-Pin-Model bypass task routing the same way they bypass tiering. New · experimental Paired model evals, blinded gremlord eval runs a baseline model and a candidate on the same coding tasks, each in its own isolated workspace, and records the route and usage for both. An optional judge compares the resulting patches without seeing which one is which. It's new, still rough at the edges, and meant for your own coding tasks or a pinned SWE-bench manifest — not yet a general leaderboard tool. Plain Claude Code vs. gremlord | | Plain Claude Code | gremlord | |---|---|---| | Same TUI, tools, auto-updates | yes | yes | | Non-Anthropic models | — | OpenAI, xAI, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint | | Per-session cost tracking | — | priced & logged | | Spend budgets & caps | — | day / week / month | | Per-task model routing | — | classifier-driven | | Requires forking Claude Code | n/a | never | Fine print How is this billed? Traffic through the router is billed to your API keys , not your Claude Pro/Max subscription. OAuth credentials are never proxied. For subscription billing, use a passthrough: true profile — normal claude, no tracking. Do the non-Anthropic models feel as good? They work through translation, but Claude Code's prompts and tool patterns are tuned for Claude, so expect them to be clunkier in the main loop. They're better used as cheap workhorses for background tasks and subagents. Translation keeps getting more reliable — tool-call IDs from translated models are sanitized so malformed ones don't corrupt a turn, and a turn that reasoned on a translated model no longer breaks the next turn on a native Anthropic one: unsigned thinking blocks are repaired before replay instead of retry-looping as "Tool use interrupted." What's experimental right now? gremlord eval — paired baseline-vs-candidate coding runs with an optional blinded judge. It works and produces real artifacts, including a documented one-task SWE-bench comparison, but it's new, the interface can still change, and one task is a smoke test, not a model ranking. Is Claude Code modified? No. gremlord launches the unmodified, auto-updating claude binary and points it at the local router via ANTHROPIC BASE URL — an officially supported gateway hook. Is it secure? The router binds 127.0.0.1 only and requires a per-install token mode 0600 , so other local processes can't spend on your keys. Keys live in ~/.gremlord/env , never in the config file. What does gremlord itself cost? Nothing — it's MIT-licensed. You pay your model providers for the tokens you use, which is exactly what gremlord measures and caps. One command to a tracked session. curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gremlord/gremlord/main/install.sh | sh GitHub → https://github.com/gremlord/gremlord