lite autoroute
lite autoroute is a subcommand of lite, the LiteLLM proxy CLI that also gives you lite login, lite up, lite claude and the model, key, and team management commands. It lets you try LiteLLM's complexity-based auto-routing locally, against models your key already has access to on your real, running proxy. It picks a cheaper or more expensive model depending on how complex a prompt looks, without editing your proxy's config.yaml and without any request bypassing it. It stands up a throwaway local proxy that forwards every request back to your real proxy, then points Claude Code at that local proxy for the session.
lite autoroute is early and evolving. Tell us what works, what breaks, and what you want next in the Autorouter discussion on GitHub. Your feedback directly shapes where this goes.
For proxy setup and the full configuration reference, see Auto Routing.
1. Install the CLI
lite autoroute start runs a throwaway proxy on your machine, so it needs the full proxy runtime: the thin install-cli.sh one-liner from the CLI quick start installs only litellm[cli], which is not enough here, and the command below replaces that install. It installs litellm[proxy] from main with a single curl command; uv is bootstrapped automatically if it is missing.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/BerriAI/litellm/main/scripts/install.sh | \
LITELLM_CLI_REF=main sh
2. Point the CLI at Your Proxy
Set your real proxy URL and key. The autorouter forwards every request through this proxy with this key.
export LITELLM_PROXY_URL=http://localhost:4000
export LITELLM_PROXY_API_KEY=sk-...
3. Configure the Autorouter
Run the interactive wizard. It discovers the model groups your key can reach and asks you to assign models to each complexity tier.
lite autoroute configure
4. Start the Autorouter
Start the ephemeral local proxy. It runs in the foreground and prints the proxy's request log. Ctrl-C stops it and restores your Claude Code settings; if the process died any other way, lite autoroute stop does that cleanup.
lite autoroute start
5. Run Claude Code as Normal
In another tab, start Claude Code. The autorouter now automatically intercepts all Claude Code traffic, and the Claude Code status line shows Routed to: <model> after each reply.
claude
For the full reference, including recovery from an unclean shutdown and important caveats, see the lite autoroute section of the CLI README.
