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Show HN: We built open OpenRouter that turns usage into a better model

Experiential Labs released Experiential, an open-source gateway and router for AI agent workflows that unifies hosted, BYOK, and local models behind an OpenAI-compatible API, with features for controlling model access, spend limits, and optimizing production traffic into custom routers or fine-tuned models. The tool, installable via pip and run locally or as a hosted platform, collects OpenTelemetry traces to build and optimize routers, and supports fine-tuning open-source models via Tinker. It includes anonymous aggregate telemetry that can be disabled, and is designed to work with coding agents like Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex.

read3 min views2 publishedAug 27, 2026
Show HN: We built open OpenRouter that turns usage into a better model
Image: Michielbdejong (auto-discovered)

Experiential is an open source gateway and router for agent workflows:

  • Use hosted, BYOK, and local models through one OpenAI-compatible API.
  • Control which users and agents can use which models, for which use cases, and how much they can spend.
  • Turn production traffic into a custom router or model optimized for quality, speed, and cost.

Start a local OpenAI-compatible gateway. On first run, the setup wizard uses the shared provider, model, and reasoning-effort selectors, persists every selected provider connection, then shows defaults for the public alias, identity, and $50.00

command budget before printing a one-time key:

pip install experiential
exp

Choose a public alias such as opus-5

, capture the issued key, and send a request:

export EXP_GATEWAY_KEY=...
curl http://127.0.0.1:8000/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $EXP_GATEWAY_KEY" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"model":"opus-5","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Help me"}]}'

Prefer a managed gateway to running one locally? The hosted platform at platform.experientiallabs.ai serves the same OpenAI-compatible (and Anthropic Messages) API at https://api.experientiallabs.ai/v1

. See SETUP.md for copy-paste prompts you hand to your coding agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and similar); the agent runs the setup for you. It collects four prompts:

  • Upload your LLM traces as telemetry: create an account instantly from your email, then pull or upload your existing LLM traces onto the platform as telemetry.
  • Connect your inference provider keys (BYOK): create an account, then connect your own OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Azure, Bedrock, Fireworks, or OpenRouter keys for free pass-through.
  • Start calling models on the gateway: make your first /v1

call with the OpenAI and Anthropic SDKs using anxpl_

key, and optionally repoint your existing coding agents. - Full onboarding: create an account instantly from your email, connect your keys, import your spend, then repoint every coding agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Aider, and similar) or Conductor at the gateway.

Start the local gateway with exp

(or exp run

); the compiled native data plane serves every route on loopback. From Python, load a fitted project router as an official OpenAI client backed by its own private gateway:

import exp

with exp.load_router("my-project") as client:
    response = client.chat.completions.create(
        model="my-project",
        messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "hello"}],
    )

First, collect OpenTelemetry traces from your current agent. If you just want to try it out, grab the public terminal-tasks OTLP dataset:

curl -L -o traces.otel.jsonl \
  https://huggingface.co/datasets/experiential-labs/wmo-terminal-tasks-traces/resolve/540883e451dc13d34fb50fdd36b143cb0f1fb0db/traces.otel.jsonl

Then build a project. The build command walks you through providers, models, and budget, and asks for your trace file:

exp build support-agent

After collecting traces from your router, fine-tune an open source model you own using Tinker.

exp optimize model support-agent

Anonymous aggregate PostHog product telemetry is enabled by default. It never includes prompts, traces, actions, observations, paths, model names, credentials, or raw customer content.

exp config telemetry status
exp config telemetry disable
exp config telemetry enable

The preference is stored locally in .exp/settings.toml

.

uv sync --extra dev
uv run ruff format --check .
uv run ruff check .
uv run ty check
uv run pytest -q

Repository and documentation conventions live in AGENTS.md.

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